Kids News - Articles for Grade 6

American Sign Language (ASL), has been one of the primary means of communication for the deaf in the United States and many parts of Canada since the 1800s. It is estimated that between 500,000 to 2 million people use the language on a regular basis....

What could be better than Halloween falling on a Saturday? How about an "extra" hour on Sunday? That will be the case for most North American residents because this weekend also marks the end of Daylight Saving Time (DST). This means that on Sunday, November 1st, residents will add an extra 60 minutes to their day by simply moving back the clocks....

While for humans the expression "sleep with one eye open" is just a metaphor to keep alert, for some animals it is a way of life. Called unihemispheric sleep, it is the ability to snooze with one eye open and the corresponding half of the brain awake, while the other half rests....

Looking for a spooky Halloween tale? How about this? According to NASA scientists, an asteroid measuring between 1,050 to 2,100 feet will be making its way towards Earth on October 31st. While the massive space rock that will be zooming in at a rapid 78,000 mph will not hit us, it will come startlingly close - Within 1.3 times the distance of the moon (about 310,000 miles) - The closest such encounter since 2006....

While world population continues to increase, our freshwater supplies appear to have stagnated and in some cases even trickled to a halt. Residents all the way from California to Brazil are battling multi-year droughts. Earlier this year, some citizens of Sao Paola were so desperate that they drilled through basements and parking lots to try access groundwater. Experts estimate that there are currently a billion people in the world that lack clean drinking water....

An invisibility cloak might be easy to come by if you are a young wizard like Harry Potter, but developing such a device for the real world has proven to be a challenging task for scientists. Over the years, there have been numerous attempts. While each version has been slightly better than the previous one, none has come even close to the original 'created' by J.K. Rowling....

American artist Stan Herd is known for numerous things - Oil and watercolor paintings, incredible murals, and most of all, stunning crop art. In fact, the maestro is considered the pioneer of this method of artistic expression that involves the skillful arrangement of plants, soil, and rocks, to create massive masterpieces that are best viewed from a higher vantage point, like a hill or an airplane....

Styrofoam, a plastic made of expandable polystyrene foam (EPS) is a useful invention. In fact one could call it almost too useful! The lightweight and buoyant plastic can be used for a myriad of things from thermal insulation to disposable plates & cups, packing material, and even to build boats! The only problem is that the versatile product is almost impossible to recycle....

For U.S. residents, fall and pumpkins go hand in hand. Some use the fruit to make delicious soups and bread, others to carve out scary jack-o-lanterns. Then there are those that spend months growing giant-sized gourds that they use to compete at pumpkin weigh-offs. While there are numerous competitions held across the country, the 'Super Bowl' takes place at Half Moon Bay, CA which prides itself on being the 'Pumpkin Capital of the World.'...