Kids News - Articles for Grades 4-5

Celebrated annually on March 14, Pi ("π”) Day is a universal favorite with students and teachers. Though the American holiday, which honors the numerical constant representing the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, typically begins with a classroom discussion of the symbol, it usually ends with a slice or two of delicious pie. The event is commemorated every March 14 because the irrational number, which continues infinitely without repetition or pattern, is widely recognized as 3.14....

Paleontologists have long determined that modern-day birds evolved from smaller members of the two-legged, meat-eating theropods, such as velociraptors. However, for many years, the only transitional fossil linking the two had been that of the archaeopteryx — a bird-dinosaur hybrid that lived on Earth about 150 million years ago, during the late Jurassic period....

And in the blink of an eye, winter is over — at least when it comes to the clocks. On March 8, 2020, most Americans will "spring forward" by moving their clocks an hour ahead. Though the start of Daylight Saving Time (DST) means sacrificing sixty minutes of precious sleep or playtime on Sunday, it provides for longer spring and summer days....

Though India is home to numerous fun festivals, few are as revered or as widely celebrated as Holi, the festival of colors. Commemorated annually on the last full moon day of the Hindu calendar month Phalguna, this year, the joyous holiday will take place on March 10, 2020....

Ryker, a gorgeous Belgian Malinois, achieved instant Internet fame in December 2018 after the trainers at the Double H Canine Training Academy in Louisville, Kentucky, released a hilarious training test video of the adorable puppy. Captioned "Epic Service Dog Training Failure," it showed the enthusiastic dog trying his best to follow the instructions, but miserably failing at every trick, that he was taught....

Since the beginning of 2020, the East African country of Kenya has been battling the nation's worst desert locust outbreak in over 70 years. The destructive swarms, some as big as three times the size of New York City — an estimated 192 billion insects — are eating their way through thousands of acres of crops and animal pastures, decimating livelihoods in the process. Even worse, the locusts, which arrived from neighboring Somalia and Ethiopia, are now spreading to other countries, including Uganda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Congo....

Though it is now arid, the Urumaco region in Venezuela's Falcón State was once a mega wetland that was home to numerous colossal animal species. These included rodents the size of modern-day buffaloes and 10-foot (3-meter) tall carnivorous birds. The latest to join the list of the area's massive creatures is a giant turtle that was 100 times larger than its closest living relative, the Amazon river turtle, and about 1.5 times the size of the world's largest living turtle, the marine leatherback....

Need an extra day to catch up on sleep or to finish an assignment this month? Then you are in luck, because 2020 is a leap year, an event that occurs once every four years. This means that instead of the customary 365 days, the year will have 366 days. Since the extra day is tacked onto the shortest month of the year, February 2020 will have 29 days....

California's Yosemite National Park is home to numerous stunning waterfalls. However, from mid-to-late February each year, the unlikely star of the pristine preserve is Horsetail Fall — a small, nondescript waterfall that forms over the eastern edge of the park's famous vertical rock formation, El Capitan, every winter. That's because, during the two-week-period, the temporary 1,000-foot fall frequently transforms into a spectacular "firefall" for about ten minutes a day during sunset....