Kids News - Articles for Grades 6-8

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Unfortunately it is a Sunday, which means that you cannot pinch your school friends (not wearing green) and get away with it, but there are always unsuspecting family members and neighbors that you can have fun with. Also, be sure to go on an extensive search for those lucky four-leaf clovers and seek out leprechauns that will hopefully lead you to the elusive pot of gold. But before you do all that, don't forget to read about the man whose death anniversary we celebrate and how all these unusual customs began....

Since 2006, US based Evolo magazine has held an annual contest challenging architects and designers to envision skyscrapers of the future. What makes the competition fun is that the entrants are not rewarded for the practicality of the design but their novel use of materials, technology and aesthetics. This allows the creators to run wild with their imaginations and results in some pretty cool, gravity defying structures....

On March 13th, 2013, hundreds of scientists, government officials and journalists, made the trek to Northern Chile to witness the official inauguration of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array or ALMA, the world's most powerful ground-based telescope....

Today is the 25th birthday of Pi Day! Yes, believe it or not, we actually set aside a day to celebrate the numerical constant that represents the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, on a flat plane surface. Why was March 14th selected? Because while Pi has been calculated to one trillion digits past the decimal point, we all simply recognize it as 3.14, which also happens to be, today's date....

Though researchers have known for many years that certain flowers have evolved their colors to attract bees as their pollinators, the same had not been confirmed about those that solely depend on birds to do the job. Now, a report published in the March issue of New Phytologist by a team of Australian scientists, reveals that this is indeed the case, at least for their local flowers....

Walk into the small Australian town of Coober Pedy on any given day, and you will get the eerie feeling of an abandoned ghost town - One where even the structures seem to have been razed to the ground, leaving behind just barren land. So why even call it a town? Because that's exactly what it is, complete with 4,000 plus residents of 48 nationalities all of whom - Live underground!...

For those of you that are a little tired of the recent snowstorms here is some good news - Winter is finally over at least, as far as the clocks are concerned. That's because this weekend most Americans, as well as, a number of other countries in the Northern Hemisphere will 'Spring Forward', by moving their clocks ahead by an hour. Also referred to as Daylight Saving or British Summer Time, this age-old tradition dates all the way back to World War One....

As if battling against a government they don't approve of is not enough, the people of Egypt now have another foe to deal with - One that they are almost helpless against - A thirty million strong army of Desert locusts that showed up on March 2nd, 2013 in the Southern region of the country's capital, Cairo....

If you happen to visit the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Norway or Denmark, you may encounter a rather strange sight - Babies napping in their strollers outside homes, daycare centers and coffee shops even, during mid-winter when temperatures are below freezing....