1. Comic Order

The comics pages can be a fun place to practice skills in recognizing chronological order. Chronological (KRON-o-LOJ-i-cal) order is the order in which things happened. With family or friends turn to the comics and cut out one feature that has three or more panels. Then cut each panel apart and mix up the order. Exchange comics with a friend. Each person should read all the pieces of the comic he/she has been given. Then put the panels back in correct order. For more challenge, use comics from the Sunday paper, which may have up to eight panels. Or pick comics that tell a story day after day and use more than one day's worth of panels at a time.

Learning Standard: Employing multiple strategies to construct meaning while reading, listening to, viewing or creating texts. Examples include summarizing, predicting, generating questions, mapping and examining picture cues.

2. Serious Art

Kieron Williamson is just 8 years old, but he is being compared to famous artists like Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso. Kieron, who lives in the European town of Holt in England, started his art career coloring in dinosaurs drawn by his parents when he was 5. He then started drawing scenes he saw while on vacation. He practiced a lot, and his parents enrolled him in art classes. Now, after a recent art gallery display, Kieron has sold paintings to collectors from around the world for about $236,000! Read the newspaper to learn about someone who does something very well, such as a firefighter who saves lives or a scientist who has discovered something. Make up a short, creative story telling what you think this person liked to do when he/she was your age.

Learning Standards: Writing fluently for multiple purposes to produce compositions, such as personal narratives, persuasive essays, lab reports and poetry; acquiring information from multiple sources.

3. 'Let's Go!'

Dora the Explorer, the cute cartoon character who can speak both English and Spanish, recently celebrated her 10th anniversary on the Nickelodeon cable television network. "Dora" is the top-rated pre-school television show, and parents say her character is a good role model for girls. To build on Dora's success, Nickelodeon has joined with the National Parents-Teachers Association and the Children's Defense Fund in a program called "Beyond the Backpack." The goal of the program is to help more children get ready for kindergarten. Think back to when you were in kindergarten and write down three memories, such as learning to read or making new friends. Choose a comic strip from the newspaper. Replace the words to create a conversation between you and a younger sister or brother going to kindergarten for the first time. What advice would you give?

Learning Standards: Focusing on meaning and communication while listening, speaking, viewing, reading and writing in personal, social, occupational and civic contexts; responding to a variety of visual, written and electronic texts by making connections to students' personal lives and the lives of others.

4. Man's Best Friend

An 11-year-old dachshund named Missy recently saved her owner's life. The small Oregon dog went to a neighbor's house and refused to leave. Missy led the neighbor to her house, where her owner was found on the floor. Missy's owner had just had heart surgery and had collapsed at home from an attack of dizziness. Missy and her owner are both doing fine. Read the newspaper for an example of a scary situation, such as a car accident or a house fire. Make a list of things you could do to prevent this from happening and what you could do if it did happen.

Learning Standards: Responding to a variety of visual, written and electronic texts by making connections to students' personal lives and the lives of others; acquiring information from multiple sources and then organizing and analyzing it.

5. Number 50

Hawaii became the 50th state in the United States on August 21, 1959. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the proclamation and issued an order for the American flag to have 50 stars. The new flag with five six-star rows and four five star rows became official on July 4, 1960. Go to the weather page of the newspaper or find a weather page online with an adult. Find the weather forecast for a town in Hawaii. Using the predictions for today and tomorrow, take a guess at what you think the weather will be like in that town next week. Why did you guess that?

Learning Standards: Using patterns and generalizations to make and justify inferences and predictions; investigating and describing what makes up weather and how it changes from day to day, from season to season and over long periods of time.