1. Newspaper Wildlife

To celebrate spring, go through the newspaper this week and cut out pictures of living things. Then sort them into piles based on whether or not each living thing is bigger than you, smaller than you or about the same size as you. Next dream up new categories of your own and re-sort the living things into those categories. Paste each group on a separate piece of brightly colored paper and label the categories. Decorate your classroom with your different categories.

Common Core/National Standards: Conducting short research projects that build knowledge about a topic; using drawings or visual displays when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or points; comparing and classifying familiar organisms on the basis of observable physical characteristics.

2. Working the Land

As a class, look through this week’s newspapers and find five examples of people working on the land, changing the land or using the land for food, materials, enjoyment, shelter or other needs or wants. Talk about each example, and discuss ways in which in the resources of the land could be preserved for the future.

Common Core/National Standards: Engaging effectively in a range of collaborative discussions; responding thoughtfully to diverse perspectives, summarizing points of agreement and disagreement.

3. Monkey See, Monkey Do

Do you ever do something just because other kids want you to do it? Peer pressure is not just something that affects humans — it affects monkeys, too! A recent study has found that humans’ “willingness to conform … is shared with other primates. ” That was the conclusion of a researcher in a team that observed 109 wild vervet monkeys at a private game reserve in South Africa. The team set out to find how much baby monkeys are affected by their mothers’ behavior, and were surprised to learn that “friends” and “neighbors” also influenced the babies. “The copying behavior of … new infants and migrating males reveals the [power] and importance of social learning in these wild primates,” a researcher reported. And that behavior even extends to the kind of “conformity we know so well in humans.” As a class, talk about peer pressure and how kids your age can avoid it. Then find a comic strip you like in the newspaper. Draw a new version of that comic showing a character resisting peer pressure in a good way.

Common Core/National Standards: Engaging effectively in a range of collaborative discussions; using drawings or visual displays when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or points.

4. Worth More Than 5 Cents

A nickel has been sold at auction — for $3.1 million! It’s not just an ordinary five-cent coin. It’s one of five 1913 Liberty head nickels known to exist. It was made secretly and illegally, discovered in a car wreck that killed its owner, declared a fake, forgotten in a closet for decades, then declared authentic. It was offered for sale by a Virginia family at an auction sale outside Chicago, Illinois, and purchased in partnership by two men from Lexington, Kentucky, and Panama City, Florida. People who collect things often pay a great deal of money for items they want. In the ads of the newspaper find something that you would pay a lot for if you were a collector. Write a paragraph explaining your choice.

Common Core/National Standards: Producing clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization and style are appropriate to the task, purpose and audience; integrating information presented in different media or formats to develop a coherent understanding of a topic.

5. A Hotel at Legoland

A Legoland Hotel, the first in the United States, has opened in Carlsbad, California, just steps from the Legoland entertainment park there. Designed to appeal to children, the hotel’s 250 rooms are decorated in themes popular in kids’ literature; its restaurant buffet is low enough for youngsters to serve themselves; and it has special attractions, such as a smoke-breathing dragon made of about 400,000 Lego bricks. At Legoland parks, all the attractions and rides are based on different Lego sets. In teams or pairs, brainstorm an idea for an entertainment park for kids your age. Give your park a name and design an ad for the newspaper to get people to come to it.

Common Core/National Standards: Engaging effectively in a range of collaborative discussions; using drawings or visual displays when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or points.