1. KEEPING KIDS SAFER ON ROBLOX

Roblox is a huge online game where kids can play, build worlds, and chat with other players. Because so many children use Roblox, the company is adding a new safety tool that looks at a picture of a player’s face to guess their age. The goal is to make sure kids mostly chat with people close to their own age or with people they know in real life, so strangers can’t easily bother or trick them. Some adults like this idea because it could help keep kids safer, while others worry about what might happen if pictures were ever stolen or misused. Roblox says the photos are only used to check age and then are deleted. Write 3 rules you would give to a younger friend about staying safe when they play games or chat online, and then design a simple “Online Safety” poster that shows at least one of those rules with a short sentence and a small drawing.

2. CHOCOLATE THAT PROTECTS THE RAINFOREST

In Brazil, near the Amazon rainforest, chocolatiers are making special chocolate bars using cacao beans and other foods that grow in the forest, like Brazil nuts, açai berries, and a fruit called cupuaçu. For a long time, big companies far away bought cacao cheaply and made most of the money, but now more of the chocolate is being made right in Brazil. The people who make this chocolate want small farmers and Indigenous communities to earn good money without cutting down the forest, because cacao trees grow best in the shade of taller trees. If farmers can get paid fairly for growing cacao and other forest foods, they have more reasons to keep the rainforest alive and healthy. At the same time, they must be careful, because huge cacao farms with lots of chemicals could still harm the land. Imagine you are creating your own “rainforest chocolate” bar: write a short paragraph explaining which rainforest ingredients you would include, how your chocolate would help local farmers, and why protecting the forest matters, and then sketch what the wrapper for your bar might look like.

3. CLIMATE TALKS WITHOUT A CLEAR PLAN

Leaders from many countries met in Belém, Brazil, for big climate talks called COP30 to discuss how to slow down global warming. Scientists say that burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas is heating up the planet and causing more heat waves, floods, and wildfires, but the final agreement from the meeting did not clearly say that the world must move away from these fuels. Some countries that sell a lot of oil pushed hard to keep fossil fuels from being named in the plan, while smaller and poorer countries, especially island nations, begged for stronger action because they are already facing dangerous storms and rising seas. Many diplomats left the meeting feeling disappointed, saying the deal did not match what the science says we need to do. Even so, some groups are trying to keep working together on protecting forests and helping communities adapt to climate change. Think about your own life and choose three everyday actions that could help the planet, such as saving energy, wasting less, or planting trees; then write 3 to 5 sentences explaining each action and how it could make a small difference even when world leaders move slowly.

4. SOLANGE’S TRAVELING LIBRARY OF STORIES

Solange Knowles is a Grammy-winning musician who also loves books, history, and art. She created the Saint Heron Library, a special collection of rare and out-of-print books by Black and brown writers, and she loans them to people all over the United States for free. Instead of just putting everything online, she likes sending real books through the mail and hosting events where people can hold the books, read them at home, and then send them back so someone else can enjoy them. Solange worries that these important stories might become too expensive or hard to find, so she travels, searches in old bookstores, and carefully lends the books to keep the stories alive in the communities that need them most. Now she is also a scholar in residence at a university, where she will help students learn to tell their own stories through music and art. Create a mini “lending library” in your imagination by choosing three books (real or made up) that you would want to share with your community, and in a short paragraph describe each book, who you would hope would borrow it, and one rule you would use to make sure the books get returned so others can read them too.

5. A SECRET MOUNTAIN OF TRASH

In the English countryside near a highway, people discovered a huge hidden pile of garbage as long as a football field and as tall as a four-story building. Criminals had secretly dumped truckloads of household trash there, probably at night, because it is expensive to throw away waste the right way. The trash heap was so big that it shocked local residents and leaders, and cleaning it up could cost more than the nearby town’s whole yearly budget. Experts worry that rain could wash dirty water from the trash into a nearby river that flows into the famous River Thames, harming plants, animals, and people. The government is now investigating who is responsible and says the people who dumped the trash should pay for the cleanup. Write 4 to 6 sentences pretending you are a reporter visiting the giant trash pile for a news story. Describe what you see, what you smell, and why people in the town are upset. Then explain one question you would ask the local government about how this trash could be dumped for so long without anyone noticing.