Helping Parents, Caregivers and Teachers Discover Quality Educational Kids Content.
The Kepler Space Telescope is dedicated to finding new planets, and it’s turned up some interesting patterns. Looking at 909 planets orbiting 355 stars, researchers concluded that the planets in most solar systems are similar in size and have more evenly spaced orbits. Our planets don’t follow either pattern. We just do our own thing!
Archive
Alligators brumate, which is like hibernation. Normally they spend cold days at the bottom of a swamp, coming up once a day for air. The recent unusually cold weather was tough on alligators in North Carolina. They left their snouts sticking out while the swamp froze around them! Happily, they’re now thawed out.
Archive
You might want to wear galoshes and old clothes today if it’s raining where you live. Then warn your friends so you don’t make everyone mad. It’s National Step in a Puddle and Splash Your Friends Day! I guess you’re out of luck if all your puddles are frozen.
Archive
Controlled burns are fires set for farming or forest management purposes, but there’s no such thing in Australia. That’s because firehawk raptors pick up burning sticks and spread the fire to other areas! For thousands of years, Aboriginal Australians have witnessed the fire-wielding birds of prey hunt animals trying to escape the fires.
Archive
Researchers have some new conclusions about the Hypatia stone, a pebble-sized meteorite found in Egypt. They knew the fragment it did not come from Earth or any known comets or meteorites in our solar system. Now they believe the materials in the Hypatia stone predate the Sun!
Archive
There are two ways to cover yourself with the blackest stuff on Earth. You can use Vantablack, which is a substance that absorbs 99.96% of light. Or you can be a bird of paradise with black feathers that absorb 99.95% of light. Both scatter light repeatedly by having no exposed flat surfaces.
Archive
What can help protect your heart, lower blood pressure, is made from a bean, and is celebrated today? Bittersweet chocolate! The bitter tasting flavonols that carry health benefits are removed from cacao beans to make sweeter chocolate, so if you want your chocolate to be good for you, bitter is better!
Archive
If the pirate Blackbeard had a book club, what would they read? The wreck of his ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, could hold a clue. Waterlogged paper rarely survives a shipwreck, but 300 year-old scraps of paper were found stuffed in a cannon. They were from a book about a sea captain’s adventures!
Archive
SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Zuma spacecraft for the U.S. Government. The second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket delivered the Zuma to its position in low-Earth orbit, while the rocket’s first stage maneuvered back to Earth to land 8 minutes after take-off. Zuma’s mission is top secret.
Archive
The Toronto Zoo got its first baby of the new year when Ashakiran the one-horned rhinoceros gave birth last week. She had a male calf after a 16 month pregnancy. There are only 3500 one-horned, or Indian, rhinos left in the wild. The 138 pound baby rhino has not been named yet.
Archive