Jump to content

Menu

Best way to keep an 8 year old up on current events?


Recommended Posts

What current events do you want an 8 yo familiar with?

 

I'd think that most are too scary. . . natural disasters, wars, crime, revolution. . . So much is not appropriate for an 8 yo IMHO.

 

I'd think one thing to do would be to choose a story that *you* think is appropriate and read it aloud together, chatting about it. Perhaps a kids' news magazine might be a good source?

 

Here is a possible online source for kids news. . .

 

http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/teachers/ns/0,27955,,00.html

 

Personally, I show my 11 & 14 yo clips of Jon Stewart, then read related stories on CNN, etc. . . But the language is very crude, and I can't see trying that with a younger child.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We talk about politics and world events in front of our children, but we don't allow them to watch the news or browse news sites, anything like that. It's far too violent for them, IMO. We give them the important overviews, without getting into the gore. Actually, it's usually DH telling me what's going on, b/c I'm too busy during the day to get to the news, and we kind of go from there. ;-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My 8.5 yo and I started watching the CNN student news about a week ago. It's geared more towards middle and up, but he seems to get a lot from it and it's created some great conversations.

 

I orginally started it more for a geography thing than current events. I was orginally going to go to the library and read through some kids news mags, then we were going to mark the places read about on our map sheets. But I found this before we started the library thing. This works better. The library was going to be a once a week (if lucky) thing. CNN studen news runs M-F. The clips are about 10 minutes long and he can pull them up himself.

 

http://www.cnn.com/studentnews/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was reading Bringing Up Geeks and it mentions keeping kids up on current events. What's the best way to do this at the (almost) 8 year old level, without too much violence?

 

Sorry for the hijack, but I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on the book you're reading, Bringing up Geeks? I've had that in my amazon wishlist for a long time now but haven't taken the leap to buy it. Care to give us a review?? :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry for the hijack, but I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on the book you're reading, Bringing up Geeks? I've had that in my amazon wishlist for a long time now but haven't taken the leap to buy it. Care to give us a review?? :D

 

 

Just leap! :D I got a used copy for $4.00 through Amazon on the recs of someone else here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry for the hijack, but I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on the book you're reading, Bringing up Geeks? I've had that in my amazon wishlist for a long time now but haven't taken the leap to buy it. Care to give us a review?? :D

 

Jane - I breezed through it a while back, ear-marking the pages I wanted to come back to. I actually really liked it though, but as far as giving specifics, ack, I don't even recall details. Much of it rang true with us though. I'll probably buy it, so I can have my own copy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I started my son out by reading the newspaper in front of him. I would read headlines, point out interesting stories, and so on. Since ther were very few pictures he didn't get those bad images in his head and as long as I was reading aloud he would get a kinder version.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...