tammyw Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 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? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StephanieZ Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kchara Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 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. ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Renthead Mommy Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 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/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plain jane Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pqr Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 Simply have the child watch the news. BBC is perhaps the best as it avoids some of the "cheap thrill reporting" that many US stations get from reporting on the pecadillos of x, y or z. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mommy22alyns Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tammyw Posted February 28, 2011 Author Share Posted February 28, 2011 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dobela Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LibraryLover Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 We're not into visuals, hyper-fluff (there is some fluff), or soundbites, so we are NPR people. www.npr.org/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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