10-Year-old Boy Invents Device That Will Save Children From Hot Cars

by McKinley Corbley

It’s officially summertime – and with the rising temperatures, comes an abundance of preventable hot car deaths.

But not if Bishop Curry IV can help it.

10-year-old Bishop has invented his very own device capable of saving hundreds of children from heat stroke. The invention, which he calls Oasis, is a tiny box that straps onto a child’s car seat. When temperatures in the car become too high, Oasis starts blowing cool air on the child’s face. An antenna inside the box also notifies the parents and local emergency services about the possible danger.

Thanks to the $27,000 that Bishop raised on GoFundMe, the youth is currently applying for a patent on Oasis.

“Bishop is a 5th grader who is fascinated with making things. From creating a home-made catapult and ping pong ball cannon, to thinking of ways to melt ice and snow on roads without using salt,” wrote Bishop’s dad, Bishop Curry V.

According to the crowdfunding page, Bishop first got the idea for Oasis when a 6-year-old girl named Fern passed away after being locked in a hot car in Bishop’s hometown of McKinney, Texas.

“We live in Texas where hot car deaths are far too common,” added Curry Senior.

While it is unclear how Oasis will be distributed, the remaining funds raised by the campaign will go towards manufacturing and prototyping fees.

Weird, wild and wonderful activities to get stuck into these July school holidays

Mikey CahillHerald Sun
When the weather is woeful it’s easy to snuggle down and watch a movie, but there is a lot on in Victoria these holidays for those willing to rug up and head out.

Kids News have put together a selection of the some of the best break attractions.

SKATE FEST

Skate Fest is coming to Geelong! Westfield Geelong is inviting kids to come by and skate in the centre’s very own indoor skate ramp. For five days, ex-professional skater Trevor Ward, will be stopping by to coach kids of all levels to develop their tricks and techniques.


There will also be walk-in free skate sessions that run at 11am each day and are hosted by a team of professional coaches.

PENGUINS AT THE BALLARAT WILDLIFE PARK

A troupe of Little Penguins have arrived at Ballarat Wildlife Park this week. There’s marshmallow roasting and campfire boasting too. The penguins are all part of the Ballarat Winter Festival and other highlights include Winter Wonderlights Christmas in July at Sovereign Hill, CBD Ice Skating Rink, Knights of Fire at Kryal Castleand Ballarat Potato Festival.

BUGS ALIVE


Behold the marvels of the invertebrate* world in Bugs Alive at the Melbourne Museum! Inspired by the intriguing life of bugs and their genius ways, Bug Lab: Little Bugs, Super Powers immerses audiences of all ages in a journey to deep dive in on the world beneath our feet.

See living specimens, meet a Bombardier Beetle then hop off to see Bugs: Mighty Micro Monsters 3D in IMAX. In the cool 3D adventure, everyone shrinks down and steps into the hidden world of super-powered bugs. You’ll never look at insects, spiders, snails and other invertebrates the same way again.

LASER MAZE

Mission impossible? Not for you. Try the intense new Winter Holidays Laser Maze at Scienceworks. Kids and families will enter stealth mode to duck and weave through a large maze of laser beams to race the clock to the finish! Developed by Mosster Studio, visitors will manoeuvre through the maze in an interactive way as they learn about laser physics and strategic thinking.

SQUISHY CIRCUITS

The City Library is thinking outside the container and using conductive and nonconductive PlayDoh to make circuits you can sculpt. Kids are invited to play with PlayDoh and circuits at


City Library in the Melbourne CBD on July 12 from 10.30am-noon.

SNOW SLINGERS

If you can’t make it to the mountains then Snow Slingers Virtual Reality Experience at Woodgrove Shopping Centre could be perfect. The wintry multiplayer experience sees players sling snowballs at each other in a virtual environment. There’s also Winter Interactive animatronics* displays and life-size animals. The game will be set among a fascinating animatronic prehistoric ice-age animals including a long-in-the-tooth 3.8-metre-tall woolly mammoth and Sabre Tooth Tiger.

GLOSSARY

invertebrate: lacking a backbone


animatronics: robots made to look and act like animals

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE FOR KIDS

Building fine motor skills with cotton ball painting

by Deborah Stewart 
Today we talked a little bit about the letter Cc in our morning circle so to celebrate our letter Cc, I thought we should try some good old cotton ball painting…

To add an extra fine motor component to our cotton ball painting, I supplied clothespins all around the table and invited the children to use the clothespins to pick up their cotton balls and then dip them into the paint. Knowing that not all my students may know how to use a clothespin, I demonstrated for the children how to hold the clothespin with their fingers and squeeze hard to open it up and grab a cotton ball then use it to paint any way that they liked…

Then I sent the children off to explore the painting process in their own way (along with all the other centers around the classroom)…

Some of the children decided that using the clothespin was too hard and chose to use their fingers instead (which still is a good way to promote fine motor skills)…

While others focused their energy on using the clothespins…

And one little guy decided it would be much more interesting to explore LOTS of cotton balls…

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Nouveau Summer Fun Camp is about to start and promises to be great for tomorrow's leaders

14 Year Old Goes for Her Master's Degree in Microbiology!

To say that Sushma Verma is intellectually gifted, would be quite an understatement. The gifted young girl graduated high school at only 7 years old, while the vast majority of her peers were just entering the first grade! Sushma received her undergrad degree when she turned 13. The incredible part of the story is that her father sold most of his land to support her dream, despite earning less than $3.50 per day! 

Art Project For Kids - Draw the White House

Kathy Pabro - Art Teacher
If you are studying American symbols, here’s how to draw the White House.
I’ve simplified it as much as possible, and have created some grid paper to help those (even as young as 1st grade) to count and draw all it’s many columns and windows. And there are quite a few of them!

• View and download White House PDF Tutorial

MATERIALS
• Card stock or drawing paper, 8.5″ x 11″
• Printed White House PDF tutorial
• Printed White House drawing, full size, optional (page 3)
• Black marker
• Crayons

DIRECTIONS
PREP: Print and/or copy 1″ grid on paper for each student.
1. Students use the tutorial to draw the White House. If helpful, include a full size drawing (page 3 from the PDF).
2. The drawing is traced with a black marker.
3. The art is colored with crayons.

Sunday footy is free for kids to enjoy a Fun-day at the MCG

Tamsin RoseHerald Sun
FOOTY-loving kids are invited to the MCG for Sunday Fundays this entire AFL season.

The MCG is offering free entry for kids to watch the footy and free entry into the National Sports Museum at the ‘G before all Sunday clashes.

Kids are also being allowed a feel for the action with kick-to-kicks on the field after the final siren for four more matches this year in August, weather permitting*.

Sunday Fundays are designed to make footy more fun for families, according to MCC chief executive Stuart Fox.

“With cooler weather on the way, a visit to the National Sports Museum is the perfect way to keep warm and entertained before the bounce,” he said.

On Sunday, July 23 cartoonist Paul Harvey will run a session with kids in the museum.


Mr Fox said the kick-to-kick sessions was a chance for kids to step onto the famous ground.

“Stepping onto the hallowed* turf and having a kick after the siren is something everyone enjoys, regardless of the footy result!”

AFL legend and five-time Richmond premiership player Kevin Bartlett said he looked forward to Sunday Funday at the MCG.


“The MCG is a very special place for me and my family, so I’m looking forward to sharing some of my favourite stories and memories with fans,” he said.

“In my opinion there’s not much that beats a Sunday afternoon watching the footy at the ‘G.”

For more information about what is on offer, visit the website:

http://www.mcg.org.au/things-to-do/sunday-funday.

The simplest holiday invitation to play ever!

by Deborah J. Stewart, M.Ed. 
If you want to add a little spark of curiosity to your classroom, then pick up a few Christmas boxes and you will have the simplest holiday invitation to play ever…

During the holidays, we try to continue with some of our routine activities as well as introduce holiday related activities.  But to spruce up the routines, we filled our holiday boxes with the materials the children are used to using and set them out on the table. When the children walked into the classroom, the tables looked rather empty but the children were immediately curious. “What’s inside the box Mrs. Stewart?” “Oh, I don’t know but we will soon find out!”

We have been using our Christmas boxes to set up invitations to play all through the week. No matter what is inside, the children are suddenly very interested and ready to take the materials out and give them a go…

So I bet you are even a little curious about what is inside the boxes we had out today. At least I hope you are!  At one table, the boxes were filled with red and green craft sticks. The children used the craft sticks for making patterns for our morning math…

After the children completed a few patterns, they would give Mr. Hayden or I a shout so we could see what they came up with and then when they were finished, they sorted the sticks back into the red or green boxes so that someone else could come along and open the box…

At the other table, the boxes were transformed into our temporary holiday salt boxes along with the color words “red” and “green” printed on sentence strips…

We also set out a few small Christmas cookie cutters for the children to explore different shapes in our holiday salt boxes too…

And during circletime, we put our book and a few book tokens (extenders) in a gift box to spark a little curiosity about what we might be reading that day…

Before opening the box, I asked the children to try and guess what they thought might be inside the box. One of my students immediately answered, “There is a book and some Christmas ornaments!”  Yep, she peaked inside the box before circletime, after all, I did leave a shiny gold box sitting right out in the open and opening it up to see what is inside is simply irresistible…

We have plenty days ahead to fill up our gift boxes with fun things to do around the classroom so when you see a box sitting in the background of one of our photos, you can be pretty sure that it was intentionally placed there to invite our students to come and play, create, discover, and explore…

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Kids with big business ideas wow crowds at education show

Karina GriftHerald Sun
KIDS with a head for business stole the show last week at one of the largest educational conferences* not just in Australia, but the whole Asia Pacific region.

Three young kids from Coopernook Public School in regional NSW wowed 8000 attendees to the EduTECH Conference, held in Sydney, with their Cap Lures made from discarded bottle tops.

These plucky kids from the bush were at the conference to showcase their winning entry of the 2016 Kidpreneur Challenge and to encourage other schools to get involved in the challenge this year. Their sustainable fishing lures* sell for $5 and were so popular they almost sold out.

Kaios, 11, Ty, 11, and Shawn, 13, learnt so much during the challenge that with the backing of the school and the community, they have now designed and developed other products including a fishing reel on a wrist band (so you can fish anytime, anywhere), a fishing rod holder that attaches to a bicycle and beanies to keep your head warm on cool fishing nights.

The self-confessed fishing buffs* said they were having a lot of fun working together and building their business.


“We wanted to recycle and up cycle, that means that you take something old that would normally just get chucked out and not get used again and you recycle it into something newer and better,” said Ty. 

The young entrepreneurs showing off their wares. Picture: supplied

Ty, who came up with the original idea, said the boys had put their own ideas into the product to make it even better and so they considered themselves all bosses of the business.


“We want to eventually get it up to a good enough level where we can make a product and get back all the money that we have used.’’

The boys were able to develop their idea through a program called Club Kidpreneur, which is aimed at students in years 4-6 learning how to become business bigwigs*.


Each year the organisation runs the Kidpreneur Challenge — a national competition run in schools to help kids learn about creative thinking and building a business. The competition has also raised more than $600,000 for charity.

Cap Lures merchandise. Picture: supplied

Participants learn entrepreneurial* skills and must design, produce and sell their products or inventions at a marketplace. They must name their business, brand their product, price it and market it as well as repay the $25 start-up investment.

Club Kidpreneur is encouraging all schools to sign up for the 2017 challenge.

The EduTECH conference itself was about more than just fishing lures. Some of the biggest technology companies, including Google, Microsoft and HP, were there to talk about what’s next when it comes to technology and education.

While robotics and virtual reality goggles were a popular item, school principal Natasha Eaton, who was a guest speaker at the event, said the future was all about kids learning how to code.

Some other young business minds from the Kidpreneur competition. Picture: Jason Edwards
“They are talking about 40 per cent of jobs in the future requiring automation, which is coding, so we need to be bringing this into the classroom right from kindy (kindergarten),” Ms Eaton said.


For more information about Club Kidpreneur visit: clubkidpreneur.com

Toddler Wows Internet by Washing Dishes While “Belly-Balancing”

by McKinley Corbley 
This talented little toddler is proving that you can never be too young to start cleaning up after yourself.

Miles Callahan is a New Jersey youngster who is being hailed as a little superhero after a video of him washing dishes started going viral.

The toddler can be seen balancing by his belly on the edge of the family’s kitchen sink while he carefully washes his dishes.
When his father, Clint Callahan, asks Miles what it is he’s doing, he nonchalantly responds with “wash bowl”.

RELATED VIDEO: Veterinarian Soothes Anxious Dogs by Singing to Them

His mother amusedly affirms the statement, to which the young toddler cheerfully says “yeah!”

“It’s never too early to teach your kids to clean up after themselves,” says the New Jersey father. “I don’t care his feet can’t touch the ground, it’s Sunday clean up boy.”

Regardless of whether he continues to clean up after himself in the future, one thing is for sure – this kid definitely has a future in acrobatics.

5-Year-old Becomes Youngest Contestant in National Spelling Bee

Little Edith Fuller just made history by becoming the youngest contestant to ever qualify for a national spelling bee

The homeschooler from Tulsa, Oklahoma triumphed over 50 other kids – some of them reportedly three times her age – in the regional Scripps National Spelling Bee last Saturday. Now, Edith is on her way to Washington, D.C. for the nationals.

The youngster won after correctly spelling “jnana”; an obscure Sanskrit word for knowledge.
Other words included in her winning repertoire are “virgule”, “sevruga”, and “odori”.

RELATED: Grieving Man Can Sleep Again After Little Girl Reaches Out in the Grocery Store

Edith’s mother apparently detected her daughter’s knack for spelling at a dinner table when she correctly spelled “restaurant” – which, while it may not be too difficult for an adult – had never been taught to her before.

“It’s fun to share her with everyone,” Edith’s mother, Annie Fuller, told Tulsa World. “I knew she’d be a novelty, so I’m proud she held her own.”


(WATCH the video below)

Ten-year-old wows at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in US

Rod ChesterNews Corp Australia
TEN-year-old Melbourne schoolboy Yuma Soerianto has just done what most app makers dream about: he’s impressed the head of technology giant Apple with his skills.

Yuma, who is a Year 5 student at Middle Park Primary School in Melbourne, is the youngest attendee this week at the Worldwide Developers Conference*, Apple’s biggest event of the year that kicks off this week in San Jose, US.

Yuma decided at age six to start learning code because he said schoolwork was not a big enough challenge. He created his first app last year and now has five apps in the App Store.

At the conference, this young developer got to pitch* his ideas to the head of Apple, Tim Cook.

Yuma’s five apps include the Hunger Button, which he created to help families find a nearby restaurant for dinner, and Let’s Stack, which is a game involving stacking boxes that he made after seeing an arcade game at St Kilda’s Luna Park.

But the app that instantly impressed Cook was the one he quickly made on the flight over from Australia to help his parents work out the price for products by adding the local sales tax and doing the currency conversion* when they go shopping for souvenirs on the trip.

“Very cool, that’s great,” Cook told Yuma after seeing his app.

“You did this when you were on the plane from Australia to the US? Wow.”


“You can make an app in one hour. I’m impressed. I can’t wait to see what you do next.”


Yuma learnt the programming code Swift he uses to create the app by following online courses.

Yuma is also helping other kids, and adults, learn coding through his YouTube channel Anyone Can Code.

“I want to make apps that can revolutionise* the world. And I also want to teach the world coding and get people into coding,” he said.

“You can code if you have the patience to do it and you really want to do it.”


Yuma’s five apps are Let’s Stack, Hunger Button, Kid Calculator, Weather Duck and Pocket Poke.

While Yuma is the youngest developer at the conference, the oldest developer is 82-year-old Masako Wakamiya from Japan who created a gaming app aimed at older people, based on a Japanese doll festival called Hinamatsuri.

A new bookshelf in my preschool classroom

by Deborah J. Stewart, M.Ed. 
My indoor classroom does not have a lot of space so I have been working on ways to try and provide the centers/environment I really want my kids to enjoy and at the same time, not make things too crowded…

One of the changes I made was to remove a large, but very nice bookshelf, out of the classroom and add this “book shelf” on my wall…

I borrowed this idea from Corner House Blog and even followed her suggestion to go to Home Depot to get the materials and have them cut the Vinyl guttering into the right size for me. Funny thing was, when I asked if they could cut the guttering into three pieces for me (I gave them the lengths I needed) – they said that the guttering could not be cut – that it would splinter or possibly shatter if they ran it through the saw.   So I whipped out my Iphone and logged into Corner House Blog and said, “well this Home Depot didn’t have a problem!”  After looking at the blog post, they miraculously cut the guttering for me! I was so excited!!

My husband attached the guttering on the wall so it wouldn’t fall off (which is what would have happened if I put it up).  The guttering is light weight – so my students and I had a little chat about how to take care of the shelves and set some rules.  We haven’t had a problem and my students love it…

Sharing cookies : storytelling and creating

by Deborah J. Stewart, M.Ed.
We recently read an old favorite of mine titled, “The Doorbell Rang” by Pat Hutchins. I have had my copy of the book for years and it even came with a cassette tape for the listening center (some of you may not even know what a cassette tape is – yikes!)…

The book is about a couple of children who sit down at the table to eat some cookies their mom made. Before eating, the children divide the cookies on to two plates so they each have an equal amount. Just as the children are ready to eat their share of the cookies, the doorbell rings and in comes two more friends. Now the cookies must be divided into four equal parts.  Each time the children start to eat their cookies, the doorbell rings again and two more children come until every child has only one cookie to eat. But I won’t tell you what happens when the doorbell rings just one more time – I don’t want to spoil it for you…

Of course, this is a great book for math, sharing, and simply talking about cookies. We focused a little on everything. We started by retelling the story. I had a tray of DIY felt cookies and invited two of the children to come and eat them.

The first two children needed to divide the cookies in half so that they each had the same amount while the other children looked on…

The children caught on quickly and divided their cookies but then someone said, “Ding Dong!” and now two more of my students joined in and once again, we needed to divide the cookies some more. We continued on until everyone in the group had a cookie…

One thing that is hard to express to you through this post is how generous the children were with each other. The children made sure that everyone had a cookie in the end. One child even offered to give up his only cookie so that another child could have one but fortunately, we had plenty to go around and everyone got to pretend to eat a cookie by the end of our story…

After retelling our story, the children went off to explore cookies in a variety of ways. One of our centers was the listening center where the children could take our book and listen to it again. The children loved listening to the story over and over again…

And one of our other centers was the fun process of making puffy paint cookies…

The children used the home made puffy paint to decorate their cardboard cookies…

As the children completed a puffy paint cookie, then Miss Lauren popped them in the microwave for 30 seconds to cook them up! This dried out the puffy paint just enough so that the cookies were now ready to go home. We had to let our cookies cool off just a few minutes first though as they were a tad hot when they came out of the microwave…

Some of the children made one cookie, others made two and at least one child made six cookies in all! Some of the cookies had paper sprinkles on top, and others were just decorated with the puffy paint icing…

To make puffy paint…

• 1 Cup of Flour
• 3 tsp Baking Powder
• 3 tsp salt
• Food Color or liquid water color to add coloring as desired
• Water

I mixed all the ingredients together and added enough water to make a paste with the flour. I filled squeeze bottles (that I bought from Walmart – next to the spatulas and other cookware) with different colors of the flour paint. If the mixture is too runny, add more flour. Too thick, add more water. Better to be thick than runny…

A fun day of story telling and making cookies! Now I am kind of craving a real cookie….

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