Daily Announcements

Today is Friday, March 22, 2019

Today for lunch we will be serving  Pizza - variety

  Monday for lunch we will be serving Chicken Ranch Wrap

 Today is: National puppy day

Today’s Weather:  will be a high of 40 and cloudy

Reminder to all 6th grade students Mohican money is due april 5th

Camp Good Grief 2019

For any student ages 5 through 13 who have experienced loss, Stein Hospice is now accepting applications for Camp Good Grief.  Camp locations include Huron, Norwalk, and Port Clinton.  If you would like further information, or to obtain a consent form, please see Ms. Aplin in the Guidance office.

Ohio Sports News    

The Cavs play the Los Angeles Clippers tonight at 7:30                  

         

The Blue Jackets played the Edmonton Oilers and lost 1-4

The Indians played the Texas Rangers and lost 3-7

The Ohio State Buckeyes earned a spot in the 68 team field for the NCAA Tournament as an 11 seed in the region and will play the 6 seed in the region, the Iowa State Cyclones in the first round today

Did You Know: womens hearts beat faster than men

Movies to Look Forward to: Disney's Lion King comes out July 17th 2019

Fun fact: Just like fingerprints, everyone has different tongue prints.

Joke of the day:  Knock knock… who’s there… gladys… gladys who… gladys the weekend

On this day in history: Mudslide in Washington state kills more than 40 people in 2014.

                     

Vocabulary word of the week: Respect, A feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their qualities or achievements.

Thought of the week: Rise up start fresh see the bright opportunity in each day

Daily Announcements

Today is Thursday, March 21, 2019

Today for lunch we will be serving Hot Dog Sandwich

  Tomorrow for lunch we will be serving Pizza - variety

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 Today is: National Common courtesy day

Today’s Weather:  will be a high of 48 and cloudy

Camp Good Grief 2019

For any student ages 5 through 13 who have experienced loss, Stein Hospice is now accepting applications for Camp Good Grief.  Camp locations include Huron, Norwalk, and Port Clinton.  If you would like further information, or to obtain a consent form, please see Ms. Aplin in the Guidance office.

Ohio Sports News                          

         

The Cleveland Cavs beat the Milwaukee Bucks 107-102

The Blue Jackets play the Edmonton Oilers tonight at 9:00

The Indians played the San Francisco Giants last night and lost 0-13

The Ohio State Buckeyes earned a spot in the 68 team field for the NCAA Tournament as an 11 seed in the region and will play the 6 seed in the region, the Iowa State Cyclones in the first round

Did You Know: the sun is 330,330 times larger than the Earth

Movies to Look Forward to: Disney's Lion King comes out July 17th 2019

Fun fact: To produce a single pound of honey, a single bee would have to visit 2 million flowers

Joke of the day:  Why is Cinderella so bad at soccer? A Because she always runs away from the ball!

Quizzes to study for: Remember to study for the Ancient China quiz today if you haven't already.

On this day in history: Series of tornadoes hit the Southeast U.S. in 1932.

                     

Vocabulary word of the week: Respect, A feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their qualities or achievements.

Thought of the week: Rise up start fresh see the bright opportunity in each day

Daily Announcements

A Safer Sport

By Brian S. McGrath

GAME CHANGER Football is rough. More and 

more kids are playing a safer version of America’s favorite 

sport.           NATIONAL FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION

Danny Lee planned to join the school football team in fifth grade. His dad had other ideas. “He said if I got hurt now, it could end my football career forever,” Danny told TIME for Kids.

Instead, Peter Lee advised his son to stick with flag football, which does not involve tackling. Lee is a former college football player. He coaches Danny’s flag football team, in Wilmette, Illinois. “I have friends and former teammates who have decided they never want their kids playing tackle football,” he says. “There’s certainly no rush to start in the fifth grade.”

NATIONAL FLAG FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION

PLAY IT SAFE There is no blocking or
 tackling in flag football. Still, players wear
 mouth guards, and some leagues even require helmets.

Experts say kids should wait until at least 14 to play tackle football, since a kid’s brain is more at risk for injury than an adult’s brain. That has made flag football the fastest-growing team sport in the United States. According to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, the number of 6-to-12-year-olds playing the sport grew by 38% in the past three years, to 1.5 million. That’s more than those who are playing tackle football.

“All my friends are playing flag,” says Danny. “And every year, it gets more fun.” 

Protecting Players

There’s more running in flag football than in tackle, and more scoring. Instead of tackling one another, players try to grab a flag hanging from an opponent’s waist. “It requires finesse,” says Cole Reed. He cofounded the youth athletics group 200% Sports in Las Vegas, Nevada.

NATIONAL FLAG FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION

FORWARD PASS A quarterback gets set to throw the ball to his
 teammate during a flag football game in Orlando, Florida.

Reed used to coach for Pop Warner, a youth tackle league. Ten years ago, he started coaching flag football instead. “Accidents are fewer and far between,” he says.

Repeated jolts to the head and body do the worst damage. In 2017, researchers at Boston University published a study of former football players. It found that playing tackle football before age 12 was linked to an earlier onset of memory and behavior problems.

Safety is a concern in flag football too, says Gerard Gioia. He’s a brain injury specialist at Children’s National Health System, in Washington, D.C. He advises parents to look for coaches trained to recognize concussions (see “Hard Knocks”). “The same questions about safety should be asked of a flag football league as of a tackle league,” he says.

Football’s Future

QUICK HANDS Pulling a flag from an opponent’s belt 

takes speed and skill.

Does the rise of flag football mean the end of tackle football? It could be saving the sport. Coaches say it teaches skills that players need to advance to tackle football. Plus, it attracts kids to the sport at a younger age. That’s why the National Football League (NFL) sponsors flag football leagues around the country. It wants to promote the sport by inspiring new generations of fans and players.

200% SPORTS

Sophie Day, 13, plays for an all-girl team in the NFL-sponsored 200% Sports league. She considered playing tackle football in high school, until she discovered flag football. “It gives me the same excitement as tackle,” she says. “It’s actually harder. You have to focus on that one flag.” 

GETTY IMAGES

Her choice is just fine with her mom. “In regular football, you have to be big, you have to be bad, and you have to win,” says Michelle Day. “Not with flag football. It’s known as the friendly sport.”

Hard Knocks

A concussion is an injury to the brain resulting from a blow to the head or body. There are up to 3.8 million sports-related concussions each year. 

In the first few minutes, a person with a concussion might appear dazed or confused. He or she might stumble or briefly lose consciousness. Later, a person might experience memory loss, dizziness, headache, or nausea. Or he or she might just not feel right. 

If you suffer a serious knock to the head or body, tell an adult immediately.

Deadly Tornado

By Shay Maunz

A tornado tore through eastern Alabama on March 3, killing at least 23 people. It was the deadliest tornado to hit the United States in six years. 

The twister touched down in Lee County, a rural area. It carved a path of destruction nearly a mile wide and 70 miles long. 

Officials at the National Weather Service (NWS) said two tornadoes may have hit Lee County. The strongest was rated an EF-4, with estimated top wind speeds of 170 miles per hour. The twister destroyed homes and businesses. Trees were snapped in half.

DISASTER STRIKES Tornado survivors search for their 

belongings. Their home was destroyed by the storm.

TAMI CHAPPELL—AFP/GETTY IMAGES

“It looks like someone almost just took a giant knife and scraped the ground,” Lee County sheriff Jay Jones told the Associated Press. 

Jonathan Clardy is a resident of Beauregard, a Lee County community of about 10,000 people. The tornado tore the roof off the trailer where he lives with his family. They were huddled inside at the time. 

“Everybody in Beauregard is a real close-knit family,” Clardy says. “Everybody knows everybody around here. Everybody is heartbroken.” 

The Alabama tornado was part of a larger storm system that also hit Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. At press time, NWS confirmed at least 34 tornadoes had struck the region. On Twitter, President Donald Trump said he had directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to give Alabama the “A-plus treatment” following the storm.

Blast Off, Crew Dragon!

By Rebecca Mordechai

On March 2, a Crew Dragon spacecraft launched from Kennedy Space Center, in Florida. It’s the first American spacecraft built to carry a crew to the International Space Station since 2011. “What today really represents is a new era in spaceflight,” Jim Bridenstine said after the launch. He is the administrator of NASA. 

ARRIVAL Crew Dragon (left) attaches itself to the International Space Station.
NASA

Crew Dragon was built by SpaceX, a company run by businessman Elon Musk. On this test run, no people were on board. Instead, SpaceX sent up a test dummy. The dummy, named Ripley, has sensors that measure how people onboard might experience acceleration. If Crew Dragon’s six-day mission goes well, two real astronauts might be flying on the ship as soon as this summer.

Changing Tunes

By Constance Gibbs

Blue whales love to sing. Males sing to attract mates and to communicate across long distances. People are capable of hearing only certain parts of a whale song, so scientists use special audio equipment to record and study the songs in detail. Over several decades, they’ve noticed that the songs have gotten lower in pitch. Pitch describes how high or low a sound is.

Emmanuelle Leroy and a team of scientists now think they know why. They’ve studied more than a million songs from five groups of whales. The songs were recorded in the southern Indian Ocean over a period of seven years. Last fall, the team’s report was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans. It sheds light on why the pitch of whale songs has gotten lower: Whales aren’t singing as loudly as they used to.

Why So Low?

CHIME IN Some whale species are communicating more quietly each year.
BARCROFT MEDIA/GETTY IMAGES

“If the whale sings louder, that will slightly increase the pitch of its call,” Leroy told TIME for Kids. “When the whale sings less loudly, the pitch will slightly decrease.”

So why are whales singing more softly? Leroy’s study presents two hypotheses. The first is that there are more whales. Before the 1970s, commercial whale hunting brought whale populations near extinction. But starting in 1985, the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling. As the whale population has increased, whales have generally begun to live closer together. And if the whales are closer together, they don’t have to sing as loudly to communicate.

The study’s second hypothesis is that the pitch of whale songs has dropped due to climate change. An increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has made ocean water more acidic, changing its acoustics. Now the songs can be heard from farther away, so the whales don’t have to sing as loudly.

“In whale communication, this is good news,” Leroy says. “But globally, for the environment, it’s not good at all.” Water that’s more acidic could be damaging to some marine life.

Leroy says that confirming either hypothesis would require more research. “We would need to understand how the blue whales emit the song,” she says. But that would mean studying individual whales. That’s hard to do. It’s also very expensive.

Scientists continue to study whale songs. Each study adds to our understanding. “Maybe our hypotheses will be proven in 10 years,” Leroy says. “Science is often a journey.”