News programmes for kids - Behind the News

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Do your kids watch the news or read the newspapers?  How do they start out? Diving straight into adult news reports can be difficult, intimidating or just downright boring for kids. So how do you get them interested and learning about what is happening in the world around them?



The News when I was a kid

Growing up in the UK in the 1980s I used to watch John Craven's Newsround. This was the world's first TV news programme aimed specifically at children. It was shown at the end of the children's programmes each weekday afternoon. This programme still runs today, although John Craven himself has retired from the show which is now just called "Newsround". I used to look forward to watching this show. It was interesting and I learned a lot that then enabled me to watch the news with my mum and dad and understand more about what was going on.

Australian TV News for kids

Here in Australia, the ABC has a children's news programme on each day, "3 News" which is aimed at younger children. There is then a weekly news programme aimed at upper primary and secondary children, called BTN (Behind the News).

I first came across BTN when I was teaching English as a foreign language and used it for listening exercises with my students. Our girls then began to watch it sometimes at their primary school, and recently we've rediscovered it via their website where you can watch all the stories, take quizzes and polls, and even learn how to become a reporter yourself.

There are also teacher resources available - with new ones being produced weekly based on two current news stories.

BTN is the perfect fit for our two girls, currently aged 9 and 11. They do have an interest in the news, but watching adult news programmes is a little too much for them - too detailed and long, and their background general knowledge isn't sufficient for them to understand many of the stories.

BTN simplifies the stories and provides the background information necessary to understand them. There are also a lot of fun stories to help hold their interest.

This is one website our girls will be returning to a lot and gaining plenty of information and knowledge from as well as having fun with it. I would definitely recommend it as a fun introduction to news stories for children.

Do your kids like to watch the news? Do they watch children's news programmes or the regular news reports with you?

Teaching Kids General Knowledge

Is General Knowledge something that can be taught? or is it something that grows with age and experience?

I believe that both are true. The more information and experiences we can expose our kids to, the greater their general knowledge is likely to become. The way we can 'teach' general knowledge is by providing the experiences and contexts for our kids to learn about the world; and also sharing our own general knowledge with our kids.

What got me thinking about all of this was something we've been doing with our girls from the book -

 "The New First Aid in English".

It has a whole list of 259 general knowledge questions in it that we've been going through after dinner in the evenings. the girls are enjoying the challenge of seeing what they know and learning more trivia. They both have little trivia books that they love reading and telling us lots of 'useful' facts from!

There have been some questions that we've been surprised the girls don't know the answers too - but equally the odd one we've been unsure of! I have to admit I didn't know what an 'ackee' was! (it's a kind of tree with a red pear shaped fruit!).

There are plenty of games to play that help to increase general knowledge. From board games like Trivial Pursuits and card games like Top Trumps; to car journey games like taking turns to name countries of cities beginning with every letter of the alphabet.

Reading magazines, books and newspapers, listening to music, the radio and watching TV; playing outside, playing computer games - pretty much everything we do increases our general knowledge in some way as we learn about the world around us.

Quizzes are a fun way to see what you know - just as we have trivia nights as adults - kids enjoy this kind of thing too. We'll definitely be doing more quizzes with our girls!

Do you have any quiz sources or games to recommend?

Similies

When I was a kid, I used to enjoy reading The First Aid In English book, and all the 'funny' words and phrases it contains.

Now we've got this book for our girls, and they are enjoying exploring it too!

We recently looked at Similes.

Similes compare things which are alike in some respect, although they may be different in their general nature.

So things like,

"as blind as a bat"   or      "as hungry as a wolf"

As our girls read through the list, there were a few questions that we couldn't answer - and Googling the answers proved interesting for us too!

"As happy as a sandboy"

What's a sandboy?   

Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable 

AS HAPPY AS A SANDBOY: Very happy. An old-established expression from the days when sandboys (or men) drove their donkeys through the streets hawking bags of sand, usually obtained from beaches. The sand was used by people for their gardens, by builders and by publicans [tavern keepers] for sanding their floors. The happiness of sandboys was due to their habit of indulging in liquor with their takings.  (source )

"As old as Methuselah"

Who was Methuselah?

According to the Hebrew Bible, the oldest person to have ever lived - he supposedly lived to 969 years old and was the grandfather of Noah!

"As patient as Job"

Who was Job and why was he so patient?

Job is a character in the Bible, who lost his family and livestock but never became angry with God because he was a very patient man!

"As pleased as Punch"

Who is Punch?

Punch here comes from "Punch and Judy" puppet shows, which our girls have only seen once on a travel show on TV about the UK.  We grew up with these puppet shows but here in Cairns, Australia, there don't really seem to be any! (If you've not seen one before, click here to go and see a YouTube clip of one!) . In the puppet show, Punch is always pleased with himself and his evil actions!

At the end of the 2 page list of similies in the book, there is a page of exercises, which the girls read through and did to see if they could remember the similes.

Things like this remind me how important general knowledge is in understanding expressions and parts of languages. Something to look at another time I think.

I'd definitely recommend this book (The New First Aid in English) for kids and adults - I'm enjoying reading through it again and it's a great reference book.

(The links to The Book Depository in this post are affiliate links meaning if you click on them and then choose to buy from there I would receive a commission. However, the opinions in this post are entirely my own - I genuinely enjoy this book and find it very useful)

Top Trumps

Growing up in the 70s and 80s in the UK, Top Trumps was a popular game.  Mostly with boys, but having a brother, I got to play it lots.  We had a version of army vehicles - from Jeeps to Harrier Jump Jets and everything in between. 

It's a simple enough game - you have a pack of cards with facts on each one, and you play them off against each other to see which card 'trumps' the other.  For example you may pick 'speed' as the fact to play on - and your car may go a maximum 280km/hr -but unfortunately your opponent's card is a plane that can travel at 900km/hr so the plane trumps the car and that player gets to keep both cards, and choose what 'fact' to play on next.

I used to love playing this game - and I remember there were the really good cards that you always hoped you would get, as they could beat pretty much anything.

Last year I found this game again and bought it for our girls for Christmas.

Apparently Top Trumps were relaunched by a new company that had bought the rights about 12 years ago, and there are now all kinds of versions of the card game, and also online versions and computer game versions!

The one I found was from Australia Zoo, and has a lot of animals from the zoo on the cards.

The girls LOVE it! 

They have played endless times, and through this have learnt lots too!  The facts given are weight, length, maximum number of young, year they came to the zoo, and threat level.  So the girls have learnt how to read all those values - years, and measurements, and get endless practice comparing numbers - large and small.  Each card also has some information about the animals on them, so they can also learn some interesting facts.

Of course they have their favourites - which are the strong, long and prolific breeding animals!

Like Agro here, who with a weight of 600kg is tough to beat!

Then there's Casper, who can lay up to 80 eggs at once!  More than most animals !

Not to mention Lilly, who is 680 cm long - which I think beats them all in that category!

For such a simple game, it provides great entertainment for the kids - at any time, any place, and they can play for 2 minutes or 20 minutes.

While they are playing, they are reading, practicing their numeracy skills, working their memories, learning animal facts, and also getting better each time at the whole winning-losing business.

There are many different packs out there now - brand names to match the latest toys - but also ones about animals, the wonders of the world and sports - a great way to introduce your kids to some general knowledge facts in a fun way.

For a small and simple game, to work literacy, numeracy, memory, and general knowledge all in one is pretty special!

The official website has all the cards available there. 

Have you ever played Top Trumps? What version did you have as a kid? or do you have now?