Articles filed under Babowice, Hope

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  Ladybugs important part of our ecosystem May 15, 2012 12:00 AM
  Second-graders in Rachel Boehm's class at Hawthorn Elementary School North in Vernon Hills asked, "Why are ladybugs called ladies if they are aren't ladies?" These beautiful hard-coated insects, typically red with black spots, are an important part of our ecosystem. There are male ladybugs and female ladybugs. Most likely the name is an Old English reference to the Virgin Mary, who was depicted in early paintings wearing a red cloak.
  

   
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  Ice Age glaciers brought variety of rock to Illinois Apr 17, 2012 12:00 AM
  Third-grade students in Jen Janiks class at Big Hollow Elementary School in Ingleside wanted to know more about rocks, What is the most common type of rock in the world? How many types of rocks are there in the world? How many rocks have been discovered in Illinois?
  

   
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  There's a lot more to good soil than dirt Apr 3, 2012 12:00 AM
  "Why is soil texture important?" asked Katherine Crawford's fifth-graders at West Oak Middle School in Mundelein. Here's the dirt on soil. You might think soil is the dirt you track onto the carpet, but it's not. That's dirt. Soil is the many-layered material that carries nutrients that bring life to plants, insects, animals and ultimately to humans.
  

   
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  An array of brain operations is at work to trigger your memory Mar 20, 2012 12:00 AM
  Students in Gregg Thompson's sixth-grade social studies class at Woodlands Middle School in Gurnee asked, "Why do people forget things and then remember them when they're not thinking about them?" and "How and why do our brains perceive color the way they do?"
  

   

• Can a bare bear bear it? Fun with homonyms, homophones Mar 13, 2012 12:00 AM
  Is it an animal, vegetable or mineral? In the game Charades, those categories guide players to figure out the winning answers. Words have categories, too, including homonyms, homophones, homographs and heterographs. These identify word meaning or spelling when differences might not be obvious.
  

   
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  Vampire bats have a long, interesting history Feb 21, 2012 12:00 AM
  Second-graders in Rachel Boehm’s class at Hawthorn Elementary North asked about vampire bats. “Why are vampire bats called vampire bats and what was the largest and smallest bat ever found?” The word vampire often conjures up the misty image of Transylvanian counts with ferocious fangs. The word origins are foggy — scholars think the word could come from Turkish, Greek or Serbian.
  

   

• Schools take steps to stop bullying Feb 14, 2012 12:00 AM
  Jen Janik’s third-graders at Big Hollow Elementary School in Ingleside asked, “Why do other people need to bully kids that are smart?”
  

   
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  Cells are the body's building blocks Jan 17, 2012 12:00 AM
  Two factors drive the growth process in people — information within a cell and nutrition. It's the same for all things in nature, cells make things grow and nutrition creates the best chance for a healthy life cycle.
  

   
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  What’s the buzz about bee stings? Nov 29, 2011 12:00 AM
  Not all stinging insects are created equal. There are 130,000 members of the order Hymenoptera, which includes bees, wasps and ants, 70,000 have stingers. Not all bees are the same, either. The real stinging threats are wasps, hornets and yellow jackets.
  

   
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  Thanksgiving celebrated in many ways around the world Nov 22, 2011 12:00 AM
  The first Thanksgiving in the American colonies, held in late December, 1621, was a three-day feast. Pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation honored the Wampanoag Indians, who had helped the Pilgrims with their difficult transition from England to the New World, with a supersized meal featuring deer, lobster, oysters, water fowl, squash and pumpkin. Most likely, they borrowed the idea for the feast from their former home where the British had been hosting fall harvest festivals for hundreds of years.
  

   
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  Gas, dust and energy make up the complex life of stars Nov 1, 2011 12:00 AM
  Coming full circle, a star begins with gas and dust, and when it dies, it returns much of the gassy mixture back to space. “We think the very first stars formed very early on in the history of the universe,” said Geza Gyuk, director of astronomy at the Adler Planetarium. “Those stars may have been very different from today’s stars.”
  

   
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  The story about dinosaurs is in fossils, rocks Oct 25, 2011 12:00 AM
  If you had to answer a tough question, you might not rush out and grab a rock. But when trying to solve the puzzle of how dinosaurs became extinct, rocks hold the clues that experts use to decode the mysteries of the very distant past.
  

   
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  Broken nose is the most common facial fracture Oct 4, 2011 12:00 AM
  The nose is made up of two nostrils shaped by cartilage. Two bones at the bridge of your nose, called the nasal root, hold the cartilage in place. It’s the bone part that might get in the way of a football, get knocked around in a car accident, or be the place where you land if you fall off a play set.
  

   
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  Scientists are studying Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Sep 27, 2011 12:00 AM
  Jupiter, the fifth planet from the Sun, is the largest planet in our solar system. The gas planet takes more than 11 years to orbit the Sun. Jupiter has four moons — Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, with 60 more smaller moons orbiting at differing rates. Using a telescope you can see some of its moons and the Great Red Spot (GRS), also called the Eye of Jupiter.
  

   
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  U.S. hasn’t printed $3 bills since 1800s Sep 20, 2011 12:00 AM
  The saying about a penny saved does not mention the $3 bill, and for good reason. These bills have never been printed by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving, which first printed money in 1862.
  

   
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  Color spectrum makes sky look green before tornado Aug 30, 2011 12:00 AM
  “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight” is an old saying that forecasts good weather. The colors we see in the sky — the red sky of a clear evening sunset or the brilliant colors of a rainbow — come from the electromagnetic spectrum. The spectrum is energy that is radiated in a wavy pattern.
  

   
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  Who made first computer? An Iowa State professor Aug 23, 2011 12:00 AM
  After examining the facts, it took a judge to decide who should be credited with inventing the first computer — 32 years after the first one was constructed.
  

   
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  Like humans, some ocean creatures need to breathe air Aug 9, 2011 12:00 AM
  What comes around goes around. Fish stepped onto land about 230 million years ago and became the first animals. The whale’s ancestor, Pakicetus, a 45-million-year-old crocodile-like mammal, walked off the land and entered the sea, becoming the first link in the Cetacea order that would eventually evolve into one of the world’s largest mammals.
  

   
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  Climbers face many dangers while scaling Everest Aug 3, 2011 12:00 AM
  At 29,029 feet in height and continually pushing upward, Mount Everest is the world’s tallest peak. Kids Ink tells you who scaled the peak first and the equipment climbers need for the dangerous journey to the top.
  

   
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  Sun’s extinction is billions of years away Jul 26, 2011 12:00 AM
  Scientists are still trying to figure out if the sun will gobble up Earth when, billions of years into the future, the glowing orb finally nears the end of its life and puffs out to 100 times its size.