Kids

Health Kids News

Mike Holmes To Help Rebuild High Park Children’s Castle

The people who are rebuilding the High Park castle are getting some high-profile help.

Mike Holmes is a celebrity contractor. A contractor is someone who is skilled at the kinds of jobs needed to build or renovate homes. Contractors hire and oversee all of the work—for instance, electrical, plumbing, carpentry and design work.

Holmes became famous for his motto, “make it right.” On his TV show, he rescues homeowners from renovations that have gone wrong and he brings in workers who fix the house properly and “make it right.”

Holmes also does a lot of charity work. On one of his TV shows, he helps people in New Orleans whose houses were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Now he’s lending a hand to help rebuild the children’s play castle in the High Park neighbourhood of Toronto, Ont. Much of the wooden structure was destroyed by a fire last March.

Health Kids News

Nutella Is Not A Health Food

The company that makes Nutella, a spread made from chocolate and hazelnuts, has agreed to give refunds to people who bought the product because they thought it was good for them.

Four women in the United States sued the company, Ferrero U.S.A., Inc., because they said it made misleading claims about the product. Television commercials for Nutella describe it as part of a balanced breakfast, along with toast, milk and fruit.

The women said they bought Nutella because they believed it was a healthy food to give their families. Then they found out that the spread contains large amounts of sugar and fat. Eating too much fat and sugar can contribute to obesity – being overweight — which is not good for your health.

Kids News

13-Year-Old Hero Saves School Bus

He didn’t think he was “too young” to do something, and he didn’t wait for someone else to help — he just jumped into action.

Thirteen-year-old Jeremy Wuitschick is being hailed as a hero after he saved the schoolbus he was riding in and its passengers.

Wuitschick and about a dozen other kids were riding in the schoolbus on their way to Surprise Lake Middle School, in Milton, Washington (near Seattle).

All of a sudden, the schoolbus driver had a seizure.

In this case, a seizure is a medical condition that caused the bus driver to uncontrollably twist around in his seat.

He lost control of the bus, which veered off the road, according to the Los Angeles Times news website.

Kids News

How Reading The News Helped Craig Kielburger Change The World

One morning when I was 12, I was munching on cereal and flipping through the newspaper in search of the comics.

I couldn’t get past the front-page story. It was about a young boy in Pakistan, a child labourer named Iqbal Masih.

When he was just four years old, Iqbal went to work in a cramped, dusty room for 12 hours a day, six days a week, weaving carpets in a factory.

Iqbal was 12. I was 12.

I knew I had to do something for him. But what?

I hadn’t been looking to make a big difference in the world. I was looking for Calvin and Hobbes!

Still, I tore out Iqbal’s story and brought it to school.

Kids Lighter News

Banning “Best Friends” At School?

Some kids in London, England are being discouraged from having a best friend at school.

Psychologist Gaynor Sbuttoni, a specialist in children’s behaviour, told a London newspaper that some elementary teachers aren’t letting students have a best friend. Instead, they are urging children to play together in groups.

The Sun newspaper reported that Russell Hobby, of the UK’s National Association of Head Teachers, said some schools there have best-friend bans.

Teachers say the reason they do this is so kids don’t get hurt if they split up with their friend.

Breaking News Kids News

High Park Residents Unite To Rebuild “Castle”

People in the community of High Park in Toronto have come together to rebuild a special playground there.

On March 17, an early-morning blaze destroyed a section of the castle-like wooden playground in the park.

Police and fire officials are investigating to find out the cause of the fire.

In the meantime, local residents and business owners are already actively planning and raising funds to rebuild the one-of-a-kind structure.

The Jamie Bell Adventure Playground, where the “castle” was, is in High Park, just north of Lake Ontario in Toronto.

It opened in 1999 and is named after a Toronto resident whose idea it was to build the unique playground.

Members of the community are pulling together again to rebuild the portions damaged by the fire.

And it’s not just local residents who have offered to assist; Canadian Tire has pledged a significant donation towards the project.

Breaking News Kids News

Toronto Librarians On Strike But Kids’ Website Stays Open

Toronto’s 98 libraries are temporarily closed after talks between representatives for the City of Toronto and the library workers’ union broke down last Sunday.

Last Monday, 2,300 library workers set up picket lines at libraries. A picket line, in this case, is where the library workers march with signs that tell the public what they want from the City of Toronto, which pays their salary. Picketing is a way of letting people know that a deal needs to be made before they will go back to work.

What do both sides want?
Library workers are looking for job security*, especially for part-time workers. Part-timers want the city to let them work more hours during the week, says Maureen O’Reilly, president of the Toronto Library Workers Union. The City wants workers to be part-time because it cannot pay full-time salaries.

The deadline for a deal has come and gone four times but the two parties cannot agree on how to settle their differences. The library workers decided that a strike was the only option left for them.

Kids News Technology

New Video Game Helps Kids With Autism

An amazing new “video game” is helping kids with autism show their emotions in their facial expressions.

Autism affects the brain’s development of social and communication skills.

People with autism typically have difficulty recognizing facial expressions and emotions.

The new video game, called FaceMaze, was developed to help kids with autism recognize what certain emotions look like, and what they mean—for instance, smiling, frowning or looking sad.

The video game looks and plays a lot like Pac-Man, a popular video game from the 1980s.

Entertainment Kids News

Ontario Place Closing Until 2017

One of Ontario’s most famous landmarks is closing.

Ontario Place will shut down for five years, to be transformed “into an innovative provincial landmark,” according to its website.

The attraction opened in 1971; at the time, it cost $29 million. It was created by the Ontario government to help revitalize the city’s lakefront area. Ontario Place is located downtown, on the shores of Lake Ontario.

The provincial government built Ontario Place as a family-friendly amusement park for Torontonians and as a way to attract more tourists to the city.

Kids News Sports

14-Year-Old Wins Golf Tournament

Fourteen-year-old Lydia Ko has become the youngest person — male or female — ever to win a professional golf tournament.

The teen won the New South Wales Open golf tournament on Jan. 29.

Ko was born in South Korea but moved with her family to New Zealand in 2003. She is the world’s top amateur golfer.

Ko won the tournament by four strokes. That means that the person who came in second took four more shots than Ko did, to complete 18 holes of golf. (In golf, unlike most sports, the winner is the person with the lowest score.)