July 11, 2007: National Parks Aplenty

The Mini Page is a syndicated, four-page tabloid written for young children found each Wednesday in the Rocky Mountain News. This issue of The Mini Page is available through the eEdition Archive to registered eEdition subscribers. Click here to learn about subscribing to the eEdition at no cost to you (for Colorado teachers).

Activities:

1. Select the park you would like to visit from those shown in this issue of The Mini Page. Draw a picture of yourself and some friends in the park. Write a sentence telling about your hoped-for adventures in the park.

2. Cut out your three favorite comic strip characters and paste them on a piece of paper. Now decide which national park each one would like to visit. Write the name of the park next to each character, then write a sentence telling why you think each character would like that particular park.

3. Pretend you are going on a two-day hiking trip in a national park. Draw a backpack on a large piece of paper. Cut out newspaper pictures and words that show items you would take with you and paste them on your backpack. Remember, all your items have to fit in the backpack!

4. Why are the national parks important to (a) historians, (b) botanists,
(c) environmentalists and (d) hikers?

5. Use resource books or the Internet to learn about a national park near you. Use these questions to guide your research:

• Where did the national park get its name?
• When did it become a national park?
• What is its primary purpose?
• What are its educational benefits?

Write a paragraph discussing your findings.

This week's standards:

• Students understand the interaction of human beings and their physical environment. (Social Studies: People, Places and Environments)
• Students understand that history relates to events and people of other times and place by identifying examples of interesting Americans. (Social Studies: History)
  
  

(standards by Dr. Sherrye D. Garrett, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi)