May 16, 2007: The Ninth and Tenth Amendments

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. Get together with several friends and choose three "special" rights you would like to have in school -- for instance, maybe you would like to have ice cream every day for lunch, or recess four times a day. Make a poster that shows those rights.

2. Many different people took care of the original Bill of Rights over the years. Find one person in the newspaper whom you would trust to take care of an important document. Write several sentences telling why you think that person can be trusted.

3. Find different comic strip characters you would put in charge of making special laws for (a) teenagers, (b) mothers, (c) young children and (d) animals.

4. Find a newspaper story about a state government decision. Paste the story on a piece of paper. Then write a paragraph discussing the decision and explaining why that decision should be made at the state level instead of the local or national level.

5. Think about how life would be different if a local or state responsibility came under national law. For example, education is regulated by each state. How might schools be different if they were all run by the national government? What about driver's licenses? What about sales taxes? What about speed limits? Select one area and write about the advantages and disadvantages of having the national government make laws related to that area.

This week's standards:

• Students understand the purpose of government. (Social Studies: Power, Authority and Governance)
• Students identify key ideals of the United States' democratic republican form of government. (Social Studies: Civic Ideals and Practice)
  
  

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