Current Events

Someone asked about Current Events on the Sonlight Forums, and since I responded with what we do, I thought I better copy my post over here so I can get at it all organized nicely instead of the hit or miss stuff I have going now.

We try to keep reasonably up to date on current events. So some of the things we do:

1. We watch CNN Student News. It's a 10 minute broadcast, we podcast it, so I don't have to go finding it, and it pretty much follows typical school year schedules. Starts up in August, takes off major holidays, goes into early June. I wouldn't label it as "fair and balanced" by any stretch, but they are fairly reasonable. The puns are well-loved.
2. We subscribe to God's World News at the appropriate levels. I like the older two levels, but I get the younger ones so my littles feel included. I also tend to pass these on to other families (non-homeschooling usually), so I feel a lot better about the money that way.
3. We started using Student News Daily in May or so. Their biweekly publications (Scholastic News) are pretty good at the older levels too as far as current events go.
4. Time for Kids is another website They have magazines too, for kids up through 6th grade.
5. One I discovered fairly recently is Pitara I like the world news focus of this one, and am considering making it the home page on my kids' computers
6. I want to get World again, and have my jr. high kiddo reading at least some of that. Not in the cards for this year. However, their website does give you a decent amount of content.

I am not using all of these at any one time... I rotate a bit, though the first two are a given for us. What I intend to require is that they are watching something (CNN Student News), reading something daily (the Scholastic and Pitara basically) that is kinda sorta like reading the daily paper, and doing a more magazine format too (God's World News, Time for Kids seems more news magazine-ish, and World online).