Issue 830 Thursday, April 18, 2013

Supported by readers of the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News

KIDS OPENING DAY,

PAGE 2.

EARTH DAY ARTISTS, PAGE 3.

MIGHTY MITES, PAGE 4.

TRAINING WITH THE

TIGERS

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM

If you are out and about this weekend, join with the Yak and celebrate the Earth!

Earth Day is officially Monday.

On Page 3, meet young winners who are honored in Michigan’s Earth Day Poster contest.

The Yak’s science eye this week is trained to look up close – really close – at some mighty microscopic mites. Learn about a mighty new discovery on Page 4.

And, as we continue to celebrate National Poetry Month, we share some poems from students on Pages 6 and 7.

2

Printed by: The Detroit Media Partnership Sterling Heights, Michigan, Spring 2013.

• Yakking About the News, Page 5.• My Kid Scoop, Page 8.

On the cover:

Also Inside:

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Photo by Cathy CollisonMakya Butler, 8, of Detroit, gets ready to cheer on the Tigers with her YMCA group that would warm up with trainers at Kids Opening Day. Behind Makya, at right, is friend Nyah Cooper, 10.

Yak Chat

KIDS OPENING DAY!

The Yak was back at Comerica Park for Kids Opening Day on April 7.

And so were many of you. Thanks to Blue Cross Blue Shield, 200 kids had a special treat at the park: They joined Tigers workout crew and Paws (and the Dad of the Tigers mascot, too) for warming up on the field. Stretching, jumping jacks, push-ups, and so many twists and turns that the Yak couldn’t keep up.

The warm-up was part of the BCBS program to fight childhood obesity and show that exercise is fun. Garrick Smith, 10, a Bates Academy student, was excited about being there with some of his PAL friends and family. He’s been to a lot of Tigers games, but this was the first this year. His favorite player? Austin Jackson. Garrick plays baseball himself. Makya Butler, 8, a third grader with the YMCA group, was just excited to be at the game – and donned a new Tigers hat and sparkling boots. She says her favorite exercise is doing cartwheels. What about her YMCA friends? Nyah Cooper, 10, likes jumping jacks and Bria Arnold, 10, likes running.

They did all that and more on Kids Opening Day at Comerica Park!

By Cathy Collison

Photo by Stephanie BeresTiger Doug Fister high-fives 200 kids after they warmed

up on the field.

Paws’ Dad and Paws help lead the warmup exercises, but have a little trouble with all the work!

Photos By Cathy CollisonOK, now it’s time for jumping jacks!.

Garrick Smith, 10, a student at Bates Academy, has been to lots of Tigers games, but this is the first this season. His favorite player is Austin Jackson.

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM Thursday, April 18, 2013 3

The Yak likes to say that every day is Earth Day because it’s always important to care for our planet,

people and animals. To help get students thinking about our air, water, land, wildlife and ecosystems, Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and Department of Environmental Quality team up to hold their annual Earth Day Poster Contest for students.

This year, about 2,500 students in kindergarten through fifth grade created impressive posters with Earth Day themes and messages. Students from across the state submitted entries, and one school especially shined in the competition: St. Gerard Catholic School in Lansing won five of the 12 first and second place honors! Art teacher Mrs. Margo Barber was excited for her students but shared that students actually made entries and submitted them for the contest through their classroom teachers.

First Place winner Ethan Jowett, 9, said he heard the good news over the school’s

announcements. He said he was excited that five students from his school were winners – including him! Ethan said students in his class have been learning about the environment and Earth Day and that it’s important for young people to be interested in helping protect our planet. What’s important to Ethan? “I like to keep the Earth clean. I want the animals to have a home and the trees to grow,” says Ethan. “I like to spend time in nature,” added Ethan, “and I like to recycle.”

Ethan’s fellow winning classmates include Makayla Paul, a first-grader; Hailey Prokop, a third-grader; Tina Thieu, a fourth-grader and Ethan Bassila, a fifth-grader.

The Lansing students, along with all of the winners, will be honored at a special Earth Day celebration at Constitution Hall in Lansing today where their posters will be on display. Ethan is planning to attend the event with his mom and dad, Jennifer and Steve Jowett.

Congratulations to all the winners and happy Earth Day – every day!

By Janis Campbell

Turn to Pages 6 and 7 to see more winning Earth Day Posters.

Students Win Statewide Poster Contest

3rd Grade, 2nd Place, Hailey Prokop, St. Gerard School, Lansing

3rd Grade, 1st Place, Ethan Jowett, St. Gerard School, Lansing

4th Grade, 2nd Place, Tina Thieu, St. Gerard School, Lansing

Photo Courtesy of St. Gerard Catholic SchoolFive students from St. Gerard Catholic School in Lansing are winners in the state’s annual Earth Day poster contest. Here are the students with their teachers, left to right, first row: Makayla Paul, Hailey Prokop, Ethan Jowett, Christina Thieu, and Ethan Bassila. Second row: Mrs. Sheila Iding, Mrs. Karen Marshall, Miss Ashley Schertzing, Miss Megan Duffy, and Mrs. Mary Jo Mills.

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This is an American house dust mite, magnified hundreds of times.

Image by G. Bauchan and R. Ochoa, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Meet up with the Mighty Tiny Mites

The Yak has written about lots of small animals, including worms, frogs, bees and butterflies. But today’s critter wins the

prize: It’s so tiny that you have to look through a microscope to see it. And there are millions of them living in your home – in pillows, mattresses, sofas, and carpets.

The unwelcome houseguests are American house dust mites, one of the world’s 55,000 mite species – and those are just the mites that have been named by scientists.

“That’s maybe 10 percent of what’s out there,” said Barry Oconnor, a University of Michigan biologist who studies mites. (Multiply 55,000 by 10 to get the total number of mite species. See answer below.)

House dust mites are arachnids (Ah-RACK-nids), a class of animals related to spiders. But don’t freak out. They don’t bite, though they can cause allergic symptoms in humans, mostly runny noses and sneezing. “The most allergenic part of the mite body is the poop,” Barry added.

House dust mites love to munch dead skin flakes, which humans are always shedding, “but they also like fungus and mold and will live in stored food, like flour,” Barry said.

Does he think of such teensy-weensy organisms as true animals, like turtles and elephants?

“Oh, sure. They’ve got legs. They’ve got mouthparts for feeding – they’re little, bite-y things

called chelicerae (chel-iss-ur-eye). One can find chelicerae in all arachnids. The fangs of spiders are modified chelicerae.”

Barry showed us some house dust mites under a microscope. We peered at several dead specimens magnified 200 times. What we saw were pinkish-gray, near translucent, oval-shaped bodies, but no detail. Then he adjusted the lens to enlarge the specimens to 400 times their size and bingo – we saw chelicerae, we saw legs – eight legs, just like spiders. But no eyes: house dust mites are blind.

Lastly, we viewed some live specimens. The feisty mites darted around under some fish flakes sprinkled on a wad of cotton – first one mite, then two. Then we saw four mites where some flakes had parted, like clouds. They were fat little suckers and moved with such ease they looked like they were swimming.

House dust mites live about a month, Barry said. During that time they mate several times. Females lay about 10 eggs, which hatch in five days. The offspring molt, or shed their skins, several times before becoming adults.

Barry showed us dozens of mite photos. They represented just a few of the hundreds of species he’s collected in North and South America.

“There are mites in the hair follicles of the (human) face, mostly around the eyebrows and eyelashes,” he said. “They’re long and wormy and have really stubby legs. Mites are everywhere pretty much except on fish. There are mites in Antarctica. They’re known from the deepest ocean trenches to alpine areas, hot springs, deserts. They are really fascinating creatures.”

By Patricia Chargot

There may be as many as 555,000 species of mites.

Photo by Pavel KlimovUniversity of Michigan biologist Barry OConnor digs for mites at Warren Dunes State Park.

5MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM Thursday, April 18, 2013

Help for Great Lakes

Keeping the Great Lakes great is taking some extra work. Record low lake levels make it difficult for boats to navigate the waters. Gov. Rick Snyder on April 4 signed off on $21 million for 58 harbor dredging projects. (To dredge a lake, is to dig deeper into the sand, or mud, creating safe channels for boats.) “As the Great Lakes State, we need to ensure the availability of our beautiful waterways to boaters to support tourism, local communities, the state economy and safe boating,” Gov. Snyder said in a press statement. “I thank the Legislature for approving these funds in time for the boating season.” At the latest Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory report, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron were 15 inches lower compared with levels only one year ago.

Invisibility Cloak?The Yak always loved the magic of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.

Well, it may be out there in our future. The online site, Science Daily, and other media, reported that scientists have developed such a cloak that is just micrometers thick and can hide three-dimensional objects from microwaves in their natural environment. The scientists from the University of Texas at Austin, call their cloak a mantle cloak and the material used is called a “metascreen.” The research was reported in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society’s “New Journal of Physics.” “When the scattered fields from the cloak and the object interfere, they cancel each other out and the overall effect is transparency and invisibility at all angles of observation,” said co-author of the study Professor Andrea Alu. Although the mantle cloak doesn’t work in visible light yet, but has been tested

using microwaves, Professor Andrea Alu, one of the study’s authors, told the New York Post, that could happen someday. “In principle this technique could also be used to cloak light,” Alu said.

White House GardeningFirst Lady Michelle Obama invited students from across the

country this month for a special job: planting the veggies that will be grown in the White House Garden. For the fifth year in a row, First Lady Michelle Obama and Let’s Move Executive Director Sam Kass helped students as they planted the vegetables that will be harvested this summer and enjoyed by the First Family and White House guests, reported the “Let’s Move” website. Check out www.letsmove.com to see what you might want to grow in your garden.

Deadly Dragonflies

It won’t be long now until dragonfly season. The Yak loves the fairy-like insects, but they are anything but gentle. In a recent New York Times story, researchers explained how the dragonfly is probably one of the most deadly hunters of prey. “They’ll tear up the prey and mash it into a glob, munch, munch, munch,” said Michael L. May, an emeritus professor of entomology at Rutgers, “It almost looks like a wad of snuff in the mouth before they swallow it.” Another researcher told the Times that the dragonfly is skillful at ambushing prey. The Yak will be watching these magnificent insects more closely.

Compiled by Cathy Collison

Yakking about the newsA weekly wrap-up for young readers

Gov. Rick Snyder has OKd funding for dredging in the Great Lakes.

Photo by Julie A. CravesA ruby meadowhawk dragonfly.

There’s a lot to celebrate this month. Since April is National Poetry Month, we’re sharing poems along with more of

the DEQ’s Earth Day Poster Contest winners here on Pages 6 and 7. The poems are from students who work with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project.

The project’s mission is to inspire students to “share their voices.” IO was founded in 1995 by a Detroit Public School teacher and poet, and students work with professional writers to publish their work in school journals. You can check out the program at www.insideoutdetroit.org.

How to Write a Poem By Poe

First, observe. Observe everything around you.Observe yourself.Know what you are writing about. Do notwrite from the top of your head,but from the bottom of your heart.Be emotional. Don’t hold anything back,’’

Poe is in the 6th grade at Golightly Educational Center.

I Remember My Mother’s HandsBy Joshua Bryant

I remember my mother’s handsbecause they always work in rows.Because after she’s done cookingher hands start to crumble like a piece of paper.Because over her hands she rests themin peace in her bed.Because they’re always in the air readyto pull words into her mouth.Because they always play at night whenthe silky moon shines bright.

Joshua Bryant is a 6th grader atMarcus Garvey Academy.

Outside the windowBy Shawna Duncan

Outside the windowI sawa tear dropcomeout of anangel’s eyeIt was inthe arms of an angelIt felt likethe tear dropfell in myheart

Shawn’s poem was published in “Here, There and Everywhere,” Mann Elementary School, Vol. 2, Spring 2012.

DawnBy Carlos Westbrook

I am a red sunny dawnwhen I shineheaven has a carnivalit is a rebirth my light makes people happy all over the earthwhen babies look at my lightthey fall asleepmillions of people dancethousands marry when my warmth hits their bodiesI frolic in the flowers with angels my light is a present

Carlos Westbrook wrote this as a fifth grader in Glazer Elementary School.

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1st Grade, 1st Place, Alyssa Doran, Steenland Elementary, Roseville

Kindergarten, 2nd Place, Benjamin Cook, Auburn Area Catholic School, Auburn

Kindergarten, 1st Place, Matthew Devine, Elmwood Elementary, St. Clair Shores

National Poetry Month

Poetry & Art!

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM 7Thursday, April 18, 2013

2nd Grade, 1st Place, Ralph Helfrich, St. Patrick School, Carleton 5th Grade, 1st Place, Jerez Rinehart, Chapman Elementary, Rockwood

2nd Grade, 2nd Place, Ava Durand, Smith Elementary, Fowlerville

Send usyour art

Draw on only white 8 -by-11 paper and use bright colors. Be sure to print your name, age, city and phone number clearly on the back of your drawing. Send your art to Yak’s Corner Art, c/o DNIE, 615 W. Lafayette Blvd., Detroit, MI 48226

4th Grade, 1st Place, Alana Asmar, Harwood Elementary, Sterling Heights

1st Grade, 2nd Place, Makayla Paul, St. Gerard School, Lansing

5th Grade, 2nd Place, Ethan Bassila, St. Gerard School, Lansing

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM88 Thursday, April 18, 2013

This page for young Yakkers is brought to you this week by readers of The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press who donated their vacation newspapers.