Page Type: Elementary

Sammie Vance was 8 years old when she heard about buddy benches. She loved the idea.

“If someone is lonely, they can go sit on the bench and others know to go up and ask them to play,” was how she explained it, according to her website. Buddy benches have been placed at schools, in parks, and in other public places. They’re not just for kids. Adults sit on buddy benches sometimes too. 

Sammie wanted to make sure there were plenty of buddy benches because she didn’t want anyone to feel lonely. So, in 2017, she started Sammie’s Buddy Bench Project. Her first goal was to get a buddy bench for her school. Six years later, the project has been a huge success, and it’s still going strong. 

Sammie’s Buddy Bench Project collects plastic lids and bottle caps and sends them to a company to have the plastic recycled and turned into a bench. It takes 400 pounds (180 kilograms) of lids and caps to make each bench. That’s a lot! But Sammie worked hard. She asked her classmates and local businesses to save their caps. She also posted on social media, asking people to send their caps. In two months, Sammie collected 1,200 pounds (540 kilograms) of caps, enough for three benches! And the caps kept coming.

Today, Sammie’s project is responsible for more than 100 buddy benches in the U.S. as well as many other countries!

Jonathan Yacko and his wife, Natalie Gilliard, were tired of mowing the lawn at their home in Vermont. So they decided to replace most of it with something totally different: wildflowers.

The next time the grass needed to be mowed, Yacko and Gilliard ripped part of it out instead. They raked the soil and poured a giant bag of wildflower seeds over it. Then they waited. As the weather warmed up, little green sprouts started to pop up.

“We’d look out the window and be like, ‘They’re coming! The flowers are coming!’” Gilliard told Nina Keck of Vermont Public (www.vermontpublic.org).

First there were tiny white flowers. Then came yellow, orange, red, purple, and blue ones. The flowers attracted bees and butterflies. The couple decided that one field wasn’t enough. They planted a second one on their next-door neighbor’s land, with the neighbor’s permission.

How cute is this? Scientists recently spotted a dumbo octopus in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii! It was a rare, and adorable, sight. 

Scientists on board a research ship sent a vehicle with a camera down into the ocean and waited to see what would swim by. They spotted the dumbo octopus at a depth of about 5,500 feet (1,700 meters), where the water is cold, dark, and not very crowded. 

There are about 300 species of octopus and about 17 species of dumbo octopus. Dumbo octopuses push themselves through the water with their fins, which look like floppy ears. They get their name from Dumbo, the classic Disney movie about an elephant with giant ears. Most dumbo octopuses are less than one foot (30 centimeters) long, which is smaller than many other octopus species. 

Scientists can’t study dumbo octopuses as much as they can study many other animals. Dumbo octopuses live in deeper water than other octopus species—as far as 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) below the surface. Not many animals can survive at this depth, which is so far down that sunlight can’t reach it. Humans can’t dive that deep, either. That’s why dumbo octopuses are a bit of a mystery. 

“I’m so glad we got to see this beautiful creature,” one scientist said. “I’ve never seen one before.”

Check out the video of the octopus!

On October 14, 2023, part of the world will experience an annular solar eclipse. The Sun and the Moon will line up in the sky to form a “ring of fire.”

An annular eclipse is different from a total solar eclipse. During a total eclipse, the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, totally blocking the Sun. During an annular eclipse, the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun but is at or near its farthest point from Earth. Since the Moon is far from Earth, it’s a bit smaller in the sky, so it doesn’t block the Sun completely. Instead, a thin ring of sunlight is visible around the Moon—what some people call a ring of fire.

The October 14 annular eclipse can be seen in parts of Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. It can also be seen in parts of Mexico, Central America, and South America. A partial solar eclipse will be visible in other places, with less of the Sun blocked.

In the United States, the annular eclipse will first be visible in part of Oregon at 9:13 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time and last be visible in part of Texas at 12:03 p.m. Central Daylight Time. The eclipse will then move over Mexico and Central America and, finally, South America.

It’s not safe to look at the Sun during an eclipse. If you are in a place where you can view the eclipse, wear eclipse glasses or solar viewers. Regular sunglasses are not safe for viewing an eclipse.

Goats love to eat, and they’ll gobble up plants that many other animals won’t. That’s why people across the United States are putting goats to work. Their job is to help the environment by eating invasive species.

An invasive species is an animal or a plant that was brought to an area from another place and can harm the area’s other species, or native species. Invasive plants do harm by blocking sunlight from reaching native plants. This can cause all kinds of problems. Native plants begin to die. Animals are harmed, too, because they depend on these plants for food and shelter. Many animals won’t or can’t eat invasive plants.

In many parks and other public lands, workers are solving the problem by inviting goats over for dinner. The goats are rented from nearby farms for a few weeks or longer. They spend their time eating the invasive plants in the parks.

Luckily, goats have no problem eating many kinds of invasive plants. Their digestive systems are even tough enough to eat poison ivy! Goats do a better job clearing invasive plants than mowers, which often leave seeds behind. And unlike chemicals that are sometimes used to kill harmful plants, grazing goats aren’t bad for the planet.

One bonus of such programs is that parks are getting more visitors because the goats are adorable.

“They’ve been a big hit,” Debra Nowak of 1000 Islands Environmental Center in Wisconsin told USA Today. “People love to come see the goats.”

U.S. president Joe Biden has set aside almost 1 million acres (400,000 hectares) of land around the Grand Canyon in Arizona as a new national monument, which means it will be protected permanently. The president chose this land because it is important to many American Indian groups.

The monument is named Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni. The name comes from the languages of the Havasupai and Hopi people, who live in the region. The words Baaj Nwaavjo mean “where Indigenous peoples roam” in the Havasupai language. I’tah Kukveni means “our ancestral footprints” in the Hopi language. The Havasupai, the Hopi, and many other American Indian nations have been working together for several years to get the U.S. government to protect the area.

Now that the land is a national monument, activities such as building and mining will not be allowed there. This is important to American Indians because companies have been interested in mining a resource called uranium in the area. Mining can pollute nearby bodies of water. The Havasupai people rely on a local body of water, Havasu Creek, for their drinking water. The land is also an important part of the history and cultures of all local American Indian peoples.

“Our ancestors were once spread far and wide throughout the region,” said Edmond Tilousi, vice chair of the Havasupai Tribe. “The canyon is a part of each and every Havasupai person. It is our home, it is our land and our water source and our very being.”

Aspen Brown got an amazing surprise for her 7th birthday. She found a diamond! 

Aspen was celebrating her birthday at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas with her dad and grandmother. Visitors to the park are allowed to search for gems and take home whatever they find. At one point, Aspen went over to an area with some large rocks to take a break. There, she found a treasure.

The diamond Aspen found is golden brown and about the size of a pea. Diamonds are measured in carats. The heavier the diamond, the more carats it is. Park workers say Aspen’s diamond is almost three carats. For comparison, a good-sized diamond ring weighs about one carat (though diamonds can also be much larger). 

Waymon Cox, who works in the park, called the gem “one of the most beautiful diamonds I’ve seen in recent years,” according to Smithsonian magazine.

It’s not unusual to find a diamond in the park, where visitors have also found garnets, jasper, quartz, amethyst, and agate. As of September, 560 diamonds had been discovered there so far in 2023. That’s more than one per day. But it’s rare to spot a diamond like the one Aspen found. Aaron Palke, who is a gem expert, said he and a team of people searched the park for two and a half days in 2022 and did not find a diamond. And most of the diamonds people do find are less than one-quarter of a carat.

Aspen’s family has already given the diamond a name: the Aspen Diamond.

In 1951, Mary Foss Starn wrote a message on an egg.

“Whoever gets this egg, please write [to] me,” the message said. Along with the message, Starn wrote her address and name (which was just Mary Foss at the time) on the egg.

Starn worked at an egg-packing factory, putting eggs into cartons. She wrote the message knowing the egg would be sold at a grocery store. She hoped someone would find the message and write her a letter. In fact, she hoped they could write letters back and forth and become “pen pals.” It didn’t happen.

Then, in 2023, Starn’s daughter received a Facebook message about a very old and unusual egg!

Back in 1951, a man named Miller Richardson found Starn’s egg inside a carton he had bought. Richardson liked to collect things. He wrapped up the egg and put it in a box. Many years later, he gave the egg to his neighbor, John Amalfitano. For the past 20 years, Amalfitano has kept the egg inside a silver cup. In 2023, he took photos of the egg and made a Facebook post about it.

“Here’s something you don’t see every day,” Amalfitano wrote. “It’s an egg, from 1951. ([The] egg is still inside, though petrified!)” When something has petrified, it has hardened.

A family member saw Amalfitano’s post and sent a message to Starn’s daughter. Soon, Amalfitano and Starn were talking to each other on the phone. Starn, who is now 92, said she was thrilled to hear from Amalfitano.

“I’m happy to have a new friend,” she told the Washington Post. “I finally have my pen pal, and it only took 72 years.”

When 5-year-old Edison Juel heard about a wildfire on Hawaii’s island of Maui, he decided to start a lemonade stand. Eddie hoped to raise money for the people affected by the August 2023 fire. But he and his parents never dreamed that he’d be able to raise $17,000!

Eddie and his family were on vacation on Hawaii’s Big Island when they heard about the fire, which affected the town of Lahaina. By the time firefighters were able to extinguish the flames, many homes and businesses had been destroyed. All around the U.S., people rushed to help. They donated supplies and money. After the Juel family returned to their home in Seattle, Washington, Eddie came up with the idea for his lemonade stand.

With his parents’ help, Eddie set up on the stand on the street near his home. In addition to lemonade, Eddie sold ice pops and ice cream sandwiches. He also decided to sell some of his toys.

Eddie’s mom, Ami Juel, made a post on social media showing the stand with a big sign reading, “Lemonade for Lahaina.” Soon people were lined up in their cars to buy refreshments. A cup of lemonade cost one dollar. Some people gave Eddie more than that because they knew it was all for a good cause. People who couldn’t travel to the lemonade stand sent donations online.

“Most people were like, ‘This is so cool. What a great idea. We’ve been looking for ways to help,’” Ami Juel told USA Today.

The stand was open for one day, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., but people kept donating online long after that. Eddie has raised more than $17,000 for the people of Maui.

“[Eddie’s] generosity invited others to be generous,” Ami said.

When Ben Wilson sees a piece of chewing gum stuck on the sidewalk, he gets out his paint set. Wilson is an artist who likes to make art using objects that most people would think of as garbage. He’s most famous for painting designs on chewed-up pieces of gum.

Wilson lives and works in London, England. It’s pretty easy to spot him when he’s painting a piece of sidewalk gum. He’s usually lying on his belly, wearing a pair of bright orange overalls that are splattered with paint. Wilson paints animals, food, buildings, and more. He often gets his ideas from people he meets on the street. Sometimes they ask him to make paintings for their friends or family. They don’t get to keep the paintings. The brightly painted gum usually stays on the sidewalk, where Wilson found it. It may bring a smile to someone’s face as they walk past it.

“By painting a picture [that] is so small, those that see it then discover a hidden world beneath their feet,” Wilson told Reuters.