Did you know that it is technically possible that the 538 electoral votes could end up in a tie?  Barack Obama could end up earning 269 votes, while Mitt Romney could earn 269 votes!  Can you predict what would happen in that case?  Let's discuss it!

Once our discussion is over, watch the video below to learn more.

Read the entire article over at Mental Floss: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/148929

Special thanks to Mental Floss writer Adrienne Crezo for her kind words:

Hey Kids -
I asked this question to one of the writers from Mental Floss on Twitter last night, and here was his answer. 
(The tilde (~) symbol means approximately.)

What do you think?  What kind of weather should we expect today and tomorrow? 
How many miles inland do we live from the east coast?

Because sometimes the periods, commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes, hyphens, apostrophes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks, brackets, parentheses, braces, and ellipses on the left just won’t do!

So some people have too much time on their hands!  They've sat around and "invented" new punctuation marks for a whole bunch of different reasons!  This article talks about 13 of them and the ways that you could use them in your writing.  I'd love it if you could write a sentence or two in the comments that uses these weird punctuation marks!  Since keyboards don't have the symbols, just write the name of the symbol in parentheses wherever it belongs in the sentence.  Thanks (certitude point)


Read the full story here on "Mental Floss": http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/144712#ixzz29DpkATN2

Here is a similar story, if you'd like more punctuation marks: http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/13-punctuation-marks-that-you-never-knew-existed

Here is a link to a website with tons of punctuation marks and other symbols: http://copypastecharacter.com/punctuation

Create a new punctuation mark of your own.  Use your writing skills to explain the symbol's appearance, and its purpose.  Make sure I know how to use it and how to draw it.  Good luck - be creative!  :)


(Image Credit: http://www.chinesetimeschool.com/en-us/articles/chinese-punctuation-marks/)

A tree's leaves are in trouble when winter comes because they might freeze from the cold. In order to survive, all kinds of trees either have to somehow protect their leaves or get rid of them.  Evergreen trees—your pines, spruces, firs, etc.— went the protection route. Their leaves, or needles, are covered in a waxy coating to resist freezing, allowing them to live for years or even decades before falling off and being replaced. The leaves of deciduous trees (like a maple, an oak, a birch, or a poplar), on the other hand, are dropped once winter is on its way. Chemistry is the reason why we have such beautiful colors of leaves in the fall! 

Read the article on "Mental Floss" to discover exactly how it all happens:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/34223#ixzz29DmqDxWZ

Write a comment that explains your best understanding of why leaves change color in the fall.  Why do they turn different colors?  What is it that makes each color?  Put it into your own words.  This practices summarizing.  :)

50 states managed to be granted their statehood - Here are 12 states that could have been.

Read the full story here on "Mental Floss":  :) http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/143276#ixzz29DjcKut6

Let me know what you think.  Type a comment in and I'll respond.  You don't have to read the whole article, but once you have something intelligent to say, type it in!