Think about the things 11-year-olds typically do - ride bikes, skip rope, play catch and maybe join a pick-up game of basketball. Charles Mullins is a little different. He started to skydive when he was 11. Now 15, the teen-ager from Germantown, Tenn., still holds the record as the world's youngest sky diver. In his own words, "It's an honor." Charles was not nervous on his first jump. The on

Imagine falling for almost a full minute, hurtling straight toward the Earth from almost a mile above ground. You feel the air rushing by. Suddenly, you are jerked up by the force of your parachute opening, allowing you three minutes to view the scenery around you before you float to a soft landing. This is sky diving, a sport that is said to offer the greatest feeling of freedom. "It relieve

Many of us are content with our lives and don't bother to worry about problems that Tylenol can't cure. Yes, things could always be better, but mostly we sit and sip our tea, jog our miles and don't think anything at all about what we'll do in the next 15 minutes. Well, recently we met two kids who deserve a pat on the back for putting up with chronic illnesses. First we met Billy Muller. Bill

What are round, can't be put in a vending machine, are the hottest new items to be traded, and are big as half dollars? Slammer Whammers - or you may have heard them called POGs. "You can pretty much collect these caps, and (the manufacturers) plan on (them) being as popular as baseball cards," says Joshua Huff, 14, of the Indianapolis Children's Choir. He and some friends from ICC - Dan Carlso

What would the world be like without sports? Would schoolchildren play cards instead of dodgeball? Would playgrounds be full of children standing around eating snacks? Would violence on the streets increase because kids have no other way to vent their energy? Workers at Nike pondered those same questions when they researched the state of kids' fitness in the United States. Here's what they fou

Imagine that it is a nice, sunny day outside. You have nothing to do, so you decide to play a round of golf. Now imagine the same activity if you were missing an arm or leg. Sounds almost inconceivable, unless you've met the amputees from the Midwest Amputee Association. The Midwest Amputee Association, located in Indianapolis, is a nonprofit organization for the support and camaraderie of amp

As a child in Modesto, Calif., filmmaker George Lucas remembers sitting passively in classrooms and being bored beyond belief. It was not until he attended junior college that the creator of the blockbuster Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies excelled by taking classes that interested him. Disappointed that his elementary and high school years weren't as exciting as they could have been, he won

Kelly Zimmerman doesn't know where she would be if there hadn't been a Boys & Girls Club in her neighborhood. Now 19, she says she avoided gangs and other types of trouble by escaping to the club to play sports. Now a decade later, Boys & Girls Clubs of America selected the sophomore at Marietta College in Ohio to be their Youth of the Year and co-chair of the P.L.A.Y. Kids Advisory Board. In

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the viewers of The Lion King missed out on 850 million words. Those 850 million were spoken through the 850,000 pictures cut from the movie. Don Hahn, producer of the latest Disney film, explains: "When we talk about a million drawing in these movies, it's really a million drawings, of which 140- to 150,000 are seen on screen when you go see the fi

Have you ever thought to yourself, "I like Indians. I like watching the shows." If you have, than you're like Clark Bishop, an 11-year-old student from Denver who just had an up-close look at ancient Indian life. Clark and five of his classmates traveled to Cortez, Colo., about 400 miles southwest of Denver, to partake of an archaeological Mecca called Crow Canyon.

KIDS SPEAK In a roundtable, kids express their thoughts and feelings about a given topic. It is an expression of opinion, based on the experiences of each participant. Bambi had to deal with it. The children of Nicole Simpson have to deal with it. And eventually you will have to deal with it, too. Death is a fact of life. One class of students in southern Indiana has had two classmates die y

Today we feature many different environmental clubs. We used five phrases from a conference we attended last year - know it, live it, grow it, share it, and push it - to organize the roundtable discussion giving the readers the idea of the multiple approaches these groups have taken. Please read the second story for a more complete understanding. KNOW IT: Kids must know enough to convince othe