First grade is tough. No more story circle. No more nap time.

Six-year-old Sophie Mullins, a first grade student at Gauley River Elementary in Craigsville, West Virginia, thought that she and her classmates were being overworked, so she did what any aggrieved constituent would do: she wrote a letter to her State Senator Joe Manchin.

Sophie got the idea from her father, who suggested that she wrote her State Senator with her grievances. "She'd say, 'Daddy, there's so much work to do, all we do is work,' and he said, 'Well, you need to write your congressman,' " Sophie's mother Sarah Mullins told WSAZ.

"Dear Sir," the young Ms. Mullins wrote, "All we do is work, work, work. I need a break. Can you please help?"

Manchin, ever concerned about his constitutents' well being, picked up the phone and called Sophie at school:

"You're working all the time, aren't you?" asked Manchin in the videotaped call that his office posted on YouTube. "So what I'm doing is, see, I'm giving you a break right now. I wanted you to take a little bit of time off since you worked so hard."

"If you work hard, it's going to pay off," Manchin said, urging her to "keep working hard on your studies so you get smarter so you can help us."

The call only lasted a few minutes, but Sophie's mother told WSAZ that it was important to Sophie, who said "Yes, I wrote a letter and talked to people, and the senator listened to me."

See? Calling your representative works! Though I hate to tell ya, kid, get used to it: work doesn't get any better when you're grown up.

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Ward Miles was born three and a half months premature. You'll first see him at four days old, the first time his mama Lyndsey got the chance to hold him. You can see her joy, fear, and sadness all at once as she cradles her super tiny son who is covered with tubes and monitors. But Ward was a fighter, and came home from the NICU a few months later, near his original due date (and on his mother's birthday). You can read more of his story at HuffPo.

Ward's father, filmmaker and photographer Benjamin Scot Miller, made this video of his first year as a birthday gift for Lyndsey the next year. You may want to have a hankie ready. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Nathan Yau at Flowing Data crunched  lot of numbers when researching what to name his son. One of the projects that interested him was the regionality of baby-naming. We've seen a breakdown of the most popular names through time by state (boys and girls), but most of those names were also the most popular names nationwide. Yau took a look at the names that were significantly more popular in certain areas of the US than they were in other areas -and mapped them. The graphic here shows some of the more regional names for children born in the 1960s (but not all of them). There are many more graphics at Flowing Data, for each decade since the '60s and for 2012, too. -via Laughing Squid

It was only the second time through this comic from Lunarbaboon that I saw the eyebrows and the time-shift, which makes it a lot more meaningful. Your outlook on everything is changed when, as someone once told me "your heart is now walking around outside of you." In some instances, it makes you braver than you ever thought you could be.

And don't think this sort of thing doesn't occasionally happen in real life.

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Taranza Mckelvin is only 5 years old, but he can work the field like a professional. Since he first saw a marching band, he’s been committed to learning the drum major’s craft. He started practicing with the band of Glades Central High School in Belle Glade, Florida. On Saturday, he made his drum major debut at the Muck Bowl—the biggest football game in the Everglades region.

Charles Moorer, the band director, was tremendously pleased:

"He catches on a lot faster than most of my students, he's a very unique kid," said Charles Moorer. [...]

"He did his performance and the crowd just loved it," said Moorer.

As you can see from the above video, they had good reason to.

-via 22 Words

Teaching fractions can be easier if you start with something a child is familiar with, like LEGO bricks. This introductory lesson is only good for the simplest fractions fractions based on a total of eight pips, but those are the ones they'll be using the rest of their lives to calculate parts of dollars and gallons (in America, that is). Seems like a genius idea to me, but I've never had LEGO bricks. Is this something schools and parents have been doing all along? -via Geeks Are Sexy

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We showed you a few pictures of Batkid's big adventure in Gotham City yesterday. Today you get a better look, because the San Francisco Chronicle put together a video that shows some of the highlights of 5-year-old Miles Scott's day saving the city, plus some background on Miles' story, and what the Make-A-Wish Foundation wanted to do for him. -via Digg

Miles Scott is a 5-year-old boy who is battling acute lymphoblastic leukemia, diagnosed when he was only 18 months old. The Make-A-Wish Foundation found out what Miles' dream was -he wanted to be Batman. So they made it happen!

With the help of thousands of volunteers, they transformed San Francisco into Gotham City, and asked Miles to save their city from various super villains and criminals. Today was the day. Accompanied by a full-size Batman, Miles saved a damsel in distress, rode in the Batmobile, rescued the San Francisco Giants mascot Lou Seal, foiled the Penguin and the Riddler, and even received the key to the city from the mayor. All accompanied by the cheers of thousands of fans, many who wore Batkid t-shirts that were sold with proceeds going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Miles received his last round of chemotherapy in June, and his cancer is in remission.

See more reports of the event at Warming Glow.

And even more pictures at the Make-A-Wish Bay Area's Twitter feed.

(Images credit: Make-A-Wish Bay Area)

Sure you know your birthday, but do you know what the hour and minute you were born? Remembering those details won't be a problem for Nicollette Brynn Anders. She was born on 11/12/13 at 14:15 military time (2:15 pm).

"That just when she happened to come," said father Mark Anders of Missoula, western Montana, to the Missoulian, "It wasn't planned. She just ... did it."

Kim Briggeman of The Missoulian has the full story. (Photo: Michael Gallacher/Missoulian).

Note: Believe it or not, according to the Missoulian, Nicollette wasn't the first baby to be born on 11/12/13, 14:15 - there are at least two others in the United States: David Cole Salvagnini in Grande Prairie, Texas, and an unidentified baby in Omaha, Nebraska.

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Look at these adorable new babies! They are twins, but obviously not identical, as one has a full head of hair. Watch them snuggle with each other as they get a therapeutic bath called the Thalasso Baby Bath (Thalasso Bain Bébé), a technique developed by French pediatric nurse Sonia Rochel.  -via Daily Picks and Flicks

The child may not be a precise artist, but he understood exactly what he was trying to create when he drew his grandmother. Yoni Lefevre, a designer in the Netherlands, asked children to draw pictures of their grandparents. Then, with props and costumes, she made those drawings come to life in photographs. You can see more works in the series here.

I haven't heard much about the Akron Comic Con. Even so, I'm willing to bet this group, photographed by Thomas Zahler, is the best family costume from the entire convention. The stroller sort of reminds me of that Jungle Cruise stroller we saw back in July, only this time, the whole family got into the act with a proud Leia and Han showing off their adorable little ewok baby -hey, Leia loved the ewoks, there's no reason she wouldn't adopt one whose parents were killed during the battle of Endor. I wonder how Chewie feels about this arrangement though.

Grant Snider of Incidental Comics is learning what its like to be a parent. In a year's time, you can become quite an expert on your baby. But then she becomes a toddler and your education starts all over again! We can take that to mean there we will see more such comics as his education continues. Just wait until the teenage years -that's a real laugh riot. Feel free to go tell Snider what he is in for next.

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Action, adventure, romance and geekery, somehow the Star Wars theme song invokes all of these feelings -even in those too young to know the film itself. This little baby is either a born geek or the world's first true Jedi. In fact, he'll stop crying if you just play him the Star Wars theme song. I guess we'll know either way if he starts moving his mobile with his mind and convincing his mother that "this isn't the baby she's looking for" when it's bath time.

I can't help but wonder if this baby would get along with the dog that loves the Star Trek theme song or if they'd be mortal enemies.

Via Geeks Are Sexy

(Photo: Sebastian Montalvo)

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a rapidly growing sport in the United States. And it’s not just for adults. More than 3 million kids as young as 5 years old have participated, too. The kids engage in full-contact fighting with minimal protective gear—just thin gloves and mouthguards. Sebastian Montalvo, a photographer and journalist in New York City, toured children’s MMA events and captured images of them. You can view a slideshow of them here.

I did a bit of capoeira and boxing back in college. The latter was far, far more practical than the former. When my daughters are old enough, I’ll encourage them to study some sort of practical martial art. MMA seems to resemble realistic brawling, so it may be a good choice.

-via Nag on the Lake