There are many ways to celebrate New Year’s Day. My family and I celebrate New Year’s with new shoes. We buy new shoes to symbolize putting ourselves on a new path to success.

This year our shoes have a travel theme. We chose a travel theme because we stayed at home almost a year due to the COVID-19 lockdown. The shoes we chose were covered with a colorful map of the world.

 I saw the Christmas star on Dec. 21! Did you see it? Did you know what it was? Bear Essential  gave Young Reporters the opportunity to interview Steve Kortenkamp, an astronomer at the University of Arizona.

He said that the conjunction happened because Saturn and Jupiter aligned by orbiting the sun and eventually lining up. The moon and the Earth do the same and that is called an eclipse. Some are solar eclipses while others are lunar eclipses. The next time that a nice solar eclipse will happen in Arizona will be in 2024.

We all know about the happiness a furry friend can bring. Either a cat or dog, these animals make great companions. The steps to adopting are simple and almost anyone can adopt.

 The Paint by Pom Pom craft is so much fun. Maybe you know about paint by number, and this is like that, only there’s no paint, there’s only little soft pom poms.

Actually, there are 800 soft pom poms made out of felt. They all are like stickers and have something sticky on the back that holds the pom poms on the board—you don’t need any glue!

 KFC is developing the KFConsole, a gaming system shaped like a bucket of chicken. The KFConsole will include a patented, built-in “Chicken Chamber” to heat snacks, providing gamers with sustenance during intense gaming sessions.

 What inspires your heart with art? Modern archeologists say that long ago people were painting in caves to communicate to others. The paintings are more than 30,000 years old.

Inspire Your Heart with Art Day is an annual celebration observed on Jan. 31.