Shortened sentence: Mosquitoes poke skin with their straw-like mouth and sip blood.
- Original sentence: Mosquitoes poke the skin with their straw-like mouth and sip blood.
- What I changed: I removed the small word 'the' between 'poke' and 'skin'.
- Why this works: Taking out ' the' (the word 'the' plus the space) makes the sentence 4 characters shorter but keeps the meaning simple for an 8-year-old.