Celebrate World Water Day!

Every year, I celebrate World Water Day here on MommyMaestra with a post sharing resources in English and Spanish for teaching your children about the importance of water. And tomorrow, on March 22nd, we'll be celebrating it here at home again. Having fresh water is a basic necessity for not only humans, but nearly all living things.

783 million people, or 11% of the world’s population, do not have safe water to drink and that this, coupled with poor sanitation, results in 2,000 children dying every day. And this is why tomorrow, my kids and I will be discussing how precious this natural resource is, and why it is our responsibility to manage it in a thoughtful manner. 

By now, most of you know that I am a former zookeeper and that I take nature and our role as stewards of the Earth very seriously. You know I have a virtual zoo here on our little farm, and that our lives (and yours) are closely tied to the rhythms of the land. I look around and see how water can make or break our local farmers. 

But I also am aware that people across the globe are fighting to survive and their access to clean water is crucial. 

So that is why tomorrow, I'm going to do more than just teach my children about the importance of water. I'm going to be developing their sense of social responsibility by talking about what we (as a family and a nation) can do to be a solution for the water crisis.

I'll be tweeting and retweeting WaterAid America's #20ways that water is just the beginning of the road out of poverty. You can follow the conversation too, by simply following the hashtags #20ways and #WorldWaterDay on Twitter.

You can also join the World Water Day Google+ Hangout Friday at 1.30pm EST. WaterAid and other water organizations will be discussing the world water crisis and solutions in a session moderated by YouTube star Justine Ezarik.


RESOURCES:

In 2011, I asked you if you know where the water in your sink comes from and if you know what is in it (do you?), then I shared some great sites with lessons plans, printables, and other resources for you to download or use.

In 2012, I focused on books in English and Spanish for you to read with your children. (But I still shared some really awesome websites in English and Spanish for your kids to enjoy, so be sure to check them out because they're still super cool.)

This year, I'm recommending the new WWD website again - but this time, my favorite part is the Logo Builder! I made the logo above and the one at the right here using it. It is really a fabulous idea and allows you to create your own logo in one of 19 different languages and using various color/pattern combinations.

We're also putting together this super cute water cycle craftivity from Sweet Tea Classroom. It comes in both English and Spanish, so you can choose which one you prefer.

You can also find instructions in Spanish here for making your own terrarium so you can create your own water cycle experiment.

And last, we'll top it all off by watching this video together...

KaBOOM! It Starts With a Playground

Unstructured play is one of the best parts of my kids' day. And playing outside is at the top of the list. My kids love playing with the dogs, climbing trees, exploring nature, and riding their bikes. We have one playground in town where they love to spend their time during the spring and summer months.

But many children don't have that luxury. Many parents struggle to find safe playgrounds for their children to play in.

Which is a terribly shame, really, because as I've written before, kids who play outside reap the benefits. They get healthy exercise, stronger immune systems, and are more compassionate and concerned about environmental issues. They even do better in school.
Which is why I choose to support KaBOOM! They are one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the U. S. dedicated to saving play for children. According to their website, their mission is "to create great playspaces through the participation and leadership of communities. Ultimately, we envision a place to play within walking distance of every child in America."

And this month, to emphasize the importance of an outdoor playspace, they are asking parents to send in photos of the playgrounds they love for a chance to win great outdoor toys. All you have to do is share a picture on their FB page of your favorite playground, and you'll be entered to win a set of two Buddy Bounce Balls or a copy of of the book Go Out and Play!: Favorite Outdoor Games from KaBOOM!.

The deadline is less than week away! Get your photos in by February 19th.

And if you've never visited the KaBOOM! website, now's your chance. It is so inspiring!

Does your community have a fun and safe playground for your children?

Fight Against Child Trafficking

I suppose I've always known that human trafficking exists. But I've NEVER realized that it happens here in the States. I don't know why I've been so ignorant about that. I guess like many people, I didn't want to acknowledge that something so horrific could happen here in the country where I live.

But an estimated 5.5 million children are victims of trafficking, an illegal enterprise that generates an estimated $32 billion in yearly profits. Human trafficking cases have been reported in every state in the United States. Rates are particularly high in California, Texas, Florida, and New York.

As a mother, the numbers horrify me. But when I learned that the U.S. Fund for UNICEF has launched The End Trafficking project to raise awareness about child trafficking and mobilize communities within the United States to take meaningful action to help protect children, I knew I wanted to share it with you.

In partnership with concerned individuals and groups, the initiative aims to bring us all closer to a day when ZERO children are exploited. Actress Angie Harmon, who I love, is UNICEF's newest ambassador, and she is lending her support for the fight against child trafficking during Human Trafficking Awareness Month in January.

To learn more about the End Trafficking initiative, visit UNICEF's website. If you are an educator, you will find resources there for middle and high school. And EVERYONE will benefit from the Toolkit on the site that shares 20 ways to take action.



Disclosure: This post is written in collaboration with Global Team 200 and our efforts to do social good by writing about issues that affect our communities and the organizations who are doing something to make this world a better place.

Education Can Be as Simple as WaterAid

"Millions of children around the world suffer because they don't have access to safe water and sanitation. Living without these vital services has a devastating impact on their health, education, and family relationships."

Everyday, I make my kids drink water. Why? Because I know that a healthy brain and body requires that basic ingredient that all life on this planet needs. I know that sugary drinks affect my kids' ability to focus when we are doing school, and can affect their energy level later in the day. In the morning, my kids drink milk or orange juice to help their brains find the energy it needs for them to focus and calculate. But at some point during the day, my kids have to drink a glass of water.

You know what? I'm lucky. I'm lucky because I can give them clean, safe water to drink. But did you know that across the globe, 800 million people do not have access to it? And because of that, 2,000 children die every day from easily prevented diarrheal diseases.  hundreds - maybe even thousands - of others are unable to attend school because they are too busy carrying water for their families and communities... especially young girls. These girls may have to carry large, heavy containers full of water for up to three miles or more, and the weight can damage their heads, necks, and spines. Other girls are forced to quit school whenever they reach puberty because their schools do not have private sanitation facilities.

Children may also be forced to skip school because they are suffering from water-related diseases. And in turn, their mother may not be able to work because she is too busy taking care of her sick child.

Which is why I want to take the time to endorse WaterAid. Founded in 1981, WaterAid transforms lives by helping the world’s poorest people gain access to safe water and sanitation. Together with local organizations, communities and individuals, WaterAid uses affordable and locally appropriate solutions to provide safe water, effective sanitation and hygiene education to people in developing countries. They have programs in 27 countries in Africa, Asia, the Pacific region and Central America.I love that WaterAid especially focuses on the needs of children. Their teams create centrally located water sources (wells) to minimize the distance that children will have to walk to carry water. These water sources also allow families to grow and cook food, which helps children to grow stronger and healthier, and better able to concentrate on their studies. WaterAid also checks that latrines (in schools) are designed so they are appropriate for use by children.

I want to encourage you to talk with your children about the importance of fresh, clean water. Last week, I shared on my FB page, this free, new printable diagram of the water cycle that was recently created by the U.S. Geological Survey for elementary and middle-school students. Print it out and share it with your child!

And make your children drink plenty of water on a daily basis. You can add flavor with a slice of lemon or strawberry. But I think it is better to train them to love the taste of water in its purest form.

And if you'd like to show your support to WaterAid, you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Disclosure: This post is written in collaboration with Global Team 200 and our efforts to do social good by writing about issues that affect our communities and the organizations who are doing something to make this world a better place.

Remembering Sandy Hook Victim, Ana Grace Márquez-Greene



photo by Connecticut Funeral Directors Association


It hasn't even been a month since the horrific event at Sandy Hook Elementary.

But it seems like a long time for me, because of all the information that has flowed across my computer screen. It still grieves me to think of that day and the unbearable loss that no parent should ever have to experience. It thrills me though to see that so many people are not letting this event simply go down in history without taking action to make a change in our country's policies.

But I'm not going to discuss anything political today. Instead, I'm going to join a group of bloggers who are remembering the lives of the victims. In  conjunction with #26actsofkindness, a handful of us bloggers at #GlobalTeamof200 have decided to create a blog post about each of the 26 victims of Sandy Hook, to honor their lives and memory. Each of us has chosen a different child to honor and recognize, in support of their families.

I'm happy to share a tiny glimpse of the beautiful life of Ana Grace Márquez-Greene, a 6-year-old girl who inherited her jazz musician father's love of music and spent her short life singing and dancing everywhere she went. Ana's parents, Jimmy and Nelba, say that she was beautiful and loving, sometimes leaving little notes that said "I love you, Mom and Dad" beneath their pillows. Ana was very close to her older brother, Isaiah, who also attended the school, and they enjoyed making music together - Isaiah playing the piano while Ana sang.

This little girl who lived with music in her heart actually lived with a heart condition and had been scheduled to have surgery on the 4th.

One of the things that touched me the most about Ana is the fact that she came from a very diverse heritage:  African American, Puerto Rican Canadian, and just a bit of Irish. So many of you who follow MommyMaestra have multicultural families and I know that this might strike an additional chord for you.

If you would like to help Ana's family, or send your condolences, you can follow their Facebook page dedicated created in her memory, or you can donate to the Ana Grace Fund website, created by friends of her family.

And because of Ana's love of music, Western Connecticut State University - where her father, Jimmy, is a music professor - has set up the Ana Grace Marquez-Greene Music Scholarship Fund in her memory. Her mother, Nelba, is a clinical fellow at the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and has also set up a family therapy fund in care of the Klingberg Family Centers for donations.

In a statement, the family encourages everyone to commit to doing selfless acts of kindness. I'll be thinking about this everyday, I hope, and looking for opportunities to do so.

If you would like to join us in the #26Acts, link up below and share what you've written. We'd love to read it. And please click on the links shared below to learn about the other children lost at Sandy Hook.

Un abrazo...

Thanks to Mamiverse for highlighting this post!

Driving Home the Meaning of Giving

Lately my children have been a little too focused on themselves.

With the holidays quickly approaching, they've been doing a lot of asking for things. They've been keeping lists and asking me to keep one, too. I have a list of things I keep in my head. But mine isn't as long as theirs...and it also focuses on other people, not myself.

So after hearing too many sentences beginning with "I want," the frown on my face appeared and I started thinking about how to teach my children to start saying "I'll give" instead.

I decided to focus on gift giving and asked my children what they would be giving to specific people. My daughter immediately got busy making stuff to give to our family and friends. My son, who is younger, was frustrated and seemed at a loss, but eventually figured out he could make ornaments to give to loved ones, too.

But that's still not enough for me. Because all the things they made, required my buying something for them (wooden ornaments that he got to paint, a loom kit and refills for her to weave), so once again, they were benefitting through consumption.

Don't get me wrong - I LOVE that they are being creative and making gifts on their own, but I also want them to experience the feeling of generosity without directly benefitting from it in a material fashion.

So we started looking at charitable gifts. There are many wonderful and deserving organizations out there who do great work to help the poor around the world. And I would encourage you to consider supporting one of them this holiday season.

But I think that we will be focusing on Oxfam America Unwrapped.

If you visit their website, you'll find a fantastic list of gifts organized by category (Education, Women & Children, Animal Gifts, Green Gifts, Making a Living, and Emergency Essentials). Each gift is based on actual projects funded by Oxfam worldwide. You can go through and read about each one.

We've gone through the website and together we set a budget and selected one project to fund. This year, we'll be giving to one of the worthy projects listed on the site. We've narrowed it down to honey bees, books for kids, or help restore a preschool. I'll let you know what our final decision ends up being.

I hope this will become an annual tradition for us, but more importantly, I hope it will teach my children to be more conscious yearround about helping others in need and giving generously.

I hope you'll consider doing something similar with your children. And if you do, please share it below.

Un abrazo fuerte...

Be a Part of Giving Tuesday

Do you know about Giving Tuesday? It's not a new idea, but this year it is blossoming into a national movement. Taking place on November 27th, Giving Tuesday is a call to action that urges everyone to demonstrate generosity and compassion by contributing to their local charities as a way to improve their community.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I as a parent can help teach my children to be kind, appreciative, compassionate, and giving. How do I develop their ability to see others who are less fortunate and to feel moved to help if they are able? I want so much to instill in them a strong sense of social responsibility, so that they can grow up to be contributing members of our society.

Giving to others is a valuable lesson. It helps us to stop focusing on ourselves for the moment, and to think about someone else instead. I really think that in giving, we become happier. We begin to see how blessed our lives really are, when we see the struggles and challenges that other people often face. Frequently, it makes our own difficulties seem smaller and less serious.

More than anything, I want my children to grow up happy, healthy, and ready to work hard to leave this world a better place.

So this is why I'm thinking hard about Giving Tuesday, and how we as a family can contribute. I see so many options available. Here are just a few:

- Donate items like blankets, socks, or boxes of tissue to our local nursing home,

- Collect canned goods for our local food pantry,

- Giving our local library some of the many books we own and no longer read,

- Buy craft/activity kits to donate to our local nursing home,

- Gather items (shoes, coats, blankets, etc.) to give to our local Mission store,

- Buy, donate, and plant bulbs at our local park.

It is simply a matter of choosing where we want to focus.

But the reality is that Giving Tuesday is so much more than just a one-time event. It is a mindset that should stay with us all year long. How can we make our community a better place? What can we do to improve it for others?

After all of the emphasis placed on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday is - in my opinion anyway - a better way to help us remember that the important thing in life is not material wealth, but rather the spirit of love, generosity, and compassion.

With this in mind, our local homeschool group got together last week and made Thanksgiving cards for the elderly living at the nursing home here in town. We then delivered them on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. This event touched my 8-year-old daughter. Though she was scared of some of the residents, she bravely entered the rooms with me or the other children, to wish the elderly a happy Thanksgiving and give them a card. Before we left, she asked me if we could do this again soon. I wish all children could experience moments like these and learn to see others with compassionate eyes.

I hope that this weekend you will think about how your family can participate in Giving Tuesday's movement...AND keep it going throughout the year.

For more ideas on how your family can participate, follow #GivingTuesday on Facebook and Twitter. Or simply visit their website.


Un abrazo....

Tomorrow is Malala Day

Tomorrow has been designated Malala Day. Have you heard her story? Malala Yousafzai is the young girl in Pakistan who has been fighting for the education of girls in her country. in 2009, she began writing a blog for the BBC under a pseudonym, describing her life under the Taliban and expressing her thoughts about the importance of educating young girls. In 2010, the New York Times filmed a documentary about her and she became more vocal about her position. Desmond Tutu nominated her for the Interntaional Children's Peace Prize and she even won Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize.

In retaliation, the Taliban, who view girls' education is an obscenity, horrifically shot her in the head last month on October 9th. Ironically, their cruelty has only brought her greater fame and highlighted the cause for which she is fighting.

You can learn more about her story watching this video by ABCNews.com.

Her story is not uncommon. Across the globe, 32 million girls around the world are denied daily their right to go to a classroom and learn. But this issue often goes unnoticed. Too often the voice of girls and women are silenced, their education suppressed, because an educated woman is a powerful thing. We see the foolishness of war. Because of our role in our families, we seek peaceful relationships and cooperation among members. We are the voice of sanity in an insane world - and we are exactly what the world needs to settle differences and find common ground.

The Office of the UN Special Envoy for Global Education has taken up Malala's issue and are declaring November 10th a global day of action for Malala and all the other girls around the world who are denied an education. Tomorrow, Gordon Brown, Former British Prime Minister and current UN Special Envoy for Global Education, and his wife Sarah will travel to Pakistan to deliver to President Zardari their million-plus petition to make education a reality for all Pakistani children.

If you'd like to join me in showing support, you can sign the petition at www.iammalala.org.

Send a Message to the Students in Bolivia

I know that both educators and parents are going to love this opportunity, because it allows your students and children to communicate with and help other students in another country - Bolivia!

Part of raising children who do not see in color, but in words and actions, is teaching them to see with their heart and find the beauty in differences. It's teaching our children to understand that there are others like us, in another part of the world, who may or may not look like us, but have the same hopes and dreams that we have.

The World Food Programme is working in Bolivia to provide nutritious meals for children in schools. As part of their project, they are inviting other people from around the world to get to know the children in the Huarimarca School in Bolivia, who benefit from their program. Your class or children, can ask a question to the children in Bolivia. The message may be in English or Spanish and will be translated (if needed) and delivered by Ximena, WFP’s Communications Officer there.

What a fantastic opportunity for your kids! You can learn more and send your message here.

Watch this video to learn more...

Celebrate World Food Day with the GROW Method

Part of being a parent is teaching your children to be responsible and respectful...of themselves, of others, and of the world we live in. It is a mindset we have to nurture. Teaching it is easy, but requires constant attention: Turn out the lights when you leave a room. Hold the door open for others. Brush your teeth twice a day.

Eat all your dinner. Don't waste food.

We own and live on a small farm. We keep two cows, two donkeys, a handful of chickens, and even tend our own little garden. The only meat we eat most of the year is venison, thanks to my husband and our freezer chest. All our food scraps go back to the chickens or the dog. So in my house, there's a pretty good understanding of where food comes from.

But not everyone has this opportunity. When we lived in town, we didn't think twice about where our eggs came from, running to the grocery store for some tomatoes, or throwing leftovers in the trash.

This coming Tuesday, October 16th, is World Food Day, and OxFam America is encouraging families to think about our global food sources. They've put together five principles - called the Grow Method - to help us all make wise decisions when it comes to improving our global food system.

Did you know that this world creates enough food to feed everyone on the planet, yet nearly 1 billion people still suffer from hunger? Sadly, about 1/3 of our food gets wasted or lost between the moment it is harvested and the moment it is set on our tables.

By using the Grow Method you help reduce the amount of waste through responsible practices. These five principles include:

• Reducing food waste (things like storing your fruit in the refridgerator so they last longer, keeping leftovers...)
• Buying fair trade to help small scale food producers
• Cooking smart to use less water and energy
• Buying foods that are in season
• Eating less meat and dairy

You can learn more in their short eBook, available for viewing here.

You can also make a difference and support World Food Day signing up to host a World Food Day dinner discussion. Oxfam has tons of free materials including a discussion guide, placemats, and recipe ideas from acclaimed chefs Jamie Oliver, Mary Sue Milliken, and others. Everything can be found at www.oxfamamerica.org/worldfoodday.

Or if you are already a conscientious consumer and would like to share some recipes that employ one or more of the above principles, you can Share GROW method recipes on Pinterest and we’ll add them to our GROW Method Cook Book! Just tag your pin with #GROWmethod to add it.

Or why not snap photos of your World Food Day meal on Instagram and tag them with #WFD2012? Then check out their site to see photos from all over the world.