What a Weekend: Blog Action Day & World Food Day!

Did you know that this weekend is both Blog Action Day and World Food Day?
How about that here in the U.S.A., October 24th has been designated as National Food Day?

Well, we are just learning and can't wait to do a family project related to the theme of Food!

How has this unfolded for us as a family?

Well, today's BrainPOP movie happens to be on Blog Action Day.

(So you will know, I moved the BrainPOP Daily Featured Movie to my side bar, so that it is there each and every day for all of you to access right through my blog.
You can click on the four arrows icon to enlarge the movie to full-screen size.)

Thanks to BrainPOP for highlighting Blog Action Day and giving an overview about what a blog is in a way that makes it concrete for young children.

Had not heard of Blog Action Day until watching this movie with the boys.
See, when you homeschool, you learn right along with your children each and every day!

Following watching the movie, did a search and found out that according to Wikipedia, Blog Action Day is an annual worldwide event where bloggers write about a single topic on October 15th or 16th of every year.

From the topics I have seen listed, it seems as if they are designed to raise awareness about social justice and major issues that the world is facing:

Environment (2007)
Poverty (2008)
Climate Change (2009)
Water (2010)

This year's theme is Food.

Since October 16th has been designated as World Food Day, many people will be posting for Blog Action Day around the theme of Food on both October 15th and 16th.

The theme for World Food Day for 2011 is Food Prices: from Crisis to Stability.

According to the FAO, the organization that is spear-heading this day,

“FOOD PRICES – FROM CRISIS TO STABILITY” has been chosen as this year’s World Food Day theme to shed some light on this trend (of upswings in food prices) and what can be done to mitigate its impact on the most vulnerable.

On World Food Day 2011, let us look seriously at what causes swings in food prices, and do what needs to be done to reduce their impact on the weakest members of global society.


So what are your thoughts and ideas for Blog Action Day and / or for World Food Day? If you are an American, what are your thoughts and ideas related to National Food Day?

Since we just found out that this is the theme, will do some brainstorming with the boys to see what we can do as a family on this theme to raise an awareness as a family about issues surrounding food in the world, as well as locally, here in our community...

We could do a project for the soup kitchens or food banks in our area, or we could learn about organic produce and how it is best to eat what is grown locally and is in season...and how to encourage people to buy and eat organic and locally grown when there is a misconception that anything organic automatically means expensive...or maybe a combination of these.

Do you have any specific plans for Blog Action Day, World Food Day, or National Food Day?
National Food Day is celebrated each year here in the USA.

Here is our area, National Food Day is being celebrated on October 24th.

Sweetwater Organic Community Farm is partnering up with Whole Foods Market to have a special events for National Food Day.

According to their website, Sweetwater Organic Community Farm is set up as a non-profit community-supported urban organic farm and environmental education center.
They have an excellent Vision, Mission Statement, and Values.
Sweetwater Organic Community Farm really reaches out into the community and provides wonderful educational experiences for all.
Plus, they grow and sell wonderful organic produce.
There is a very good chance that our family project will involve something related to Sweetwater Organic Community Farm, so if we do, will share with you in the future about our visit there and the project we chose to do.

We love Whole Foods Market, although we really wish that they would build one closer to us!

We are glad that both Whole Foods Market and Sweetwater Organic Community Farm are both working in conjunction with a project for National Food Day. We can't wait to find out more about their project!

If you are doing something, do you plan to integrate something around this theme of Food into your weekend plans with your family or are you planning on doing something in your classrooms related to this theme?

Please feel free to share a link to your blog posts related to Blog Action Day, World Food Day, or National Food Day in the comments section of this post.

After we do some brainstorming and planning as a family, and after we do our family project, will do a follow-up of what we decided to do to look at the issues surrounding Food.

Would love to hear what all of you are planning to do for Blog Action Day, World Food Day, and National Food Day!

Adding the BrainPOP Daily Movie to My Blog for All of You to See!

Hello Readers!
Wanted to share with you the BrainPOP Daily Featured Movie, as it is something that both Little Bro and Big Bro really enjoy watching.  The BrainPOP app on my iPhone has been so handy to have them watch the Daily Featured Movie. Each one is interesting and informative. Both of my boys look forward to seeing the Daily Featured Movie, before we start our morning work, as well as while we travel. Hope that you will like watching the Daily Featured Movie too!
Enjoy!

 

 
For this week, the BrainPOP Daily Featured Movie will be embedded in this post.

A big THANKS to BrainPOP and its creators! 

In the future, might move things around a bit and will feature the BrainPOP Daily Featured Movie on my blog to the right of my regularly featured posts.

The BrainPOP Daily Featured Movie is free and is available for viewing directly from the BrainPOP website for viewing on your computer or your iPhone.
To view it on your iPhone, simply download the app from the App Store.
To view it from the BrainPOP website, go to their website and select Daily Featured Movie. 
To get BrainPOP for your website or blog, you need to contact the company and request that they send you the code to embed it.

Since we were traveling quite a bit over the last few weeks, it was great to be able to have them watch the daily video as we were on the road traveling.

The free movies are factual in nature, focus on one topic at a time, and are well done.
For example, movies this week have included Eleanor Roosevelt, Carbon Dating, and Maya Civilization...


Such a wealth and breadth of topics...

According to the BrainPOP website, it is geared to grades 4 and up.
There is also a BrainPOP Jr. for grades K-3.



We signed up for a free trial of BrainPOP and will have to check if that gives us access to BrainPOP Jr. as well.

We will need to explore this as well, but regular BrainPOP has worked out very well for us.

Do you use BrainPOP or BrainPOP Jr. with your children?
How do you like using them?
How about the foreign language versions of BrainPOP?
Anyone using those, if you would share your experiences, that would be great!  Please mention if you use French or Spanish, too. We are very curious about the foreign language versions, as it might be a neat way for the boys to do some language lessons in either target language.



Full Disclosure: 
To get this code to embed it onto my blog, I contacted BrainPOP and they sent me the embed code.