"Declare your Interdependence"
It's Geography Awareness Week!!
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."
-John Muir, 1911
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| Photo: Yann-Arthus Bertrand, "The Earth from Above" |
Hosted by National Geographic, Geography Awareness Week takes place every third week in November. This years theme, Declare your Interdependence, is to raise awareness about our interconnectedness to the rest of the world through everyday decisions that we make such as what to buy and what to eat.
Among the activities that you can do with your family is the Global Closet Calculator. It is a virtual interactive game in which you look at some of the items in your closet and learn how you are interconnected to other areas of the world through these items. The program generates your own personal global footprint map.
In the second part of the game, geared more towards middle school age and up, you learn about how simple objects affect a lot of people in many different ways and are asked to use critical thinking skills to make decisions about the products.
This year's poster breaks down the manufacturing of a pencil. It shows a map of the globe with a key showing the areas of the world where all the different parts of a pencil come from. It also includes a list of ideas for further engaging kids and students. Here are just some of the ideas plus some of our own:
1. Put up a map of the world in your kitchen and have your kids mark the location of where all the ingredients came from to cook tonight's dinner.
Extension/Challenge: Do this over the week and try and bring the points closer to home with each meal. For your last meal, try and only use ingredients from a 200 mile radius, or 100, or 50 if you're really good! It's harder than you think, i.e. salt. This website has some helpful tips and foods in season for each state: http://www.simplesteps.org/eat-local
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| Source: http://www.thesecondlunch.com/2009/08/eating-seasonally-and-locally/ |
2. Who depends on you? Make a poster of all the plants, animals, and people that depend on you to be fed, watered, or just loved!
Extension: Make a poster of all the plants, animals, and people that you depend on! Do this at the beginning of the week and then again at the end of the week after you have explored the Global Closet Calculator and have expanded your perception of who you depend on. Compare the two posters.
3. "Explore your own backyard! Take pictures of different interactions between organisms. For example: a predator-prey relationship, a producer-consumer relationship, a mutualistic relationship, a decomposer, and a commensal relationship. If you don't know what these are, read about them at
4. Explore your river basin. All life depends on water. Discover where your water comes from and where it goes, and how our daily choices impact water quality. 
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