Frog Mom Writes For The National Geographic Education Blog

Last week was Geography Awareness Week and during that week, the National Geographic Education website organizes a blog-a-thon, featuring a different blog post on the importance of geography each day. The contributions included pieces on Rhode Island maps, the great nature sale, a trip to Mumbai, organic farming, being a geography major and my piece on marine conservation.

As an outdoors blogger and a nature lover, I love that the National Geographic does so much so that children know their world better. The blog-a-thon seemed like a perfect place to write about something else. Inspired, I wrote expressing my interest in the blog-a-thon and lucky me, they said yes! I had two days to turn in a piece on the importance of geography. A tall order considering I was like a child in a candy store – where should I start?

There were so many topics I wanted to write about – orientation in the wild, understanding how habitats are related, animal tracking and local wildlife, the water cycle where you live, creating an outdoors bingo. Geography is such a vast discipline that pretty much anything nature- or planet-related could fall in the right cracks with the right words. To narrow my vision, I popped over to Facebook and polled my friends. Three themes clicked with people – teaching children about planet stewardship, understanding how habitats are connected and the importance of water.

Wrapping my mind around those, I wrote on the importance of marine conservation, a topic close to my island girl heart. You see, I grew up on a remote island in the South Pacific. As an island child, I went to the beach every single afternoon after school with my mom and my brothers. Every weekend, we hopped on the family zodiac boat to a coral island for a swim and a picnic. With my brothers, we snorkeled around coral reefs, swam all day and dove for starfish. Back then, I took everything for granted – seashells, starfish, clear water, thriving coral reefs. Now, I know better and our oceans need our help. The ocean needs everybody’s help, especially the little ones’. Here is Why Children Need to Care About The Ocean.

Happy reading and love the ocean, my friends!