December 5, 2008

 Laura:

Today I am grateful for Nina’s laugh and smile.

Nina has always cheered me up, especially with her laugh. Her laugh is really small, but it is really nice to hear. For some reason, it always make me feel warm and smile. When she laughs it’s kind of like cold medicine when you have a REALLY bad cold and like music after a deaf person becomes able to hear.

Her smile is really refreshing too. Nina’s smile is like when you finally get to see that pretty night blooming flower come out. I can’t stand it when she is unhappy. I like to see her smile, it is a pink blossom of light into a dark spooky room, it always will show.

So today, because Nina means so much to me, I am going to play doll house with her when I’m done tweeting and blogging for today because I know that she really wants to and I want to give the gift of happiness to he too.

 

Nina:

Today I am thankful for my friends.Today I helped one of them do the baseline for hot cross buns on recorder.

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The 2008 Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference Challenge

Happy December 1st! Today marks exactly one year of making a difference and a year that 25 Days to Make a Difference has been around! YAY!  I owe a HUGE THANK YOU to the people that have been through this year with me and have helped me so much. There are really way too many adults and kids and families to name. So THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!

This year, I’ve decided that I will do a good deed every day. I invited my younger sister Nina to help. She does a lot of good deeds, but last year, her keyboarding skills made it hard for her to blog about them. Now, she is really excited to post here this month. I’m excited too! Nina rocks.

Please think about doing small things to make a difference every day for the next twenty five days too. Leave a comment here or blog about what you do. The person or family who makes the most difference by December 25th will win a donation to the charity they choose. What’s more important is that people will get to read about all the great things other people do.

This year, we won’t be donating money to charities though. We really like focusing on service work more. So, Nina and I will be donating a month of service work and fundraising to the charity of my winner’s choice. We will also be tweeting about what we are thankful for every day this month. If you’d like, you can follow Nina and I on Twitter at @twentyfivedays. You can tweet about what you are grateful for every day too or what you are doing to make a small difference.

If you are a student, teacher, or school who would like to join in this fun, please consider joining Working Together 2 Make a Difference. This is a ning where classes can show what they are doing to make a difference. It would be really rewarding to see lots of schools doing good deeds and sharing it there. It could inspire other people too!

Today Nina is Thankful For:

My friend Emily. Emily is really nice to everyone. She cheers everyone up, especially me. Emily was in my kindergarten class. Now she is in third grade with me. I see her make lots of people happy every day. I tried to do a good deed today by helping Emily.

Today Laura is Thankful For:

Nina. She is really smart. Today, I helped her with her homework, and this made me feel glad. It makes me feel good that I can help her with something, especially math!

What are you thankful for today and how did you or someone else you know make a difference? Leave a comment and we will start keeping track of all the good things that happen in the next twenty five days.

Thank You Depew Middle School!

Yesterday, I presented to five different classes of seventh graders. At first, I was really nervous but as I kept going, I got better and warmed up to the students. I learned SO MUCH. After the first class I taught, I thought about how to make my teaching better. My mom and Mrs. VanEtten said that all good teachers do this every day. I really enjoyed teaching, but at the end of the day I was exhausted! I didn’t know until now how much work teaching is!

Mrs. VanEtten’s students are starting a research project. They are going to research ways to make a difference and then blog about it on their classroom blog. I think that this would be really fun to do, especially because lots of the kids are really interested in helping out and making the world a better place. They shared a lot of great ideas with me, and many of them have already done great service work. It was really inspiring for me to listen to them share the sorts of things they are doing or want to do.

I planned an activity where we all brainstormed what it meant to be a good citizen. Then, we talked about what a good digital citizen is. When we first started that activity, I showed this movie, which is funny. It told us how to stay safe on the internet, which is good, but I wanted to talk about digital citizenship, which is different. Everyone was telling me what NOT to do online, but then I encouraged them to tell me what we CAN do to be a good digital citizen. We know we SHOULDN’T spread rumors about people online in chatrooms or post personal information about ourselves, but do we ever think about what we SHOULD do?

Yesterday, I shared my idea that when we create safe places online where kids can learn together and accomplish things, we make the internet a better place. Mrs. VanEtten’s seventh graders were great to work with because they understand this and they are going to start trying too. They will blogging as they do their research paper. I used this Common Craft video to begin talking about blogging, and I got to share what I”m doing here too. I’m making some new friends there, and this is great.  Please visit their blog and leave them some comments if you haven’t already!

A Book Drive for My Library

Throughout the month of July, I have not kept up with my blog because I have been doing some really cool things during my summer break. I made fliers for the book drive a while ago. A friend and I passed half of them to half of my street and I did the other half with my little sister, Nina.

I am very excited about this, and I am so excited I can’t stop looking for books to donate. What is more exciting than that is that I have already received some calls from other people saying that they have books for me.

A neighbor from two blocks over already gave me seven books, and I will be getting ten more today! That means I have 43 books in all! Also, my dad is going to find more books, and maybe I could get my sister to donate some of hers.

Also, Miss Theresa Gray told my mom about a site called Shelfari. It’s a very cool site where you can shaer your favorite books and even write reviews. Almost everyone in my family has joined. This is a link to my Shelfari page. I hope you will read, donate books, and join Shelfari too!

A New Month, A New Charity!

The first time I walked into my Public Library, I was really excited. They always have great displays outside. I could already smell the crisp paper inside each and every book, old or new.

When I first walked in, I could see books that were recommended inside a bin. I could see the check out register.

As I ventured to the kid’s section of the library, I saw people looking for movies, on the libraries computers and studying. Then I knew that I had hit the jackpot, BOOKS GALORE!

The whole back end of the Library was kids books. magazines, picture books, videos, tape books, chapter books and more. About every type of book you could think of was there.  Eventually, this became one of my favorite places to be.

Yesterday I called the library to ask if they take book donations. As many of you know, many libraries are in need of books or are underfunded. So, because I think that my library is really great, I want to turn my library into my charitiy for this month.

I think that it would be really cool if I started a book drive. For this month, I am going to turn my book drive into a neighborhood book drive. What I will do is make fliers requesting book donations and tommorrow I am going to distribute them on my neighboring streets. Later on, I will collect books with my sister using my wagon. Then, I’m going to donate them to my public library! If you know me and have books to donate, please let me know! You can also donate them to you OWN library–just call to see if they accept donations!

The person who donates the most books this month will win a twenty dollar donation to the charity of his or her choice! Please email me or leave a comment to let me know what you do to help libraries!

Bake Sales and Lemonade Sales and Badges! Oh My!

A few days ago, Mr. Morris from Wetpaint asked me to think about helping the China Earthquake Relief Fund. This will help rebuild schools in China that were destroyed in the earthquake. The people working for the China Earthquake Relief Fund want to raise $50,000.00 so they can build safe schools for children in China.

So, this evening, at dinner, my mom dad and I talked about what I could do to raise money for this. I thought about doing a bake sale. My mom thought it might be a good idea to try to start a global bake sale or lemonade sale. On July 14, I will be having a huge bake sale and lemonade sale in my yard. We have a block sale that day, and all of the money I raise at my bake/lemonade sale will go to the China Earthquake Relief Fund. If YOU help out, we could raise even more money to donate together. You can participate as an individual, a family, or a classroom or school even. All you need to do is have a sale on your own and donate the money directly to the China Earthquake Relief Fund. I can’t accept any money from anyone myself, but you can send it right to them!

My dad thought about making badges for everyone who participates. If YOU decide to do a bake or lemonade sale to raise money to donate to the China Earthquake Relief fund in the coming months, you will receive a blog badge from me to put on your blog, if you have one. You will also win a magnetic badge too. And if you want, I will even Skype with classes to thank them. Magnetic badges will be sent in the mail. I am looking forward to making all of these. It’s going to be fun! In the future, I hope to support more global causes and to give away different badges for every cause I choose.

I really hope that some different people from all around the world will participate in this global bake sale for the China Earthquake Relief Fund. I hope YOU take on this challange! And if you aren’t able to bake or sell lemonade you could spread the word about this contest. Please consider blogging about it, using Twitter to write about it, or asking someone you know to take part.

DON’T FORGET TO LET ME KNOW IF YOU PARTICIPATE! I WILL SEND YOUR BADGES THROUGH EMAIL AND THE REGULAR MAIL!

And if anyone else has ideas to encourage people to participate, please blog about them too or let me know and I’ll spread the word!

  

Reflecting On the WNY-PLP

A little while ago, I was asked to present at the WNY-PLP celebration. Mr. Richardson and Ms. Nussbaum Beach were here to work with teachers who are using things like blogs in their classrooms. It was a really big honor to be asked to do this!

I learned a lot by giving this presentation too.

I met a lot of people who are interested in technology and who teach with it in their classrooms. Before I presented, my mom and I did an unconference, and I met with people who were interested in learning more about my blog. In class, sometimes, my teacher asks us to read and use post-its to record what we are thinking about, like our connections. The unconference was sort of like having a book talk and sharing all of our thoughts.

There was also a separate room where school teams were showing off how they use technology in their curriculums. People were talking in groups and it was really loud in there because everyone was so excited and talking all about what they were doing! It was really cool to see TEACHERS being students. I’ve never seen this before.

Last night, my mom showed me the book that Mr. Richardson wrote, and the cover is exactly like his blog. It looks the same. I thought it was really cool, and it makes me wonder how they did that.

Giving my presentation helped me organize all of my thoughts about blogging and everything we’ve been able to do–my readers and me–for the charities we help. I never really spent much time doing this. It was both a great opportunity and a good chance for me to think about setting some new goals too.

 

Going Global

Over the last few days, many things have been happening! Last week, I presented at the WNY-PLP. I met a lot of teachers and school administrators who are using blogs in classrooms with their students. I also got to see some great things that other schools are doing. I have a lot of pictures from that day, and I even videotaped a post about it, which I plan to put up tomorrow.

This weekend, I heard from Jenny Luca and her class in Australia. I will be skyping them next week and I am really excited. My mom and Ms. Luca were thinking about having her class team up with me and some other classes to support a global cause during their next school term and I think that this is a really cool idea! I will talk with them about this over the next few weeks to learn more. Plus, my Aunt will be in Melbourne over the summer, so I will get to send Ms. Luca’s class some things from America. This is really cool.

Today, I also got an email from Troy Morris who works for Wetpaint. I don’t use wikis yet, but my mom said that Ms. Gray uses Wetpaint wikis a lot. She showed me hers, and it is really cool. Mr. Morris asked me to think about helping out the China Earthquake Relief Fund. This is an excellent cause. It is something that a small group of people started, so it fits right in with the sorts of charities that I like to support. These people are trying to raise money to rebuild schools that were ruined in the earthquake. I will be writing much more about this and doing what I can do support this fund here in Buffalo. Does anyone want to help me? I really need some help, and I could use some ideas about how to organize something here to help them.

Also, I wanted to tell you about something that a group of teachers are doing here this summer. Mr. Meader works with my mom sometimes, and he is a part of Buffalo for Africa. I wish that I was old enough to go to his summer institute, which is at Frontier High School. This is a good example of how we can make a difference for people all over the world. Please think about visiting his site!

Thank You Kelly Genet!

A few days ago, wile I was at school, my mom and sister went to get bottles from Kelly Genet in Grand Island. She donated $10.00 in bottles! I am going to donate the money from the bottles to Suzanne’s Ride for Roswell. She is doing the Ride for Roswell in memory of my Grandpa Stockman.

We are also going to support Suzeanne in the month of June because my block sale is on June 14. My mom, dad and I have started getting ready for the block sale, and if you live locally, we hope to see you there!

Later on today, I will be doing another blog post with a special guest. Together, we will talk about who made the most difference this month, and I’ll talk about the WNY PLP presentation that Mr. Will Richardson and Ms. Sheryl Nussbaum Beach invited me to do, which was awesome.

Thank You Skype!!!

This week I got a webcam in the mail from SKYPE. My webcam is awesome! THANK YOU SKYPE!!!

So today I want to write down some things about how I can use my webcam to make a difference.

1. I can do webchats with classrooms about small ways to make a difference
2. I can post a video on Artsnacks which is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time
3. Spread awarness on the charity of the month by announcing it on my blog
4. Announce  the winners of blog contests
5. Monthly interviews with charity directors in skype. I like to interview the people who I work with during the month sometimes. My webcam will help me do this and see them at the same time!

 If you have any more ideas about what I can do to make a difference with SKYPE and my webcam tell me by leaving a comment!

Skype News!!!

Today, while I was super bored (my little sister is at a birthday party) and leafing through an old crafts book, my mom opened my 25 Days e mail and guess what? I got an email message from Sara Schoenborn. She works for SKYPE !

HER TEAM HAS DECIDED TO DONATE A WEB CAMERA TO ME SO THAT I CAN SEE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SKYPEING ME! I AM LITERALLY JUMPING UP AND DOWN AND DANCING AROUND MY COMPUTER WHILE I WRITE!!!!!!!! SO AS YOU CAN READ I AM REALLY HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My mom just emailed Mrs. Hernandez at 17 Chances to Help to see if she would like to Skype with me again. Is anyone else out there interested in doing this? I really enjoy blogging and Skyping about blogging and ways that kids can make a difference. This is really cool.

Skype Chat With The Bloggers of 17 Chances to Help

 

The first thing I would like to write about today (or tonight) is my Skype chat with the bloggers at 17 chances to Make a Difference. Mrs. Hernandez invited me to be interviewed by her class. They were the same age as I am.

I thought that everyone was really nice. I was really excited to do this chat, and I am excited for the next skype chat I will have. Mrs. Hernandez said we might be able to Skype again. I felt bad because I was able to see the class but they couldn’t see me. They had a webcam, but we don’t have one yet. I’m hoping that next time we will.

I thought that the questions and anwsers they gave me were really different from anybody else’s. I think that the younger you are the more different your questions are because most adults ask the same things of me, but kids have different questions for kids. Mabey that’s just how I feel.

The kids from 17 Chances to Help asked me really great questions like what kind of music I like. They also said that I have an accent, because they are from Florida, and I am from New York, which was really funny.

I hope that I will get to talk with them again. I also hope you will visit their site because they are blogging about making a difference too!

Being a Cheerful Giver

 

Today I finally returned my pop bottles and pennies/loose change! I earned enough money to buy 12 gift bags!!! I was really excited about this! I will be donating the gift bags to Compass House on behalf of Cheerful Givers! I hope that the gift bags I made will make more kid’s birthdays happier and brighter, I know that I had fun shopping for them. This would make a great charity project for a group like the Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts. If you ever want to learn about how to support Cheerful Givers, just email me!

 

Thank You Laura!

Today, as I walked into Tim Horton’s, I saw a long line ahead of my mom and I. Almost all of the tables were taken up. I was relieved because Laura Rumschik (the interviewer who I was meeting from NeXt) picked us out of a big crowd.

Laura was really cool. She had a really pleasant smile and her voice was soft. Talking with her was relaxing. We sat at a table next to a group of ladies and a messy seat. Laura asked different kinds of questions that other reporters never asked me before. It was cool to know that she really took some time looking at my blog. Laura already knew about Compass House and I thought that that was really impressive. Another great thing I noticed about Laura was that she was younger and that made me relax even more.I’m not really crazy about being interviewed. It makes me really nervous, usually. But Laura was great to talk to because she is only a little older than me. Laura is also a real Published Writer. She writes for the Buffalo News as a NeXt reporter!

At the end of our interview, she even made a donation for Suneel’s Light. I was really surprised by this, too. It was great and nice of her! THANK YOU LAURA!!! =)   

Please Vote for Me!

This winter, Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference was nominated for a Blogger’s Choice Award, and a lot of nice people have voted for me. I’m in first place for best charity blog right now! If you haven’t voted for me, would you please take a minute to create a free account here and vote for me? It only takes one minute. Thank you!