Thinking About World Thinking Day

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Would you believe it's been nearly a year since the release of THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY FOR CELEBRATIONS? (Pomelo Books, March 4, 2015)

Apparently some of us have been too busy celebrating to notice.

I did notice, however, that this bilingual collection of 156 holiday poems selected by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong was recently included on the 2016 list of "Notable Books for a Global Society" by the Children's Literature and Reading Special Interest Group (CL/R SIG) of the International Reading Association!  Party on!

I'm fortunate to have two of my own poems included in this fun educational resource. Last May I shared the first, "Look For the Helpers," in celebration of World Red Cross Day.  Today I'm sharing the other for World Thinking Day, this Monday.

World Thinking Day is celebrated annually on February 22nd by Girl Scouts and Girl Guides worldwide.  It's a day of international friendship— an opportunity to connect with the Girl Scout/Girl Guide sisterhood, ten million strong across 146 countries. They learn about different cultures and customs, and also discuss important issues that affect girls and young women around the globe, like lack of education or clean water.

I was a Girl Scout leader for four years until our troop disbanded due to some of the girls moving away and others changing schools. It was a wonderful, cohesive group for the time it was together, though, and one of their favorite activities was taking part in World Thinking Day. Here they are the year we chose Guyana to research and celebrate:

Girl Scout Troop 1520

Do they look like a great bunch of girls or what?

And here's my poem from THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY FOR CELEBRATIONS to commemorate the event:

Thinking About World Thinking Day
     by Michelle Heidenrich Barnes

We are Girl Scout Troop 1520:
ten girls from a family of ten million.
Around the world, we join together—
across Egyptian deserts,
the rainforests of Guyana,
and Australian bushland.
We taste Irish soda bread,
Indian dal,
and fresh coconut from Fiji.
We learn customs and crafts,
games and traditions,
and explore how we are different,
yet very much the same.
We make a friendship circle
with our sisters across borders, 
and promise each other
to make the world a better place.

As I did with World Red Cross Day, I also created a video for the occasion. It's significantly less polished than my "Look For the Helpers" video, but I recruited some scouts from my daughter's new troop to help me out, and boy, was it fun! You can watch it HERE.

Find this video and other goodies on PoetryCelebrations.com – home and party central 

for THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY FOR CELEBRATIONS.

Thank you for all the feedback and encouragement in response to last Friday's blog post!

February's DMC challenge from David Harrison is well underway. This week's featured "ditty"-inspired ditties included ones by Jone Rush MacCulloch, Janie Lazo, Jane Yolen, and Karen Eastlund. Carol Varsalona posted one this week on Beyond Literacy Link and Linda Baie has posted another today at TeacherDance. See you here next Friday for our wrap-up celebration!

And speaking of celebrations... Donna JT Smith is hosting a "Between Other Celebrations Celebration Day" over at Mainely Write.  Let me grab my party hat and I'll meet you over there for the  Poetry Friday roundup!