by Merritt Frey, Executive Director

Like you, I am adjusting to our new reality here at Mali Rising’s U.S. office (read: my house). Because we want to contribute in our own small way, we are working on a web page with fun learning resources for both adults and children wanting to use our time at home to learn and grow. (Tomorrow we will share more about what we are doing in Mali. Here is our now-slightly out-dated blog post about this from March 18.)

It will take a few days to get that resource list up and running, so we thought we would share some initial stay-at-home resources for kids and adults here to keep you going:

• CONNECTION: Join us this Sunday at 11am mountain time for a live, video chat with our Girls Project Coordinator Hindaty. Learn about her work to get girls in Mali into school & keep them there! Appropriate for ages 10-100.
  

• CRITICAL THINKING AND RESEARCH: If you have a middle or high schooler at home, ask them to write an essay for our annual Make the Case for Caring Essay contest! We are extending the due date to midnight eastern April 30 to allow students now stuck at home to submit.
  

• PERSPECTIVE: Consider watching this great documentary — On the Way to School — on YouTube, iTunes, or AmazonPrime. Kids and adults will love this movie, but if you are homeschooling middle or high school students, consider asking them to write an essay after watching the video. You can give them different prompts for their essay. For example, you could ask them to write about: How do the trips to school in the movie compare with their own normal trip (or even their “trip” now to the dining room table) (simple compare and contrast essay)? Alternatively, you could ask them to write an essay describing in detail one of the trips in the movie (descriptive essay). Or you could ask them to write a cause and effect essay — how does your student think the students in the film’s trips to school would help or hurt their ability to learn once they arrive in the classroom? Essay too heavy? Just have a family discussion with the same kind of prompts!

Next week we’ll be sharing that page full of more ideas — from home cooking ideas from Mali to music to additional virtual events. Stay tuned and stay safe.