Our "World Block Party," and how to organize your own

Our family loves studying other cultures, times, and people. This past Earth Day I wanted to give my own kids the "big picture" of those aspects of the world right now. So I organized a "World Block Party."

Claiming I organized it all by my distracted little self is quite a stretch. In reality, I pulled moms from our Culture Club and Science Club to help out. Really, they MADE the event.

Anyway, here is what I wrote about it, after the fact, hoping to make the paper. (It didn't... but my blog is just as good, right!?)

     "Nearly 150 people came together for the World Block Party held at the Whittier Center on Monday at 11am. The event, held on Earth Day, featured games and activities highlighting the demographics of the world's population.
Steffanie Casperson, event organizer, said, "Our family enjoys learning about languages, cultures, and countries all year round. Earth Day seemed like a fun occasion to put all our learning together into a giant snap shot of sorts and see what the world is like, right now."

The World Block Party activities included international music, dancing, games, and a reenactment of the word's population as if it were a village of 100 people. Mollie Anderson of Millville checked her children out of school to attend. "I felt like we learned so much. Everyone - moms, older kids, younger kids. I felt it was a great way to enhance what they learn about in school."

Though all members of the public were invited, due to the event's scheduling, most school-aged children in attendance were homeschooled.

The World Block Party was sponsored by Utah Online School, which supports homeschooling families by providing public school materials and support, free of charge. Mindee Taylor, teacher of the students in Cache Valley enrolled in Utah Online School said, " I was excited to be a part of such a neat opportunity!  It was a  wonderful activity for kids to learn more about the world around them. " This was UOS's 9th event for local students this year. Others have included performances at the Eccles Theater, parties at the Fun Park, and touring local businesses like Macey's and Texas Roadhouse Grill.

"We were grateful to UOS for being willing to sponsor this event," Casperson said. "I've been wanting to do something like this for years, but the organizational undertaking was huge. Once we had UOS step in to sponsor, it was so easy to find other moms who wanted to help the kids learn about the world in such a physical, hands-on, and memorable way. Lots of people helped, lots came, and I think everyone had fun!""

If you missed OUR World Block Party, no sense suffering any regret! Just host your own. You will need:

10 amazing moms to help, a large venue (gymnasium or somewhere contained but with lots of space) 100 participants holding what we called "Field books" which guided them through our "fields" - education level, language, religion, etc., and any other bonuses you can add in, such as balloon coloring, international music and dancing, etc.

The idea for this event came from a book titled, "If the World Were a Village" which can be purchased here. We chose from the info there which we wanted to "act out," updated the numbers from when the book was published from info we found online, and created the books.

The best way for you to visualize how we "acted out" this village is probably just to read the script I used to move our 100 villagers through the activity. And it seems the best way to share said script with you, for you to use, is to throw it up right here, on my blog! So here you go!

Anyway, we followed this activity (it took about 30 minutes) with other games to round out the event so it could be fun for all.  We had blue balloons to color the continents of the world on. There was a money game where participants moved gold "coins" around on a table to guess the distribution of the world's wealth. On the walls were 10 flags to guess which countries they were and order them in total population of largest down. Or one could walk around and count how many cell phones, computers and cars were posted, representing how many our village of 100 people would have. We also played a slide show showing the possessions of people around the world, had international music playing, and passed out cookies.

As you might imagine, it was not a small undertaking, but giving ALL the help I got, not only was it not so bad, but so much more amazing than anything I might have been able to pull off on my own. Another great reason to homeschool: when there is fun and dynamic learning to be done, you'll never be without great ideas and help to make it happen.