I just learned from a post on AL Direct that this week is Geography Awareness Week, which is especially fitting for me since I have spent the first part of this week in The Bahamas, a place I knew nearly nothing about until my friend suggested we spend a few days there.
The National Geographic Society is one of the organizations promoting Geography Awareness Week. One of the resources listed includes the National Geographic Bee, a competition open to grades 4 through 8. Registration is to be completed by the school principal, and there is a $70 registration fee. The registration deadline for the 2009 competition has been extended to December 12, 2008.
National Geographic’s web site also offers the GeoBee Challenge where ten questions from the National Geographic Bee are posted each day. It IS challenging, although I did not do as poorly as I feared I might. (As an aside, one of today’s questions had the Bahamas as an answer option.) The GeoBee Challenge might be a fun way to highlight some of the material in the 900s of your library’s collection.
Have you or your colleagues offered any library programming to feature geography? If so, we would love to read about it.