Vocabulary Building and World Hunger?

Are you wondering about the connection between vocabulary building and world hunger? Interestingly enough, I came across this great resource! Whether you are a teacher, retired, business person, construction worker, or stay-at-home mom, working with words is a great way to keep your brain active and engaged.

I love it when I find a site where I can have fun, learn and also do something good for the world, and that's just what I found at www.freerice.com. With freerice.com you play a game to improve your vocabulary. For every word you get right, 20 grains of rice are donated to hungry people through the UN World Food Program! If you're online playing games anyway, you might as well play this one. You'll learn some new words, and help feed some people in need at the same time!

FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com. To learn more about the world hunger problem, and the solutions they have in place to help, visit their site.

FreeRice.com

If you happen to be a teacher reading this, you might consider having students keep track of how many grains of rice they can earn. Then, in the FAQ section of the site, it tells you how much rice (in grams) it takes to feed one person, and how many grains of rice are in a gram. So, while learning vocabulary (and they aren't easy words...sorry lower el teachers..) your students could keep track and graph how many people in the world they are helping.

So, try it out! See how many pieces of rice you can earn. I played until I earned 1,000 pieces of rice. And, I thought that I had a pretty healthy vocabulary, yet, I found I have plenty of room for improvement!
Kathy Cothran
"The Original Gadget Girl"
http://theoriginalgadgetgirl.com