Since I was a child I was fascinated about people and places around the world. This was mail due to a gift my great-grandfather once gave me: yearly subscriptions to National Geographic Magazine. I believe the magazines started as a birthday gift for my 8th birthday. I truly owe my love of cultures, traditions, languages, and interest in travel to this. After reading and being completely in awe of the many places and people around the world, I somehow found myself to be working at a global awareness magnet school as a teacher. I believe there are no coincidences in life and this was very much meant to be.

One of the resources I love to use with my students, no matter the age or grade level, is National Geographic. Now they also have various other websites specifically for kids, travel, etc. but I find the original is always the best. It is a wonderful resource for anything science, social studies, social science, or history related in my classroom. While designing and implementing my curriculum plan about East Asia, specifically China, Japan, and South Korea, I used this website constantly to show my students real life photos of the people, places, foods, schools, environment, locale, and traditional dress of the people in each distinct region. My Kindergarteners were especially amazed at the way people dress and what they eat around the world. Although growing up in the heart of Los Angeles provides a great foundation in cultural awareness and introduces the palate to a vast variety of traditional foods from different countries, it is different to view photos of adults and children engaged in other places around the Earth.

Not only did my Kindergarten students take great pleasure in viewing photos and learning about each East Asian culture and people, they listened very carefully while I read information and articles about each related place or area of interest to them about China, Japan, and South Korea. I also found that on the version of National Geographic for Kids, it will read articles and interactive information to children in the primary grades which my students and I found both fun and exciting. After I found that they loved the National Geographic website, I also ordered the magazines and the students "read" (since they don't have the skills and abilities yet to read independently they needed some help) and treasured the magazines just as much as I did as a child. I was happy to get to share my love of history, social studies, places, and people with my Kindergarten students this year through use of this website. I highly recommend it for students of all ages and know I will be using it a greater deal for next year with my 4th graders. I know that they will be able to engage in much more independent research and use it as a wonderful informational textual resources for both social studies and science reports and projects.