I've seen kids in South Africa pushing wire cars that look as though they've been made from coat hangers. And then there are those intricate kites flown in Asia and the Origami swans children float on ponds. When I learned how maple syrup is made by reading the prize-winning essay written by a young student, I realized kids around the world could learn a lot from each other by exchanging how-to information.
Maybe you read about a student who made a clock out of a potato. How do you do that? Or how do you make a simple robot or put together a 1000-piece puzzle? How do you use berries to make a natural dye?
Sure, it is possible to find answers to some of these questions from anonymous sources on the Internet, but, as a global citizen, the experience of learning how to do something new from a person in another country is much more interesting and fun. Some young people could describe how they made a connection with kids in other countries through YouTube, ePals (See the earlier post, "Getting to Know You."), or the Maker Movement (See the post, "I Made This Myself.").
In case you're interested in making maple syrup, here's what I learned from that young man in Waupaca, Wisconsin, USA. Three weeks before spring, find a maple tree which is at least 10 inches in diameter. After drilling a hole 2 inches deep, you insert a spike and hang a bucket on it to collect sap. Eventually you take the bucket to a sugar shack, where the sap is boiled down over a very hot wood fire. I takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.
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