• winner joins a P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program expedition
• possibility to win $15,000 for your favorite charity that’s working in the front lines of the global water crisis
• every vote for your entry means P&G will donate a day’s worth of clean drinking water (2L) to a person in need in a developing country

The contest runs most of this month, so register your blog today and start rallying supporters to help get donated water to those in need, and join the Children’s Safe Drinking Water expedition!

Learn more about Clean Water Blogivation!

Have you signed up? If so, leave your blog URL below so we can be sure to check out your post and support you!

Andy Gibson has started a meme asking bloggers about their five-a-day to staying mentally healthy as part of the Mindapples Five-A-Day Campaign:

Mindapples is a social movement to promote individual self-management of mental wellbeing. The original “5-a-day” campaign encouraged people to take care of their physical health through simple daily activities, and we want to do the same thing for mental health. We aim to create a stigma-free public debate about mental wellbeing, simply by asking everybody the question: “What’s your five-a-day?”

So, what are my top five things to do every day, or every week to stay mentally healthy?

1. Walking away from the computer: as much as I love the interwebs and all my connections there, life is only complete if I take care of the rest of the world and connections offline.
2. Talking about subjects other than my field of work: it’s true! I really do have conversations outside of nonprofit organizations and social media   It helps to have friends and a partner working in many different fields.
3. Listening to people who disagree with me: this includes reading books or news or some healthy debate.  I feel like talking with people who have a different view point only helps me better understand their point of view but also helps me better understand my own.
4. Finding new music: both my husband and I love music, whether it’s old, new, on a CD, last.fm, or a live show.  If you have some recommendations, let me know!
5. Game nights: as much as we love music, we love game nights with lots of friends.  Anything and everything, from pictionary, scrabble, 25 Words or Less, Carcossonne or Settlers of Katan.  It’s great to use some of the normally un-tapped parts of the brain.

You can share your five-a-day with Mindapples here!

Andy asked that we keep this meme going by tagging five people to share their five-a-day, so look who’s next:

• Britt Bravo
• Beth Kanter
• Dave Briggs
• Steve Bridger
• David Wilcox

You’re invited, too!  Blog about your five-a-day and share your answers with Mindapples!

I browse through the many projects on the DonorsChoose.org website, take the time to select ones I think you all would like to support (as I explained in an earlier post, I’m selecting projects that focus on technology in the classroom), and add them to the challenge page.  But, by the time I come to blog about the challenge or encourage donations about a specific project added to the list, they are already funded!  This is great news, that so many projects are successfully reaching their funding goals, but it does make it difficult to inspire donations from readers!

The Bloggers Challenge widget is in my sidebar, so that readers who come to the site, any time, can see the challenge information and participate.  But, it isn’t very compelling to donate any amount of money when the highlighted project is fully funded already.

I have edited, refreshed, and selected new projects for the challenge many times this month, but the same thing keeps happening.  Now, I’m certainly not mad or frustrated.  Quite the opposite – I’m thrilled to know that so many projects I found insteresting and deserving of the spotlight have been funded!  That’s the goal of the challenge, right?

Here’s my question, and I do hope you’ll weigh in: How could I do a better job in the future of 1. inspiring you to participate and 2. keeping up with the ferocious turn over of funded projects?

I’d really love to hear your thoughts!  And, if you have a minute and five dollars, here’s a great project that you can help support!

I teach kindergarten in a low income neighborhood. My students do not have a lot of parental support at home. I have to provide for all their education needs.

I am currently allowing my students to use my big CD player to listen to books on CD. The problem with that is the whole class has to listen to the book being read. It becomes very distracting for some and the noise level makes it difficult for me to work with small groups. Therefore we are not able to listen to the books very often. Listening is a important part of reading instruction. It allows students to follow along and develop word recognition and fluency.

Being able to provide my students with a kid friendly CD player and headphones would allow them to listen to books independently. The headphones would allow for a quieter classroom which would be appreciated by all.

By supporting this proposal you are providing my students with a kid friendly CD player and headphones. You are also helping my students develop fluency and the word recognition that is important in learning to read.

My students need a CD player and 4 headphones to use in the listening center. The cost of this proposal is $160, which includes shipping for any materials requested and fullfilment.

Help support the Bloggers Challenge and this great project!

Thanks so much for your ideas, thoughts, and participation!