Getting children interested in giving seems to foster an interest in helping that continues throughout a lifetime. Including children in parent’s charitable interests highlights parental values, informs ideas about social responsibility and explains why it’s important to help others.
It also allows a family to come together and focus on a shared goal. Both the process and the goal remain a sustainable and viable activity as children become adults and begin the process with their children.
Pandas International presents a number of exciting possibilities for parents and children to have a common vision of what it’s like to share the planet with other species and how that relationship is essential for our world to survive.
Preserving an endangered species can also bring a number of other topics into the mix: the importance of sustainable habitats; the concepts of interdependence, the web of life, carrying capacity, and ecological balance; what responsibility do individuals, states, countries and governments have to wildlife preservation; and understanding the triple bottom line of sustainable development and progress as the blueprint for our future.
Specifically, Pandas International offers opportunities for giving that range from panda adoptions to providing formula for cubs to helping replant bamboo to having birthday parties centered on raising money for pandas to a program for schools to help the Giant Panda, Pennies4Pandas.
Information about these alternatives is available on the website or by calling (303) 933-2365 or emailing info@pandasinternational.org
Curious about Pandas? Visit the sites below to have a live look at the pandas in the USA and China.
Here’s a great way to teach kids the value of giving. Kids for ColoradoGives is A fun place to discover and support charitable causes you care about.
Here’s a great way to teach kids the value of giving, either individually, or, as part of an exciting classroom project to support the black and white bears. For the older set, office mates and colleagues can also be involved in giving, and in this case, giving to the Giant Panda. Check out Charity Checks. They make it easy and fun. www.charitychecks.us
10 Fun Facts About Giant Pandas
1. The front paws of a Giant Panda are very different from other bears due to a special bone found in their wrists. Their sixth toe, an opposable thumb, is used for grasping bamboo. They use this bone in the same way humans use their thumbs, mainly for grasping food.
2. Baby Giant Pandas are born weighing around 4-6 ounces which is approximately 1/900th the size of their mothers.
3. Giant Pandas are categorized in the bear family but are the only bears which do not hibernate.
4. Wild Giant Pandas can only be found in the southern mountains of China in the Sichuan, Gansu, and Shaanxi provinces.
5. Pandas cannot store fat so they do not hibernate; therefore, they eat about 14 hours a day.
6. Latest research confirms adult Giant Pandas are much more “talkative” than we suspected and have the ability to make 11 distinct sounds.
7. There are less than 1,900 wild Giant Pandas left in the world.
8. Baby Giant Pandas are born pink, with almost no hair, and blind.
9. Giant Pandas can eat up to 40 pounds of bamboo a day.
10. Giant Pandas have lived on earth for 2-3 million years.
Coniferous Forests: Vegetation composed primarily of cone-bearing, needle-leaved, or scale-leaved evergreen trees, found in regions of the world that have long winters and moderate to high annual precipitation.
Conservation: The study of the loss of Earth’s biological diversity and the ways this loss can be prevented. Biological diversity, or biodiversity, is the variety of life either in a particular place or on the entire Earth, including its ecosystems, species, populations, and genes.
Culm: The woody, hollow aerial stems (culms) of bamboo grow in branching clusters from a thick underground stem (rhizome). The culms often form dense undergrowth that excludes other plants. Bamboo culms can attain heights ranging from 10 to 15 cm (about 4 to 6 inches) in the smallest species to more than 40 m (about 130 feet) in the largest.
Endangered: Any species of plant or animal that is threatened with extinction.
Habitat: The place where an organism or a community of organisms lives, including all living and nonliving factors or conditions of the surrounding environment. A host organism inhabited by parasites is as much a habitat as a terrestrial place such as a grove of trees or an aquatic locality such as a small pond. Microhabitat is a term for the conditions and organisms in the immediate vicinity of a plant or animal.
Hibernate: To spend the winter in a state like deep sleep
Panda’s Thumb: The elongated radial sesamoid (wrist) bone that allows the panda to grasp and manipulate bamboo. The panda is the only bear with this anatomical adaptation.
Sustainability: Relating to or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged.
Web Cam/Panda Cam: A camera used in transmitting live images over the World Wide Web.
Conversions:
1 Hectare is equal to 2.47105 Acres
1 Acre is equal to 6.o7 Mu (Chinese Acre)
1 Kilogram is equal to 2 Pounds 3.27 ounces
1 US Dollar is equal to 6.91 Yuan or RMB
