Youth Tobacco Prevention

This free 55-minute video about smoking is a mail-in offer. Visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage for the address as well as free d/l in pdf teacher’s guide and facilitator’s guide.

The Dark Side of Freebies

How to put an end to junk mail, spam and telemarketers

Too often I find myself putting my ‘real email’ (one that I use daily) onto the freebie email forms. This means I just put myself at risk for spam and junk mail. Some forms request a phone number as well. Depending on how much I would like a certain freebie, I may or may not enter the information.

There are a few ways to help protect yourself from the influx of junk.

1. Email. Set up an email account (use a free service like hotmail or yahoo) to use only for filling out freebie forms.

2. Telemarketers. Sign up at the National Do Not Call List or tell the telemarketers to have your number removed from the telemarketers system.

You must say “Please remove me from your calling list” or they legally don’t have to. If you just say “Don’t ever call here” they can still leave your number in the system. You can tell them “I am noting the time and date of this call” just as extra assurance that they know that you know that your name and number must be removed.

The national do not call registry is located at: https://www.donotcall.gov/default.aspx

3. Junkmail. Why not mail it back to them as long as they’re paying the postage. Save those postage-paid return envelopes. Opt out of junk mail: http://opt-out.cdt.org/

Online Artsy Fun

Mr Picassohead! This is cute. You can drag objects to create your own abstract painting. Here’s mine http://www.mrpicassohead.com/canvas.html?id=822a231

For the Love of Libraries

The library is a great free resource! The library in my old town has a book cart that has used books they want to sell — for cheap! I’ve got some great educational books for 25-cents! We’ve found some of those ‘New True Books’ that tell about for example ‘The Hopi Indians’, etc, that my kid will use.

One of the best buys I got at the library was book-on-tape: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn which comes in a video-tape case type of thing, has around 4 tapes, I believe it’s the unabridged version, for 50-cents! The cost of it brand-new I think would be over $20!

Library book sales are the best! I’ve been to the sales at my local library and my first experience with them was amazing. I did not realize the sale was going on and when we got there it was going to be over in about one hour. It was also the last day so the library had the prices $5/bag (they used the brown paper grocery bags). Because we got there so late, I actually got $5/car! I ended up with six computer paper boxes and several grocery bags full of books - and the library wanted me to take more! They really tried to get me to take their romance novels (ugh!), which I would have taken directly to a used book store to use for store credit :). No more room. I got some American Heritage encyclopedia style books and quite a few other sets of encyclopedias. My kid can use them for projects and cut them completely apart and I certainly will not mind. My parents, when my sister and I were young, bought the Encyclopedia Britannica set which cost them quite a bit of money. The pages were thin and I was so afraid I would tear them just turning a page. I am glad I paid only pennies per book so my kid can enjoy them! Because of our adventure that day at the library, they took my name and phone number to call me when they have another sale. They welcome us when they see us come in, ‘here’s our homeschoolers’ LOL!

The Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List

Deborah Markus of Secular Homeschooling Magazine must have been reading my mind when she wrote The Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List. I wish she would put it on a t-shirt! To read the full article, visit http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/001/bitter_homeschooler.html.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• 2 Learn what the words “socialize” and “socialization” mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you’re talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we’ve got a decent grasp of both concepts.

• 7 We don’t look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they’re in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we’re doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.

• 13 Stop assuming that because the word “home” is right there in “homeschool,” we never leave the house. We’re the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it’s crowded and icky.

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A Prayer For Children

A Prayer For Children by Ina Hughs

We pray for the children who sneak Popsicles before supper, who erase holes in math workbooks, who can never find their shoes. And we pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers, who never “counted potatoes,” who never go to the circus, who live in an X-rated world.

We pray for children who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money. And we pray for those who never get dessert, who have no safe blanket to drag behind them, who watch their parents watch them die, who can’t find any bread to steal, who don’t have any rooms to clean up, whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser, whose monsters are real.

We pray for children who spend all their allowance before Tuesday, who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food, who like ghost stories, who shove dirty clothes under the bed, who never rinse out the tub, who get visits from the tooth fairy, who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool, who squirm in church and scream in the phone, whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray for those whose nightmares come in the daytime, who will eat anything, who have never seen a dentist, who aren’t spoiled by anybody, who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep, who live and move, but have no being. We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must, who we never give up on and for those who don’t get a second chance. For those we smother and…for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.

Calculate Your Carbon and Cash Savings

The Stop Global Warming calculator shows you how much carbon dioxide you can prevent from being released into the atmosphere and how much money you can save by making some small changes in your daily life. It’ll promote action, awareness and empowerment by showing you that one person can make a difference and help stop global warming.

General Dining Etiquette

Do not talk with your mouth full. I’ve had meals with people who constantly talk while they eat. After that first time, I try to position myself at the dining table away from them. It’s not that the person is bad, it’s their dining habits that I won’t deal with. I’d rather eat the food on my plate - not what came flying out of someone else’s mouth while they were talking with their mouth full.
Did you know that the point of etiquette rules is to make you feel comfortable, not uncomfortable? The idea is that if there are standards that people abide by, then you can have confidence that you are behaving “appropriately.” It takes the guesswork out of public behavior. I was blessed to have parents who taught me dining etiquette, but many people are not so fortunate.
However, there simply isn’t time in the day to set aside a separate amount for eating and for talking. By combining the two activities, an incredible amount of time can be saved. Also, none of your companions will ever need to ask what you had for lunch again. They will know, because they can see. Please speak with your mouth full is a tongue-in-cheek article of the benefits of mid-masticational interaction.

Randomness

Snack Time & Wrapper Purses

What do you bring for kids for a snack when you are trying to switch to vegetarian? I’d just like for us to eat healthier and rid the toxins from our bodies. We tried the Honest Kids juice at Costco - it has a much “cleaner” juice taste than those other juice bags. http://www.honesttea.com/products/kids/ Plus you can recycle the juice bags which will be made into purses. I think it’ll look like those gum wrappers I used to fold in elementary school. Here’s a blog showing how to make a purse with candy wrappers and chip bags. http://www.candywrapperpurse.blogspot.com/ Even where I like to get my coffee from makes purses & clutches from coffee bag wrappers http://www.greenmountaincoffee.com/prdNonCoffee.aspx?Name=Candy-Wrapper-Purse.