How Cartoons CAN Teach Your Kids

OK, OK, OK! Before everyone freaks out on me and I get a TON of hate mail please just bare with me for a few moments. I swear I'm not promoting Cartoon Network or Disney Channel as learning tools! As a matter of fact the only time the Peanut and Cracker Jack's watch Cartoon Network or Disney is at their grandparents house with watchful adults switching the channel if a weird show like "Uncle Grandpa" or whatever it's name is (it is seriously the name of a cartoon if you haven't heard of it yet) comes on instead of something that's relatively harmless.

I'm talking about most of the shows that you will find on public broadcasting channels. Yes, I know, it's still cartoons. Yes, I know, we don't want our children in front of the television all of the time and that outside time is more important. I believe all of these things and our children actually watch very little television. But, all three of them watch public broadcasting from time to time. All three of them watch the news with us every day. Eldest Cracker Jack has been asking questions about what the news reports for about five years now, occasionally Younger Cracker Jack will ask about something she hears if it sparks her interest, and Peanut will sometimes pipe up with "That bad man broke the law, it's good the cops got him." We switch the channel on most violent news, or if it's concerning something sexual, but other than that they need to know what's going on in the world just as much as we do. 

Whoops! Got off topic slightly for a moment there. Sorry about that. Anyways, back to the main reason I'm writing today. Television can, and will if given a chance, teach our children. It's up to us to monitor what they're watching so that we agree with what they are learning.

I absolutely love putting on Dinosaur Train for Peanut, the Cracker Jack's actually like it too, because there's a moral in each story for the most part and serious science when it comes to the information they give out about the dinosaurs. They don't "dumb it down" either they just present it in a child friendly way. They use the real name for each species of dinosaur and even sing songs that include those names. Each episode is about half an hour long with the end of it having scientific facts about dinosaurs being talked about by a real paleontologist. For those of you who have kiddos into dinos you should really let them check this out. You can also find full episodes online to watch.

Another favorite around this house is Sid the Science Kid. This show is about a preschool aged boy and his friends in preschool and was based on a preschool science curriculum called, Preschool Pathways to Science. One of the children's favorite episodes talks about decay where a pumpkin is used to show how decay happens (fall appropriate right? lol) and the decay song is really catchy. This show does follow some national standards but again you can find whole episodes online and pick and choose which ones fit with what you're teaching.

Word World is another good one for teaching sounds, sound blends, and words to younger children. The girls really really like this one and make sure to catch it at least a couple times a week. ECJ will sometimes join them even though this is not one of his favorite shows.

There's the show Wild Krats for children who are a bit older that focuses on animals. Along with several other shows that I simply cannot think of at the moment. The four I mentioned are ones that my kids watch on a semi regular basis. 

Right now there are a TON of Halloween and fall episodes for almost every show if you go to http://pbskids.org/video/ and if nothing else these are sure fun to watch though most of them have a lesson that can be learned from them.

Here is how I would incorporate Sid The Science Kid into a lesson about spiders for my children. (I chose this one because it is one we did the other day and I refuse to have a live spider to study in the house.) I began with talking about house spiders and that they are generally harmless. I printed off several factoid sheets for my 11yo son, a coloring page for Peanut, and a quick worksheet that I found for YCJ by doing some web searches the night before. While I spoke about the house spiders they all listened and Peanut colored. Then I went to the site I shared above and clicked on Sid The Science Kid: Halloween Party. The teacher on the show explained spiders a bit better than I did and made them seem less spooky. All three kiddos watched the episode, YCJ then filled out her worksheet, ECJ then journaled with the help of his factoids, and Peanut went on to watch a Curious George episode because she absolutely loves him and I'm trying to get her excited for Halloween and not think it's scary. All in all this took about an hour to do and I probably could have shaved more time off if I had simply let them watch the episode and do the papers I'd given them without my talking to them first.

The main reason I use http://pbskids.org/video/ to help teach subjects, especially science, to Peanut is because it's a fun way to introduce a new science concept without getting her stressed out. It makes it fun and that's really important to her learning style. 

Television used in moderation can be a learning tool. Cartoons in moderation can be learning tools. Used correctly these things are great.

Now time to send the kids outside to play.

School Zone or not?

Those of you who caught my (probably many posts) on our curriculum this year know that I was unable to find our usual big Mead workbook for Preschool. It's a book I had used for both the Cracker Jack's and was disappointed to not find it in the stores this year. Yes, Mead still sells them and you can buy them online but at the time I was in a time crunch. School Zone books were widely available and though I wasn't sure about the layout of them I decided to buy first one and then another that was a "combo" set and try them out, after all if I didn't like them then I could just order the Mead book online.

* Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review nor was I supplied these materials free of cost. The opinions here are my own from our experience thus far with these books.

The Pros:
There are good number of pages per each skill and letter in both books. More than what I remember Mead having. Each letter has four pages dedicated to it in the Big book and a page or two in the Combo book. These are coloring pages, tracing pages, find the letter pages, and more. It's not just about tracing the letters it's also about recognizing them when your child sees them.

This is from the Combo book.

At the end of every five letters or so there's a nice review that's a couple of pages long as well as at the end of the alphabet. This works out well for us because Peanut needs lots of review and this way when I look in her book I know which weeks will be review weeks or if I would like to do those couple of pages over the weekend with her. Really it depends on how fun the pages look.

Two of the pages to review the alphabet.

 The pages for numbers and other concepts such as bigger or smaller and "how would you feel" are bright and colorful and really grab the child's attention. There's also a review after several numbers. Peanut really likes the number pages.

The other concepts are nicely presented as well. No page in any of this book should take more than a few minutes time which is ideal for keeping a preschooler's attention. We haven't done many of these yet but at the rate she's eating the other pages up lately we just might finish faster than I thought that we would.

These are also very well priced coming in around $10 US each. We haven't used the disk except for once as Peanut prefers her Sesame Street disk and her Caillou's disks much better. We'll try it again in a week or so but really I bought the book for extra practice because it had more tracing for her letters.

The Cons:
These workbooks are not as well laid out in my opinion as the Mead workbooks. I tend to have to flip through them a lot to find what I'm looking for. Those color strips up at the top are not a color coding for topics. 

There is no real science or social studies section which I dearly miss from our beloved Mead workbooks. 

And, these don't "feel" as complete as the Mead workbooks. Though I cannot exactly place why it is so they just "feel" less complete.

All in all I am pretty satisfied with the books however. Peanut absolutely LOVES these books and is more than willing to do at least three pages each day. Now that I've gotten more comfortable with them she will often breeze through a couple of days lesson plans with these books if she's in the mood. There are also days that she'll spot something in one of them and ask to do it even if it's not on her lesson plan for that day OR if her favorite cartoon may be coming on. On an average day with three of the pages from the books scheduled along with a couple other activities she's done with her "book work" in less than an hour and doesn't need to get the wiggles out until she's done. This is a major bonus for us and the large pictures and bright colors really help with her vision issues.

I was planning on moving her officially onto Kindergarten work before the official start of Spring but just barely. At the rate she's learning and the pace she's setting for herself we may just be done within a few weeks either side of Christmas. This means I'll have to decided if we should go back to the tried and true Mead book to go along with her other curriculum or if we should get the School Zone Big Kindergarten book. If she does indeed move through this quicker than I had anticipated and retains the information then chances are that I will be purchasing more School Zone materials in the future.

You can check out what School Zone has available for the elementary school levels here or check out Mead's here both are very similar on pricing. We used Mead for over 7 years here and loved it, but we're liking School Zone right now.



Come see us again tomorrow to see how you can use television for science in early elementary grades without worry.

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5 Reasons to Limit Dye

Linking up today's post to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers for List It {Tuesday}

OK, I'll be honest. When everyone was jumping on the dye-free band wagon I was there shaking my head at the latest parenting trend. I mean, we all grew up with food dyes and we turned out OK didn't we? And then, a good friend of mine started researching it and taking dyes out of her children's food. She shared several articles and links with me. I still shrugged my shoulders and went on about my day. My kids didn't eat THAT much dye what was the big deal?

Many of you know that each of our children have different challenges that they face each day. From ADD to dyslexia and beyond... I took Eldest Cracker Jack off of his ADHD medication several years back and began teaching him coping skills. Most days he does well but some days he'd be bouncing off of the walls like an insane little monkey. After my dear friend (check her out at Learning Life with 3 Sons ) began telling me about the less-hyper behavior of her sons after the removal of dyes from their diet I began to pay more attention to what ECJ was eating and his behaviors when he ate food with dye in it. The equation ended up being: dye = more hyper days vs. no dye = less hyper days. That was enough proof for me. Not to mention the fact that for a couple of days when we had company it slipped my mind just how much cool aide the kiddos were drinking. Two whole BIG pitures of blue cool aide in less than two days! ECJ was in the bathroom physically ill for almost four days afterwards!

So... without further ado... here's our 5 reasons to limit dye in our home

1. Children are able to concentrate better with less dyes in their diet. Yup, you read that right. I said children, not just my ADHD child. I have seen an improvement in all three children's concentration since we began limiting food dyes around here. And on the days that they DO eat food dyes (yup, it happens) we have school days where I'd like to rip every hair out of my head. Needless to say we TRY not to eat food dyes at all on school days.

2. Hyperactivity lessons in proportion to the less dye you use. Do I mean that if you take food dyes completely out of your child's diet that they'll never be hyper? Nope. Sorry. Doesn't work that way. BUT all of the kiddos are LESS hyper the less dye we eat. Some days it doesn't matter their just little monkeys who look like they've eaten a six pound bag of sugar each ... but then, they're kids.

3. The FDA doesn't have a clue what the long term affects of food dye are. Yup, it's true. I don't have all the links right at the moment but if you do a search on it TONS of information on the matter pops up. There are a lot of chemicals (the thought of some of them make me ill when I realized we eat this) in food dyes and no one knows yet what affects there will be on such large consumption of them. Yes, I know we all ate food dyes when we were little and most of us are fine right now ... but there were LESS dyes in food when we were younger with less chemicals. Not to mention that there are American companies that make products for the UK and do not include dye in them for over there, but when the same product is sold here it has dye's added in! A few companies (Yoplait is one) that have heard our complaints and have gone dye free ... Activia is NOT one of them as my mother found out to her horror.

CSPI Says Food Dyes Pose Rainbow of Risks

A Naturally Colorful Life

The Color of Trouble

Food Dyes Linked to Cancer, ADHD, Allergies...

4. There are soooo many studies that link food dyes to health issues. I put just a couple links up above and I'll add one or two more below. These people state it so much better than I ever could.

Childhood ADHD

Die Food Dye

The Food Babe

5. Once we were given apples... OK, now you're going "What?!?!" But we were once given apples that whenever the children bit into the red from the skin would bleed badly into the white of the "meat" of the fruit. That's right, food dye is being sprayed onto apples (and other foods) to make them look better so you'll want to buy them. How do I know that for sure? Well, I found a simple recipe to clean fruit and tried it out. Here are the results:

Before cleaning.

After cleaning.

Cleaning the apples
with water and vinegar.

If you look into the issue it just makes sense to at least limit the amount of dye that goes into our children's bodies. We're not dye free here but we are dye limited. This means little to no cool aide is given, all fruit is washed, we pay more attention to food labels. If the kids just HAVE to have fruit snacks that are shaped like Dora then I buy them but they do not get to take as many as they want.

I'd like to be one of "those" mom's and ask you to try just one week with either going dye free or limiting your kiddos dye's and see if you notice a difference. If you do I'd love to hear from you about your experience either here in the comments or on our Facebook page.

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{{ The following is an exerpt from Learning Life ... and what she wrote about going dye free. }}

Before this past January I really never gave much thought to artificial food dyes or the effect they had on our bodies. I had heard tid bits about red 40 and yellow 5 & 6. The brighter and more colors, the more likely my kids would eat it, and they did. I chose to try dye free for a week to see if it would help with some behavioral problems I was having with my son. He had been having an increasing hard time focusing in school, almost no impulse control, extreme mood swings, and was only getting 3-5 hours of restless sleep a night (which probably contributed to his mood swings). Many of his problems were possible side effects to his ADHD medication. He was diagnosed in kindergarten (4 years ago) with ADHD and promptly put on medication. The medication worked wonders, and when it didn't then his dosage or medication was switched. However it seemed the meds have stopped working and his doctor had started talking about my son having more than ADHD going on, because he was out of ideas of what other meds to try. I had shared with Crystal some of what was going on and how I was at a lose for what to try next. I really didn't want my child diagnosed with a life altering label. She challenged me to try removing artificial food dyes for a week and to look into how food dyes effect behavior. Over the weekend, I looked into it and was first shocked then angry. There was so much research about the link between ADHD and dyes and hundreds of testimonies from parents. How could I never heard about this?! I couldn't believe there was a alternative to medication, and how could our doctor never offer this as alternative before he had me give my 6 year old pills. I decided it was worth a try, at this point I felt I had nothing to lose. That Monday school was closed due to extremely cold temperatures. I told me kids we were doing an experiment and that we weren't going to have anything that had a number in the ingredients for one week. I didn't tell them what results I was hoping to see. They helped me box up all the foods that had dyes. We went shopping to restock our cupboards and they actually had fun reading labels and finding new foods to try. We were all surprised my how much stuff has dyes. I was nervous about how they would do at school when I wasn't there to monitor what they were eating and about them feeling left out at snack time. The teachers were very supportive and had dye free alterative that I sent in. Three days into the challenge I saw the first sign of improvement! My insomniac child fell asleep only after and hour of being sent to bed and slept all the way to morning!! I was so excited, but still cautious that it may have been a fluke. The following days he continued to fall asleep easier and slept through the night. His teacher told me that he was more on track than he had been in a long time. At home little things that would have sent him into a tailspin didn't seem to phase him. The other boys had also calmed down, had more impulse control, and better ability to handle their emotions resulting in less arguing amongst them. My son's eczema had started clearing up. The changes weren't only with the kids; my migraines were gone, I had more energy. When I slipped up and had a Mt. Dew, I would get a killer headache and would be more irritable and short with the kids. Seeing the results removing dyes has made for us, we have chosen to stick with it. It didn't turn me boys into perfect little gentlemen. They still bicker and argue, the still run through my house and are loud; but they aren't completely out of control anymore. We have been dye free for just over 3 months.

I know there are many other reasons to avoid dyes, but I honestly don't know them. It helps with behavior in our house and headaches for me so we just go dye free. I have on occasion "lifted" the no dyes and my boys really don't care for the taste of dyed foods (mostly) and can feel a difference when they eat them.

Meet the Campers Mamma!!

Yup, that's right, you get to meet me! I don't talk about myself a whole lot, well, at least I don't think that I do. I do from time to time mention that I have a bit of OCD but then most parents do to some level I think. Mine kicks in during high periods of stress or when I make a schedule and it doesn't get finished or followed. I've learned to manage it a bit over the years but sometimes that doesn't mean much.



I'm thirty-three years young most days, some days it's "years old". I have a wonderful husband and beautiful children. I wasn't always a mom and wife but some days it feels like it. It seems like there's always something to do, someone interrupting, some disaster to manage, or someone to cuddle. That's my job, it's what I do, and I enjoy it ... most of the time. There are days (don't we all have them) where all I want to do is pour myself a glass of wine, sink into a bubble bath, and finish a good book while soaking to candle light and classical music. Maybe one of these days I'll do just that but right now I'm sure I'd be missing something fun or new with the kids that I'd regret not being out of the tub for. Besides, the tub we have isn't really big enough for a good soak and I'm waiting for a really really deep one to be installed in my master suit ... but the master suit is at the bottom of the to do list for the house.

I used to be quite a lot smaller than I am now, actually I looked pretty sick most of the time. When my husband met me I was a size 0! We're not saying what size I am now other than to brag a bit and say that I did drop a lot of weight and dress sizes lately and am feeling rather proud of myself. Fruits and veggies are some of my favorite foods ... along with coffee. Next spring I plan on putting a decent sized veggie garden in the side yard. It will have to be fenced in to keep deer and raccoons out, not to mention well intending doggies who want to help dig.

Being outside never used to be one of my favorite places to be. You'd find me next to a fire reading a good book (or not so good one) or finding something, anything, else to do indoors. I have natural red hair and really fair skin, the sun is not always my friend. I like to joke and say I have two colors: white and lobster red. This made camping for me a bit interesting. However, a few years ago I discovered that "tanning" (again I CAN'T tan) help psoriasis, which I have in spades. Now, I'm outside as often as I can manage it. I do usually still burn, but after two sun burns (OUCH) a year my psoriasis tends to go away for about six months which makes that worth it for me most years.

A lot of people think I'm a pretty serious person. Actually I'm a silly, goofy, clumsy, nerd who doesn't "fit in" with most groups. I'd fit right in at a Star Trek convention. Last night Star Trek the original television series was on while I was looking something up and without looking I piped up with "Spock" before my husband could flip the channel to something else. He's still mildly surprised when I do this. I'm known to occassionally pipe up with "Just cannae dae it Cap'n! We have nea enough ... (fill in the blank with whatever we're lacking at the time)". (Apparently spell check does not like it when you try to type with a Scottish accent.)

I end up in most of the same goofy pictures that the Peanut and Cracker Jack's do mostly because I want to get in on the fun. I add about a half inch to my height whenever someone asks me how tall I am and very few people know how much I weigh or what size I wear. I'm your typical 30-something mom and wife. The only thing I do differently than most women I know is that I homeschool my children. I LOVE homeschooling my children.

I'm not sure what else I can tell you about myself. My days are spent with the kiddos learning and playing. My evenings are spent either here or on Facebook. My nights are spent being cuddled by an incredible man. I am blessed with having a wonderful family as an adult and having so many of you interested in our little lives. Thank you for following us.

 If you missed it last week you can meet the hubby and his service dog here.
If you don't already like us on Facebook and you want to you can go here.


** OK, so the pictures weren't THAT embarrassing lol **

Monday's Menu Plan

OK, so I figured it out last year that if you plan your menu at least a week at a time you are not only less stressed out but there's less trips to the grocery store AND you save money. So... on top of all the other places I link and all the other things I blog about, I decided to join up with I'm an Organizing Junkie for their Menu Plan Monday Link Up. You can also check out the Menu Plan Monday main posts on their Facebook page here.

This is my first time linking up here and even though this week we don't have anything complicated or fancy in the works I do have a few new things on our menu.

Chicken Pot Pies
Saturday

Chicken Shepard Pie
Sunday

Before I begin this week's menu I just wanted to put here (there's a point just wait for it ;-) ) that on Saturday we tried making chicken pot pies for the first time home made. They turned out pretty good though a bit dry and they had more of a Shepard's pie texture ... so I changed the second pot pie into a Shepard's pie for Sunday night! We also made caramel filled apples for the first time and had them for desert Sunday and will eat the rest Monday night for desert.

Caramel filled apples -
cut them into slices

Sunday - Chicken Shepard Pie with Caramel filled apples for desert
Monday - Turkey burger sloppy Joe's and garden salad with caramel filled 
              apples for desert
Tuesday- Chicken soup (made from leftover chicken pot pie filling) with sugar
              cookies for desert
Wednesday - "something beef" day *
Thursday - Spinach Spaghetti
Friday - Garlic Butter oven baked fish, garden salad, and buttered noodles
Saturday - Leftover bonanza

And what was the point about talking about Saturday night's dinner? Well, it's a pretty simple idea really. I try to do this often. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I will take one group of ingredients and attempt to get anywhere from 2-4 meals out of them. In this case the recipe for the chicken pot pies was a new concept and I will be able to make three different things out of the filling. This will feed our family of five for at least three nights if not four. The best part? All ingredients included this whole recipe cost me less than $12 to make ... so that's about $3-$4 dollars a day!

* "Something Beef" day is always a day that I plan the night before, the only requirement is that the main course is some kind of beef. We eat a lot of poultry and fish so we need the red meat break on occasion.

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Fall Bucket List Progress Report

We started with a list of 20 items on the Fall Bucket List and we've checked off six so far! So, here's our progress report on what we've got done and what we're planning to do next.

 We got #2 checked off ... Pick apples at an apple orchard. There were tons of pictures here but I shared most of them already in a different post.

#3 was also checked off when we visited Yates Cider Mill earlier this month. I think I shared most of these already but, well, I just love splashing around pictures of these kiddos!!

 We checked off number 12 this past week when we visited the local library! This one was harder than you would think because of *gasp* those dreaded late fees!

After church today (Sunday, October 20) we did another two and got them checked off along with made a heck of a fun afternoon for the Peanut and Cracker Jacks.

 We were making caramel filled apples (number 16 from the list) first. Peanut found it a little difficult to hollow out the apple with a spoon. She tried valiantly for about twenty minutes before asking my help. We only hollowed out four apples because I'd only bought one bag of caramels. 








 Then, they each took a turn stirring the caramel on the stove top. Of course I was standing right there and had moved the handle back towards the back of the stove for the girls who needed to stand on a step stool to safely reach to stir. I was also less than two feet away and still nervous.

I think Peanut stirred for literally just long enough for me to snap the picture, she said it was too HOT. Once those caramels melt you pretty much need to get them off of the heat or they'll burn or boil and splatter ... by then the children were working on the next project so it was safe thank goodness.

We set them in the fridge to cool and set while we did the next project on the list and a couple things that we hadn't really planned on. After dinner they were able to eat one half of an apple apiece for desert while we watched "The Legend of Smurf Hollow." I thought that they were a little too sweet so next time we make them I won't be hollowing out the apples so much. Also the caramel didn't set as well as I'd hoped, next time I'll decrease the water added when you melt the caramel.

** We used Kraft Caramel squares to do this. These do not contain any dye or artificial coloring, though they do contain a few artificial flavors. However, this product also includes SOY. The brand I pictured below does not contain soy but has more ingredients in it and some chemicals to help preserve it. **

Our next item we decided to check off the list was making bird feeders (number 17). We used toilet paper tubes (thank you toilet paper tubes) which we cut in half, punched holes in, then coated with peanut butter and bird seed. We cut these in half because we're attempting to see if Fancy Bird, our parakeet, will enjoy these. If not then we'll simply hang them outside.

 You can't see it very well here but Younger Cracker Jack was really concentrating because her tongue had snuck out of her mouth again. Elder Cracker Jack decided that using a hole punch on a double layer of cardboard on a toilet paper roll really hurts your hands and is difficult to do. 

 I quickly noticed that Peanut was having issues with the sticky peanut butter on her hand and the texture of the seed mix and provided spoons to scoop and sprinkle with. I'm pretty sure that it didn't bother YCJ at all since her hands were pretty much one big ball of peanut butter by the time her bird feeders were done. I'm still not sure if ECJ ended up with more peanut butter in his belly or on his feeders but he sure had fun doing it.

Five of the finished product are sitting to the side to dry for the night. One has already been placed in the bird cage ... I'm not sure if Fancy really knows what to do with it though. We'll give her a couple of days to decide if she likes them.

Number 5 was listed as "Visit a pumpkin patch". After thinking back over the last couple of weeks I realized that we were at three pumpkin patches this month and didn't buy a single pumpkin! So, I guess we're buying them at the grocery store this year again. 

Our swimming lessons are going swimmingly. I'm pretty confident that by the end of this session at least two out of the three kiddos will be able to swim which will check off number 9.

This means that about a quarter of our bucket list for this fall has been checked off. We're waiting on more leaves to fall before we can jump in them and I'm sure that at least another five items will be checked off in the next ten days as they're all pretty much linked to pumpkins and Halloween. The rest I will be tackling next month and hopefully we'll be able to check them all off in time to begin our Winter Bucket List. *GIANT smile* The children challenge me each week to check off at least one item, I don't think we're doing half bad!

How's your list coming along? Tell me in the comments or share with us on Facebook.

Posts coming up this week:
Meet the Campers ... Mamma (Monday)
List It {Tuesday} - 5 Reasons to limit dye  (Tuesday)
My review of School Zone Preschool workbooks  (Wednesday)
Can you use cartoons for science? (Thursday)
Our week in review (Friday)
... and ...
Our outside time (Saturday)

** I had to share a quick peek into some art/science we have already done this week because I'm excited about the possibilities these present. Oh, OK, and about how much fun we had doing them!

"Home-made" pumpkin crayons.

Chalk pastels...