So since I was asked to do more personal care items, I’ve dedicated a whole week to finding some amazing products! To start off the week I want you to find some personal care products around your house and bring them to your computer. Then go to Skin Deep- Cosmetic Safety Database and look up some of the ingredients in your products. What you will find will amaze you! Even on some products labeled “natural” and even some organics come back with scary things. If you do this, write down some of the ingredients that had moderate hazard to high hazard levels and keep them on hand. I will have an extra entry to every giveaway this week that can you write some products that alarmed you. You can choose to write the products name- but that is up to you. Even if you don’t do this for an extra entry, I highly advice you to check this out and see what’s really in your products. It’s been an eyeopener for me!!

Part of Ella’s homeschooling is dedicated to doing yoga exercises. Since we began yoga there has been a huge change in Ella’s behavior. She is definitely more relaxed and centered. Yoga gives her a place to put all of her energy and unwind. I did a yoga week a few months ago and reviewed GreenTREE Yoga. They just released a new book, “Create a Yoga Practice for Kids” and it has been an amazing tool in our homeschooling!

Green Tree Yoga is an amazing non-profit Yoga instruction company. Their mission is to educate the public about the healing and strengthening benefits of Yoga through various programs. Green Tree Yoga will provide you with the tools that can be used in a variety of settings for people of all ages and abilities.

“Create a Yoga Practice for Kids” was made to help parents and teachers teach their students how to get through a complete yoga exercise. It begins with opening poses and what you can say to get your child’s attention so they will be interested. All of the poses are fun and any aged child can participate. Though you might have to do some altering for younger children. Ella’s favorite opening pose is the Cat/Cow/Puppy Wag. Your child starts off on their hands and knees-arms bent- with a flat back and their head straight-kind of like a table. Then they arch their back up and straighten their arms to go into the Cat Pose. Ella likes to meow when doing this pose. To go into the Cow Pose, your child lifts their head and arches their back inward. Then your child will go back into the opening pose on their hands and knees and “wag their tails.” Ella also likes to start barking while shaking her tail. This helps the spine get a little more flexible for the upcoming poses.

The book then goes into Themed Poses with a series of exercises that go along with the theme. There are themes like Opposites, Pose that Make you Feel Powerful, Poses that Flow, Poses that Grow, Poses that Kick and lots more. Each theme has at least 4+ poses. I like that the themes can go along with other activities you might be teaching your child. Every pose is explained with pictures and you are told what you can say to your child. You are also told the benefits of the pose!

“Create a Yoga Practice for Kids” has Relaxation exercises to help wind down the activities. We usually take this time to reflect on what we just did. My favorite is to have Ella lie down and I say things to help her visualize relaxing. I will say things like, “Wiggle your toes, then let them doze, relax your feet to this gentle beat, relax your heels, like sunning seals, relax your legs like mama birds sitting on eggs…” Sometimes Ella is ready to get up before the mantra is over, but that’s ok.

I really like the section of games! The first one is the Alphabet Game. You have your child try to make letters with their bodies. If you are teaching your child the alphabet, this could be a fun way to incorporate that day’s lesson. There are a bunch of other great games that can be done with just 1 child or a whole classroom.

You can get “Create a Yoga Practice for Kids” at GreenTREE Yoga for $20. You can also download a free MP3 or preview their CD tracks.

Thank you Yael for the new awesome book! I have loved learning how to become a better teacher! 🙂

Ella loves to be out of the house. After breakfast every morning she asks to go get dressed, if she hasn’t already dressed herself, and wants to go for a car ride. We have better days when we are out of the house, and I’m a broke single mom, so going to do things can be limited. But I have found fun things to go do while still making them a learning experience.

We frequent a pet store at least once a week. Though, we do go to different ones each week since there are a ton in our area. Your child will have as much fun at the pet store as they will at the zoo. You can talk to your child about each animal and if your pet store is as friendly as ours, your child can hold different animals and talk about the textures and other features. We have an amazing fish store called FinTastics. It is seriously like going to an aquarium. They have salt and fresh water sting rays, puffer fish, crabs, lobsters and other really cool fish. Though, try not to be tempted to bring any animal home! We came home with 4 of these yesterday:Another great place to go is to the candle store. You can call me crazy, but this is a great place to teach your child colors and smells. We love to go to Yankee Candle and they know us by name. Ella can pick up a candle, and 9 times out of 10, tell you what it smells like. She also likes to grab candles out of the bin and smell them. She’ll have 3 or 4 in her hand and then I make her put them back. This also works on her sorting skills. I have been taking her to Yankee Candle since she was a little baby. So she is used to the store and knows not to touch the glass. Only you are able to judge if this is a suitable activity for your child!

Exercise is very important to every child. We try to get to the park at least once a week. Another great thing about parks is that most have preschool programs that are usually free or under $5. Charlotte has tons of parks and recreation centers. There are usually 5 to 6 programs going on daily that will teach younger- and older- children about nature. There is an amazing park here called Latta Plantation that actually has ponies and horses to ride! I know you can find park events on Zvents or you can look up the website for your county’s park and rec centers.

Go to an art museum or gallery. Most galleries are free, though museums have free days. Talk about what your child sees in the pictures. What colors they see, how it makes them feel. It’s really cool to see their interpretations, especially if you frequent a place and their opinions change.

Libraries are also great. Most hold story times daily for different ages and have arts and craft activities going on. You can find out what’s going on at a library near you by searching for your county’s public libraries. I usually will take Ella on a rainy day and we’ll go sit in a corner and read.

Michaels and Lowe’s both do monthly arts and craft events at all of their stores on Saturdays. If you visit their websites you can find out which craft is going on. You will need to register for Lowe’s and you can just walk in at Michaels.

Do you have any fun educational outings with your children? I’d love to hear more ideas!

Congrats to Clarissa for winning the Rudbeckia Hat!!

clarissa@neiding.com said… CommentsCounter=CommentsCounter+1; document.write(CommentsCounter)
22

twitter follower

September 24, 2009 12:32 AM

Congrats to DLH for winning the Soft Star Shoes GC!!

DLH said… CommentsCounter=CommentsCounter+1; document.write(CommentsCounter)
2

I am a fan of soft star shoes on facebook.

September 22, 2009 10:29 PM

Congrats to Coccinelle for winning the Leg Huggers!!

Coccinelle said… CommentsCounter=CommentsCounter+1; document.write(CommentsCounter)
82

Tweeted at

http://twitter.com/CoccinelleGreen/status/4401870821

Entry 3

September 26, 2009 5:04 PM

Congrats to Vgi for winning the DreamSacks Tunic!!

vgi said… CommentsCounter=CommentsCounter+1; document.write(CommentsCounter)
138

I learned that DreamSacks mission statement is: To provide wonderfully nurturing natural products while consciously caring for people and our environment.

September 28, 2009 4:45 PM

Congrats to Connie for winning the Celia Bag from Eco-Handbags!!

Connie said… CommentsCounter=CommentsCounter+1; document.write(CommentsCounter)
61

I am a email subscriber

September 25, 2009 10:50 AM

Thanks to all that entered!! I am still waiting for the winner’s confirmation on the Parade Baby Pumpkin Tee. Here are the current giveaways going on:

• OrganiLuxe Lunch Kit Set Ends 10/10
• Happy Green Bee Chemise Ends 10/11
• Keen Tote Bag Ends 10/12
• Oeuf Mask and Tail Set Ends 10/12
• Idbids T-Shirt Ends 10/13
• Hazelaid Jewelry Ends 10/14
• Greenbees Estephania Sandals Ends 10/15
• Natural Luxe Mama Tote Ends 10/16
• Charlie’s Soap Combo Set Ends 10/17
• Mermaid’s Purse 5 Herbal Soaps Ends 10/18
• Best Baby Organics Japanese Pants Ends 10/19
• idbids Starter Kit Ends 10/19
• Alex Toys Monsters Play All Day Set Ends 10/20
• GlammaTOYS CitiBlocs Ends 10/21
• Beyond Learning Pick-Up Words Ends 10/22
• Thinkbutton EcoArt Book Ends 10/23

OK, seriously we all should go just live in a (BPA free) bubble. I just saw a post on ScienceNews about their being BPA in receipts!! I’m blown away by the numbers of common products that are coming back toxic. Here is the article:

While working at Polaroid Corp. for more than a decade, John C. Warner learned about the chemistry behind some carbonless copy papers (now used for most credit card receipts) and the thermal imaging papers that are spit out by most modern cash registers. Both relied on bisphenol-A.

Manufacturers would coat a powdery layer of this BPA onto one side of a piece of paper together with an invisible ink, he says. “Later, when you applied pressure or heat, they would merge together and you’d get color.”

At the time, back in the ‘90s, he thought little about the technology other than it was clever. But when BPA exploded into the news, about a decade ago, Warner began to develop some doubts.

Research was demonstrating that this estrogen-mimicking chemical was leaching out of polycarbonate plastics, out of the resins used to line most food cans and out of dental sealants. In the womb, this chemical could disrupt the normal development of a rodent’s gonads — or evoke changes that predisposed animals to later develop cancer.

Warner recalls that these reports piqued his curiosity about whether the color-changing papers that were increasingly proliferating throughout urban commerce still used BPA.

By this time, the organic chemist was teaching green chemistry at the University of Massachusetts. “So I’d send my students out to local stores to get their cash register receipts.” Back in the lab, they’d dissolve the paper, run it through a mass spectrometer and look for a telltale spike in the readout that signaled the presence of BPA.

And they’d find it, Warner says. Not in every receipt. But in plenty. And the paper used in the receipts that contained BPA looked no different than papers that didn’t.

But that was then, before he co-founded the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, an organization that works with industry to develop safer products and production processes. So earlier this week I asked Warner whether he had evidence BPA might still be present in those papers. Yep. He turned up BPA-based receipts in use the last time he looked. Which was last month.

And the amount receipts carry isn’t trivial.

“When people talk about polycarbonate bottles, they talk about nanogram quantities of BPA [leaching out],” Warner observes. “The average cash register receipt that’s out there and uses the BPA technology will have 60 to 100 milligrams of free BPA.” By free, he explains, it’s not bound into a polymer, like the BPA in polycarbonates. It’s just the individual molecules loose and ready for uptake.

As such, he argues, when it comes to BPA in the urban environment, “the biggest exposures, in my opinion, will be these cash register receipts.” Once on the fingers, BPA can be transferred to foods. And keep in mind, he adds, some hormones — like estrogen in certain birth-control formulations — are delivered through the skin by controlled-release patches. So, he argues, estrogen mimics like BPA might similarly enter the skin.

Maybe, maybe not. BPA and real estrogen don’t have the same structure, so their permeability might vary. Moreover, there are all kinds of materials in the skin that might selectively degrade or alter this hormone imposter as it passes through.

More importantly, I asked: Have you published your data? “No,” Warner says, “that’s not my goal.” His research organization “is dedicated to not preaching about the bad but about diligently trying to invent the good,” he says. Moreover, he says he lacks the resources to do a thorough job of quantifying the prevalence of BPA-laced receipts.

Perhaps. But for his research to have an impact, it must pass peer review and appear in journals that can be cited. His analytical techniques need to be articulated so that others can try to replicate his findings or shoot them down. And somebody has to go the distance and investigate how much BPA can rub off onto fingers from receipt papers, does it get through the skin — and if it does, how much gets into the circulation, where it can reach organs throughout the body?

Warner, a patent-toting inventor, has set his sights on developing some new analog to the old litmus test. He envisions something that could be rubbed across a receipt, or perhaps the fingers; when it sensed the presence of BPA it would change color.

Of course, a simpler caveat-emptor approach would be to just mandate labeling of any and all products that contain BPA at their point of sale — or in the case of receipts, at the cash register. At least pregnant women would know to wash their hands after picking up a BPA-laced receipt. And we’d all know to keep such paper out of hands of kids. We might also want to store those receipts in some zip-it-closed plastic baggie, not our wallets.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.”- Albert Einstein

Before I had a child, this quote meant something different to me. Now that I have Ella, it takes on a whole new meaning. It is just as important to have imaginative play toys around the house as it is to have learning toys. Or if you have a child like Ella, she will turn her educational toys into imaginative play. 🙂

The first Eco-friendly toy I bought for Ella was the PlanToys Assorted Fruits and Vegetable cutting set. Ella still to this day puts toys in her mouth. I didn’t want to buy her food play items that weren’t safe, especially since I knew they would go in her mouth. I had heard rave reviews about PlanToys and I had to find out for myself.

PlanToys only uses replenishable rubberwood, which is preservative free and naturally processed. They were the first company to use recycled rubberwood! The wood is not chemically treated in any way. PlanToys only uses water-based colors and non-toxic glues. So yes, it’s safe for your child to put them in their mouth! PlanToys manufactures all of their own toys in Thailand, so they have complete control of the process. Thailand is rich with rubberwood, which PlanToys has successfully recycled for their toys.

PlanToys creates toys to inspire children’s imagination as well as promoting their physical and intellectual development. They have unique designs that every child will love. Ella has loved her Fruit and Vegetable cutting set. I bought it for her for Christmas last year and it took some time for her to master cutting the veggies. It would occupy her for at least 30 minutes until she got it!But now she is a pro. It definitely promotes fine motor skills as well as imaginative play. Ella loves to “cook dinner” and make flavored teas with the fruits. She will put them in her tea set and serve “orange tea” to all of her friends. This has been one of her favorite go to toys that she plays with every day. And I mean every day!

You can find baby toys, developmental toys, educational toys and wooden toys at PlanToys!

Stay tuned for next months Eco-friendly Holiday Gift Guide for your chance to win an amazing toy from PlanToys!!