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I heard a great interview on NPR the other day. It was (Bottled Water: A Symbol of US Commerce, Culture) with Charles Fishman, author of an article published in Fast Company magazine about the bottled water industry. His article is entitled "Message in a Bottle." I was going to try to write a post about what I learned about bottled water, but then I saw another blogger already did a great job so I am just linking her.
Unplug Your Kids heard the same interview and did a great post.
Then there is this information about plastics leaching chemicals into your water. Read this if you and your kids drink from plastic bottles especially!
Real-Life Parents Share Real-Life Tips
There is a new e-book just out, edited and published by Carmen Van Kerckhove of Anti-Racist Parent blog and New Demographic, an anti-racism training company. She has collected great contributions from many of the ARP columnists dedicated to combating racism. It's full of helpful and encouraging tips.
Unfortunately, I hate the piece I contributed. Everyone else shared positive ideas about raising children in healthy ways. I told a humiliating and long-winded story about a time I blurted out a really ignorant, racist comment and Buster called me on it. I am burning with shame right now thinking of the whole world reading about it. Why didn't I share something uplifting and hopeful instead of showing what an idiot I am? My piece is also the longest, with too much back-story. And I'm the only one that didn't use my real name in the credits. An odd mixture; I totally revealed my stupidity while refusing to tell my name. sheesh.
But if you want to read everyone else' great tips, go download it here.
From The Dave Thomas Foundation:
We invite you to celebrate Father’s Day at Wendy’s restaurants, where 50 cents from every Frosty purchased during Father’s Day Frosty Weekend will be donated to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, in support of its signature program, Wendy’s Wonderful Kids. The Wendy’s Wonderful Kids program awards grants to adoption agencies across the nation to move children from foster care into permanent, loving adoptive homes. When you celebrate Father’s Day, you celebrate family!
Thanks to
Baggage and Bug for the link.
Vanity Fair is putting out an Africa issue this month. I just watched a music video of the photo shoot they did to take the cover photos:
In this behind-the-scenes footage, which is accompanied by a beautiful track from popular Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour, Annie Leibovitz and guest editor Bono go about the business of creating the issue's 20 iconic covers. "It's a visual chain letter," says Leibovitz, "spreading the message from person to person to person."
Fascinating stuff! There are also articles on
Madonna's Malawi,
The Lazarus Effect ,and
Africa: An Interactive Map.
Thanks to
Chasing Ray for the link. Be sure to check out her
Summer Blog Blast Tour of author interviews starting on Sunday.
June 12 was the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia (1967), the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage in the United States. The
Loving conference is going on now in Chicago.
Thanks to
Finding Wonderland for the heads-up and the link to
Loving Day. Tadmack tells us: "Ms. Mildred Jeter (an African American lady) and Mr. Richard Perry Loving (a Caucasian gentleman) were residents of Virginia who married in June of 1958 in Washington DC, leaving Virginia to evade a state law banning marriages between any white person and a non-white person. When they returned home, they were charged with violation of the ban, pleaded guilty, and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. They left... but they decided not to leave it at that, and that is why today we celebrate people's rights to love anyone they choose."
I visited the
Loving Day.org site today and I was fascinated by their interactive
U.S. map. You can click on the time line of dates in our history and see the states change color as they go from becoming a state, making interracial relationships illegal, and then making them legal. At first it seems tedious to have to keep clicking and wait for something to happen (for many years nothing changes at all). But then you realize - each click is a year. A Year. When it was illegal to marry and live in a family with people you loved. Because their skin was a different shade or their culture was different from that of your family of origin. I kept clicking back and forth through the years. Now we can be together. Now we can't. Can. Can't. I started crying.
If you are gay or lesbian it's still illegal in most places to marry the one you are committed to loving. I wonder what that map is going to look like in 40 years.
Another blog post about Loving Day:
My American Melting PotThis one's not about Loving Day, but it's not to be missed:
Los AngelistaI missed the celebration this year and can't go to the conference, but I am happy to hear about what others are doing. My son Buddy graduates from pre-school today so this tranracial family is celebrating all over the place!
From a Reading is Fundamental Press Release:
—Campaign targets parents and caregivers of young children—
WASHINGTON—June 12, 2007—Addressing a persistent gap in minority children reading scores, Reading Is Fundamental, Inc. (RIF) today launched the RIF Multicultural Literacy Campaign to promote and support early childhood literacy in African-American, Hispanic, and Native American communities.
RIF's multi-year campaign, supported by Macy's, provides parents and caregivers of children under the age of 5 with new educational resources for building children’s language skills. The campaign includes a number of components: a new early childhood website and educational video available at http://www.rif.org/, both funded under a grant from the Star Schools Program of the U.S. Department of Education; a partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute to conduct literacy workshops; and multicultural book donations for schools. In collaboration with media partners Univision Communications Inc., the leading Spanish-language media company in the U.S., and Radio One, Inc., which owns and/or operates 70 radio stations located in 22 urban markets, RIF will air a public education campaign to begin in August.
"Parents have tremendous impact on how well their children develop language skills in the first five years of life," said Carol H. Rasco, president and CEO of RIF, the nation’s largest non-profit children’s literacy organization. "The RIF Multicultural Literacy Campaign reinforces this message and offers parents and caregivers new resources to help them get their children prepared for success with reading and in school."
Reading scores among African-American, Hispanic, and Native American fourth graders significantly lag behind those of white and Asian children. According to the most recent U.S. Department of Education data, 76 percent of white and 73 percent of Asian children score at or above basic reading level compared to 42 percent of African-American, 46 percent of Hispanic and 48 percent of Native American children.
"As a country, we cannot let so many students fall behind," said Claude Mayberry, Jr., founder and CEO of Science Weekly, and chair of the RIF Multicultural Advisory Board. "This RIF campaign is the start of a renewed effort to engage parents, caregivers, community organizations, educators, and corporations in a comprehensive approach to improving literacy outcomes among African-American, Hispanic, and Native American communities."
Check out the RIF main page for background information, tips for educators and parents, and ways to get involved, as well as games, stories and activities to do with your children from birth to age 5 or 6 - 14.
Thanks to Jen Robinson for the link.
National Wildlife Federation has a haiku contest going on. I think the only prize is the chance to see your haiku on their website next month. What the heck, it sounds like fun. You know I love haiku!
And have you checked out their Green Hour program? Get those kids out of the house and away from the screens a little.
They have something else brewing called the Great American Backyard Campout. It's happening all over on June 23. Sounds like time for S'Mores!
I am working on updating our library web page. Today I am mainly looking at other library websites and exploring what's out there. What are your favorite library sites? What are the features you most value? If you were redesigning your library page, what would you include? Tips please!
In my surfing I have discovered these cool web 2.0 toys that I would love to share with teachers and students:
- Google Docs. Write documents and spreadsheets anywhere and open them on another computer. Share, collaborate, and work from a variety of locations...
- Mindomo: An online graphic organizer. Kinda like Inspiration, which we teach the students to use in planning and organizing their research or writing. Again, work in one location and share, collaborate or revise from another location.
- Thumbstack: Make and share presentations on the web. Kinda like PowerPoint. No need to tote all those old fashioned flashdrives or *shudder* floppies if you do all your work on the web, right?
- Picnik: Online photo editing.
- Meebo: Mush all your instant messaging pals together in one place. No need to remember if they are on aim, yahoo, whatever.
So now you can go on vacation and forget about what was on your desktop at work, right? Better put all these links in your del.icio.us account first.
Thanks to Online Education Database for all these links.
What do you give them?
A lady walks into a bookstore. She's looking for a book for her brilliant niece. Niece is six and already reading H. Potter. What goes through your mind in those few seconds you have to pull up the perfect book?
"But if Harry Potter really existed, and the Dursley’s were nice people, this is what he would be reading at age six, and he’d like it a lot.”
Check out: Ten Seconds: Running the Hurdles with Harry Potter by A. Bitterman at Reading Reptile.
Thanks to Purled Pouches for this great link to an essay about how Potter has changed us.
It's not too late to jump on the bandwagon for Mother Reader's 48 Hour Book Challenge! It starts this weekend on Friday at 8 am. The idea is you drop everything and read chapter books in the upper-elementary , young adult or adult levels. You can count the hours any way you like, as long as they are consecutive and between June 8 and 10. There are prizes! One of the prizes is a framed photo taken by me, as a matter of fact.
I wasn't going to join the challenge because my little guys never give me extra time to read on the weekends, but then when I saw all the great books on my summer reading list I thought what the hey! I am diving in. I'll find a few extra hours in there somewhere. I won't be any competition for the prizes though, so the field is wide open for you. Go sign up!
Do you have Celiac? This is a link to the BEST food blog in the universe. It's not just about food - it's about being full of joy and loving life. It's beautiful writing. And here she is teaching us about how to be healthier.
Did you know that 1 out of 100 people in the U.S. has Celiac disease? And only about 3 % of us know it. That means at least one of you reading this today ( and someone else in your family) is celiac, and you probably don't know it. Go read that link and think about it.
What he said. I hear that!
Where is our rage?
This iris bud is to remind me of my potential. Yesterday it was a bud; this morning when we ate breakfast it was open in loveliness.
HipWriterMama has been writing inspiring posts every Monday. She is doing a 30 day challenge to encourage anyone who wants to participate to work on establishing a new good habit. She says, "...with every productive new habit, you'll find more motivation and determination to work toward your dream. And that is what I'd like this Challenge to show you. Your ability to work towards your goal no matter what."
I am joining in this week with my goal for the next month: My 30 day challenge goal is to study Nancy Atwell's "Lessons that Change Writers" and practice writing my own small moments of memoirs. I mean I will read her book in stages through out the month and write every day.
I have been intrigued by how teachers are using Atwell's ideas on teaching writing. I would like to learn to write those "small moments" that take a seed of experience and nurture it into a little sprout of beautiful writing. One step beyond haiku, if you will.
I am going to borrow the book from a teacher friend and work my way through the lessons, with myself as the student. Atwell is a seventh and eight grade writing teacher. I am putting myself in the learner's position to see how much I can get done. I am going to spend time every night writing - not for the blog or work or anything other than learning the practice of crafting memoirs in small pieces. Here is a sample lesson from the book.
I'll be checking in with Vivian every Monday to report how it's going. I invite you to join in and work on developing a habit of your own. It can be any little thing you want to practice... Go read and see what others are doing.
The May issue of The Edge of the Forest is packed with great articles and book reviews.
I am most interested in investigating JacketFlap. I signed up for JacketFlap last fall after seeing it in my sitemeter, and then forgot about it. I signed up again last month when I saw is linked around. I am still learning to use it effectively but the potential is huge. Connect with everyone interested in children's book publishing, read blogs, learn about what publishers are interested and what books are hot. Anyone here know more? Leave me a comment with your tips please!
Kelly tells us there's more in TEOTF:
Allie (Little Willow) discusses The Bermudez Triangle: Too Cool for School? and profiles author Deb Caletti.
Kim Winters talks to children's writers on retreat about what they are reading and why for the In the Backpack column, and gets personal about writing for children in A Day in the Life.
Kelly Fineman interviews David Lubar in our Blogging Writer feature.
Reviews in all categories--from Picture book to Young Adult. (There are tons of reviews this month.) They've added an interview archive for your convenience.
Best of the Blogs covers THE scandal of the month (you know which one...)
Don't forget to subscribe to The Edge of the Forest with the Subscribe feature. Just enter your name and e-mail address and you'll receive notification when each new issue is published.
The Edge of the Forest will return June 10. Please let Kelly know if you would like to contribute a feature story or a review.
Kelly, at Big A, little a, asked for suggestions for early readers to give her son for summer reading. A lot of folks commented with their favorites and she said she would publish a pdf tomorrow so we could all print it out. I am looking forward to seeing that!
It got me thinking about working on my list of beginning readers on LibraryThing. I have been meaning to post a link to some book lists here in the sidebar. I love LibraryThing. You can sort your own books by tags, find other people who own the same books, get suggestions for other books in the same genre or author, read and post reviews and chat about just about anything.
I have quite a few beginning readers around my house. Buster, who is nineteen now, enjoyed them when he was in Pre-k through second grade. We spent those summers doing extra reading and writing work together. I taught kindergarten and first grade for many years, and I am a children's librarian now so this level of books is one of my special interests. Now Buddy is starting to read them and I have been buying more. Many of my favorites are quite old, so I am particularly interested in finding new books with diverse ethnicities represented.
If you click this link to my LibraryThing Beginning Readers list you can see our favorites. You can experiment with the different views to see book covers, ISBN and LC numbers, subject headings and my ratings. If you click the column headings you can sort them several ways. I think view E is the best one for printing, but I like view A the best because I love seeing the book covers. If you click a tag you see all the other books I have with that tag. If you click a book title see detailed information about that book. You can also see a list of similar books recommended.
If any of you have a LibraryThing account I would love to add you to my watch list. Or if you have another way of keeping and sharing book lists I'd love to hear about it! So far for me LibraryThing is the easiest, coolest, most versatile way to share lists. What do you think?
I have decided to join in with TV turn off week. The first time I did this Buster was in first grade. It seemed like a crazy idea at the time but a lot of families in the school where I was teaching were doing it so I joined in. It was hard at first. We really missed our favorite shows. But we ended up spending more time having fun together and it was amazing how relaxing our late afternoons and evenings were. We went back to watching TV after that week, but it changed my perspective on a lot of things. Commercials, for one thing. They are a lot more ridiculous and obnoxious once you get a little break. Consumerism is not as pretty once you get out from under the spell.
Over the years Buster and I gradually got unplugged more and more. I only have one TV and it's not a very good one. I got rid of cable when he was about 12 because I didn't want him watching all that junk. All my old favorite shows went off the air and I didn't get attached to any new ones. A couple of years ago I put our TV up in the attic so Buddy wouldn't get hooked on it before he was preschool age. I liked having it up in the attic because it kept Buddy from always getting into it. It's a lot easier to keep a toddler from getting into mischief with turning the box on and off and on and off and sticking things in the VCR if it's not in the room where they play. I took it back down to the living room again when the Pope died and we had a German exchange student living with us. We wanted to watch the funeral and the new Pope being chosen.
I have the TV in the living room again and I am noticing that we are getting to rely on it more and more. My boys are put in front of a TV at their day care. That is one of the things I really don't like about it there. I have questioned it and the teacher say they only use it when they are busy fixing lunches or it's raining... but the truth is both little guys have learned to sit still and watch TV more than I think is healthy for toddlers and preschoolers. The American Academy of Pediatrics says it's better to have no TV at all for children under 2. That makes a lot of sense to me. They are developmentally invested in wandering around investigating and manipulating and touching things to explore their world. They should be talking to people in real life, not watching the screen.
Anyway, Punkin, my two year old, comes in the house after school every day and goes straight to the movie shelf. He loves Thomas the Tank. He shouts with glee when Curious George music comes on the TV. He can sit still in my lap for half an hour with his thumb in his mouth and watch TV. I like the cuddle time but I don't think it's healthy for him to be so attached to the magic box already. I got in the habit of letting them watch while I am cooking dinner. Usually it is only half an hour but since they sit so still and quiet it is really hard not to let that stretch into an hour or two... LOL the free time is so attractive! So I think we need a TV turn off week.
Buddy is having his tonsils out on Monday morning. My mom is going to take care of him at her house the rest of the week while I go back to work. He has to be out of school for 7 to 10 days and I thank God she is able to do it because I don't have that many sick days left. I decided if she lets him watch TV at her house that is her prerogative, but at our house we will have it unplugged.
I wish there was a way to know how much electricity I save by not having the whole set up plugged in. I guess I could try to read the meter and then read it again at the end of the week and compare that to a normal week... anyone ever do that?
Links:
Journey to Mom
Unplug your kids - she's doing the blog challenge
TV Turn Off Network
Fact Sheets
Ad Busters
Facts, FAQs, Alternative Ideas
Crayola Activity Calendar
the house finch's song
falls in cadence with the clacking;
the year's first mowing
My four year old Buddy is having his tonsils out on Monday morning. I expect to be blogging light this week as I concentrate on nursing the patient back to full strength. I consider it one of God's blessings that the grocery store had our favorite ice cream on sale - buy one get two free!
I have been toying with the idea of making book lists for the past six months or so. I thought about:
- Making lists in blog posts and linking them in my sidebar; but if it is just a plain list with no links that seems boring to me.
- I would want to have links to Amazon or somewhere so you could read reviews and see book covers, and I don't feel totally comfortable linking a big chain bookstore.
- I thought about making a list at Amazon and linking that - I have explored other peoples listmania lists and experimented with that. I just don't like feeling like I am selling for them.
- I thought about using LibraryThing to make a list by tags. I am not good about being consistent and thorough in my tags. I just spent about an hour editing tags to match "board books" with "board book" and "primary" with "primary grades". Tags are always a work in progress with me.
- The other thing about LibraryThing is that not all my books are in there and not all the books in my list are actually owned by me. Most of the ones I borrowed from the library and loved enough to want to include are tagged "wishlist", but not all.
- Of the books I actually own, I have only LibraryThing cataloged the ones I want to discuss or recommend. Mostly they are by, about or illustrating people of color, are kids' books, or deal with education, adoption or parenting.
Anyway, if you go to my library on LibraryThing and click on some of my tags you will see a list of toddler books, picture books, multicultural books, African American, etc. You can also see who else has those books, read some reviews and find links to the books at book sellers or WorldCat (which shows you which local libraries near you have the book). I would really appreciate it if you would look that over and tell me if you find it helpful or useful. Also, if there are books you would recommend leave me a comment and I will add them to my wish list. I am always looking for more really excellent kids books by, about and illustrating people of color. What are your favorites? Do you have a list or a link to a website that has a good list?
I found this at
Just Enjoy Him. Every child deserves high quality health care... and every parent ought to be able to take their child to the doctor when they are sick. This is something we all can get behind! I emailed my congress people and I urge you to do the same.
The Children’s Defense Fund has a Call to Conscience and Action on their website and on it, you can fill in your name, address, and email, and they will forward your email to your representatives with the following message:
Comprehensive National Health Insurance Coverage for All Children
Dear [Decision Maker],
I’m writing to you today to tell you that I will hold you accountable with my voice and my vote for enacting urgently needed comprehensive health and mental health coverage for all children now.
It is unjust, morally intolerable and economically costly that more than 9 million children lack health coverage and a baby is born without health insurance every 46 seconds in our rich nation.
* Almost 90% of uninsured children live in a home where at least one parent works;
* The majority of uninsured children live in two-parent households;
* Reading scores and school attendance of uninsured children improve dramatically after they become insured;
*The tax cuts Congress and the President enacted for the top 1 percent of all taxpayers will cost $61 billion this year, enough to provide health coverage to all the 9 million uninsured children
We can and must do better in protecting the health and well-being of all our children. Enact urgently needed comprehensive high-quality health coverage for all children now!
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Address]
[City, State ZIP]
All children need health care, period, end of story. If you want to send such a message to your legislators, please Click Here and let your voice be heard.
I have posted a couple of times about the Cosmo Girl film contest. I went to check on how our girl Kiri Davis was doing today, and found this message:
CG!'s film contest
CosmoGIRL! and Take Action Hollywood announce our
Film Contest finalists.
We have determined that the online voting has been corrupted as a result of one or more instances of tampering with the voting process by users. As a result, none of the online votes will be counted, and we will submit all three of the semi-finalists to our panel of experts for final judging and selection of a winner. Read rules here.
So I guess our voting is all for nothing. Too Bad! I really hope they take her film seriously. You can still see it here:
A Girl Like Me
Kiri Davis is in second place now! Did you know you can vote once a day, every day? Go over there and see her film A Girl Like Me and vote or vote again! She is up for a scholarship from CosmoGirl. Spread the word - she is talented and smart and made an amazing film.
I blogged about Kiri Davis before; she made a film showing how young children are sensitized to good/bad images of race. She repeated the Clark doll study from the 60s to see if young children would prefer white baby dolls over dark skinned ones. Sure enough, white and black kids said the white dolls were more beautiful, better and smarter than the black dolls. It is heartbreaking to watch this film. We need to work on this people!
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Thanks for the link to my post. It was an interesting story wasn't it?
Your links about the plastic are very interesting. Yet another reason to avoid bottled water. One of my readers commented that she bought some stainless steel bottles to use for transporting drinking water.
I bought some plastic water bottles that are supposed to be good for repeat uses. I hate buying bottled water (unless it has bubbles in it!), and would much rather fill my bottles with filtered tap water.
The best water I've EVER had was in Austria. It's just amazing. It's good to drink good to shower in (my husband said he didn't need conditioner after he washed his long hair)... sigh. Good water. I liked the water in Rome,too, because of the public fountains.