Still Waiting...

We're still waiting for baby to make an appearance. I just added a poll on the sidebar of my blog -you can vote on whether you think I'll have a boy or a girl. Julia thinks its a girl, and Lucy did say that she thought it was a boy for quite a while, but she's switched to saying girl now too. We're not telling names yet, partly because we haven't quite decided. Lucy has names picked out though: "Star" if its a girl and "Nemo" if its a boy.

Everything is ready for baby to come. We have the house all clean, the Christmas decorations put away, and my to do list is about finished. Tomorrow will be 39 weeks, so I suppose we could have another week to go yet, although my midwife guessed I would go a bit early. I'll be sure to post the good news as soon as I can!

Introducing: Sing Song Yoga

Sing Song Yoga is a unique program that uses songs to teach yoga poses to children. Deb Weiss-Gelmi, the developer and teacher of this program, is a friend of mine! She is a school teacher and has been practicing yoga since 2001. Her daughter Lia is a year older than Lucy and we've had many playdates together. I was so excited for Deb when she decided to have this dvd made, and I think the results are fantastic! My husband Ross just graduated from film school in August and was involved in making this dvd also. Lucy and Julia were so excited to watch a movie that their Daddy helped make, see Deb teaching yoga, and look for their friend Lia on the dvd.

In the past I had done some searching for a good kids yoga dvd and wasn't really impressed with the ones that I saw. I read reviews on amazon and checked out several dvds from the library looking for something to use with Lucy and Julia. Including movement in our homeschooling days is important, especially in the winter when we don't get out to play as much. I had sort of given up my search, not finding anything that I was interested in. Sing Song Yoga is definitely what I was looking for!

Sing Song Yoga uses songs to describe how to do each yoga pose, with the words appearing on the bottom of the screen. Deb demonstrates how to do each pose while she is singing, along with children who do the poses also. Deb is great at gently giving directions when needed and even says a couple of times "If you fall out of this pose, its okay!" The dvd moved quickly enough to keep my girls interested, yet also gave enough time for them to try the movements. There are a variety of fun poses - a frog that leaps up into the air, a donkey that kicks, and many more. Easy as well as challenging poses are included and sometimes the children show different ways of doing the same pose so that you can do them whichever way you choose.

I like that the dvd gives the option of playing all of the poses or selecting just standing, sitting, or floor poses. I couldn't do much of the yoga being as hugely pregnant as I am, but eventually this will be great for me to do along with the girls. Its easy enough for them to follow along with, but I think I would also feel pretty stretched and challenged. Lucy loves ballet and practicing this yoga dvd will be a huge help at improving her balance, flexibility, and coordination. Julia (age 2) enjoyed watching and trying a few things, it will be interesting to see if she actually learns how to do the poses after a while. The songs are simple and catchy, so we could even sing them on our own whenever we wanted to do some stretching.

Deb gave us this dvd to review, and is also giving away a dvd to one of my readers! Check out the Sing Song Yoga website for information on how yoga is great for the brain, see a clip of the dvd, and more. You can also order the dvd right from her website. To enter the giveaway, leave a comment on this post being sure to include your email address. For an extra entry you can leave another comment letting me know that you are a follower of my blog. The giveaway will close on January 30th at midnight.

I'm proud of you Deb, and think you did an amazing job! Thanks for sharing Sing Song Yoga with us!

Ewww...

We took apart the Berkey water filter today to clean it. The filters had gross orange stuff on them and after we cleaned them off and primed them again more orange dust came out. We've been filling the Berkey with our regular tap water, so if we weren't filtering our water we would be drinking that nasty stuff!

If you haven't already, you can read my research on What's In My Water? part 1, part 2, and part 3. The Environmental Working Group also recently updated their National Tap Water Database with some great information and research.

Hugg-A-Planet

We recently received a Hugg-A-Planet Earth, Moon, and Mars set to play with and review. Of course the homeschool teacher in me is excited to have these as learning tools for my kids! Hugg-A-Planets are soft, stuffed globes. Earth has 600 places labeled on it, the Moon has 100 places labeled, and Mars actually has 400 places labeled as well. The Moon and Mars are both in proportion to the size of Earth. The Moon fits in a pocket on the Earth as you can see in this photo:

We already had a small beach ball type globe that we used for school and the girls really enjoy playing with it. I don't let them play with it all the time because its just a beach ball type thing. I like that we can leave the Hugg-A-Planets out and play with them and reference them often. They are squishy and huggable, although it does bother me a bit that they don't stay round. The Earth gets pretty lumpy, and I think that's because of the pocket part in it. Julia sitting on it didn't help its lumpiness either. There are just a few places where the seams don't match up exactly so the borders of a couple countries aren't entirely clear.

Overall though, I think the Hugg-A-Planets serve a great purpose. I love that I can have my kids toss me the Earth and talk about where elephants live. When we first opened up the package, Lucy asked me to show her where Australia was. I don't know why she wanted to know that in particular, but I was happy to show her. Mars and Earth both come with great fact sheets that we will use in our studies as the girls get older. We had to disregard parts describing how the earth began and the age of the earth and planets as this is contrary to our beliefs. The Mars fact sheet in particular has a lot of great information that I didn't know and was interesting to read.

The Earth, Moon, and Mars set is actually on the International Space Station right now! They were delivered on September 18, 2009 and will stay until 2016 or longer. Here is a fun video of some astronauts using a Hugg-A-Planet Earth in a short lesson. If you'd like your own Hugg-A-Planet, you can use the code "freeship" for free shipping until the end of February (this is for ground shipping only). Thanks Hugg-A-Planet!