Time spent outside – digging in the soil, nurturing life, feeling the warmth of the sun, and contemplating permaculture and its role as a solution to many of the world’s ills – with Blake’s poetry resonating all the more. Spring certainly is an awakening.

Where can you find your heaven, your infinity?

photo credit

Heaven In A Wild Flower is a copyrighted post from: Almost All The Truth - Exploring how to improve and protect the health of our children and their world through living, learning, and parenting…
Come join the conversation (I love your comments!) on Almost All The Truth, and connect further on Facebook, and twitter!

What Is Permaculture?

Don’t ask me why, but I used to always get permaculture and permafrost confused. Still, often when I think of permaculture my mind immediately goes to that consistently frosty ground, and increasingly lack thereof, which is indicative of why many subscribe to the principles of permaculture.

The core tenets of permaculture, permanent agriculture, are:

1. Earth care—care for the earth and all of its living systems.

2. People care—care for yourself and others (individuals, families, and communities).

3. Fair share—take, have, and use only what you need, and when there is surplus, give to others and recycle resources back into the system.

Permaculture seeks to care for both people and environment by relying on certain design tools that follow the above principles. When permaculture began in the 1970s it was in reaction to an oil crisis and increasing food insecurity. The idea was that people can, and should, design their lives to be more sustainable, self-sufficient, community-driven, and simply easier on the planet’s ecosystems. Do any of those scenarios sound familiar now?

We have unparalleled crises of the environment: fossil fuels and their extraction at all cost, extreme poverty and global hunger, climate change, and a loss of old-fashioned self-sufficiency. Is permaculture an answer?

Top 5 Permaculture Practices For Home And Garden

Most of us will not uproot to take part in permaculture on a larger scale. Luckily the principles of permaculture can be put into practice in your own home and garden with a little time and thought.

1. Animals. Incorporate animals into your backyard garden. Chickens are great for eating bugs, providing eggs, and even fertilizer. Goats are great for weed control, converting inedible vegetation into milk, and more fertilizer. Mosquito eating fish are another interesting option if you have a backyard pond. Vegan permaculturalists may still incorporate animals as companions and for their non-edible contributions.

2. Green Building. When building, adding, or remodeling a home, or even just want to make a few green changes, an emphasis on sustainability works to keep the home more efficient while reducing waste. A major benefit to people is better indoor air quality specifically and a better living environment generally speaking. Green building is an area that could potentially add a lot of expense, but if done well could actually save money, especially in the long-term.

3. Rainwater Harvesting. Rain nurtures life, yet we do not actively work to capture the inherent use of rainwater. There are two schools of thought here: (1) Direct the rainwater to the areas of your garden that need the water and (2) Catch and store rainwater or gray water that would otherwise go into the storm drains to use as needed.

4. Thoughtful Gardening. Thoughtful gardening is a means of using what you have available in an efficient way to produce food for people and habitat for wildlife. Take care to plan your landscaping and home garden carefully to be attuned to natural patterns, needs of the land, and how it can be achieved through natural methods: sheet mulch, composting, sprout gardening, seed saving, observation, and education.

5. Waste Management. ”Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” It starts with bringing less into your home in the first place. It ends with using something until there is no more, reusing what is left, or finding someone who can and will. We should make the most of our resources and not let any go to waste.

Permaculture is an interesting and controversial subject. I agree we need to be more thoughtful about how we connect with one another and the natural world. I believe that many of the human and environmental issues we have could be alleviated if we were more observant of how our ecosystems interact and rely on one another.

Which of the permaculture principles do you already follow? Which would you like to include more of in your life and home?

Be sure to join in and follow the discussion on permaculture here and over at the headquarters for Change The World Wednesdays.

Permaculture: Caring for People and Environment Through Design is a copyrighted post from: Almost All The Truth - Exploring how to improve and protect the health of our children and their world through living, learning, and parenting…
Come join the conversation (I love your comments!) on Almost All The Truth, and connect further on Facebook, and twitter!

Is it wake-up time, Mama? A little voice in my doorway wonders. She is so rarely the first one up. Blueberry bagel, real blueberries, not the blueberry-flavored corn syrup bits, for breakfast in the early morning quiet. Sun pours in the window telling us it is going to be another nice day.

We snuggle for a few as she explores my face with her small fingers. I awake when a sweet boy proudly announces there is something on the table for me. He has made me my own bagel breakfast, just the way he likes it–dripping with butter and warm from the toaster. There are notes and pictures on the table and two excited little boys waiting to show me all they had done.

Sunday morning acoustic music, coffee, sun, quiet, resting my lovely bones, gardening, rhododendrons?, and always, always a content mama to be able to have such a life.

Happy Mother’s Day

To all the mamas, to Mother Earth and Mother Nature, to those with a mother’s spirit, to all. Up for a little reading this morning?

Mother’s Day, This Time With More Meaning… My post over at SocialMoms explores how to add meaning to Mother’s Day by working to improve the lives of mothers around the world.

Groovy Green Livin has a great roundup for Mother’s Day reading!

There is still time to honor mama. Try one of these eco-friendly, fun and frugal ways to make the mother in your life feel special!

Production Not Reproduction has a short, but thought-provoking post with a link to a Mother’s Day adoption roundtable that is worth a read no matter how, or if, you have children.

Amber at Strocle.com is questioning the idea that motherhood and selflessness must always go together. Definitely read this one!

Have you finished your morning beverage and reading? Now go outside and play! :) How do you hope to spend Mother’s Day?

Mother’s Day: Sweetness In The Morning is a copyrighted post from: Almost All The Truth - Exploring how to improve and protect the health of our children and their world through living, learning, and parenting…
Come join the conversation (I love your comments!) on Almost All The Truth, and connect further on Facebook, and twitter!

photo credit

What Are GMOs? What Are GE Foods?

Simply put, GMOs are genetically modified organisms that have been genetically engineered in a laboratory by inserting DNA of different species, including plants, animals, bacteria, and viruses. Genetically engineered food is just one subset of this.

Contrary to some opinion, agriculture has NOT been using genetically engineered foods for long. American farmers first planted genetically engineered crops in the mid-1990s. Between 1999 and 2000, genetically engineered soy, cotton, corn, and canola became the norm and now include large percentages of these crops grown in the U.S., as well as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and India.

There is a huge difference between common sustainable agricultural practices likegrafting, plant breeding, crop rotation, cover crops, soil enrichment, natural pest predators, and biointensive integrated pest management, all of which have proven benefits to yield and soil fertility and the biotech industry’s methods.

The Problem With Genetically Engineered Food – Big Picture

We may not have to worry about fish genes in our strawberries, but there are plenty of other reasons to be concerned, namely adverse consequences for soil, human and environmental health, with little effect on global food issues.

Environmental Health, Human Health, and Food Security

Understandably we are continually looking for more efficient methods to feed the world’s hungry. Experts expect the world will add another 2 million people in the next 40 years or so. Nine billion people is a lot of people, but the argument that genetically engineered food will provide food security, particularly in the developing world, is unfortunately not likely to be the solution.

“I am particularly alarmed by those who seek to deny small-scale farmers of the Third World — and especially those in sub-Saharan Africa — access to the improved seeds, fertilizers and crop protection chemicals that have allowed the affluent nations the luxury of plentiful and inexpensive foodstuffs….While the affluent nations can certainly afford to pay more for food produced by the so-called organic methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low-income, food-deficit nations cannot.”

–Dr. Norman Borlaug, Nobel-Prize-winning agriculturalist and father of the Green Revolution

The myth that we must encourage a second Green Revolution is naive. The first Green Revolution certainly increased production, but managed to do little to curb world hunger, and instead has led to soil degradation, greater pest and weed problems, and ill health effects. Even now we are growing and raising enough food to feed the world, and 30% of food produced worldwide is wasted, yet a billion live in chronic hunger.

“Some researchers have shown that none of the genetically engineered seeds significantly increase the yield of crops. Indeed, in more than 8,200 field trials, the [genetically altered] Roundup seeds produced fewer bushels of soybeans than similar natural varieties, according to a study by Dr. Charles Benbrook, the former director of the Board of Agriculture at the National Academy of Sciences. Far from being a solution to the world’s hunger problem, the rapid introduction of genetically engineered crops may actually threaten agriculture and food security.”

–Dr. Peter Rosset, director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy and co-author of World Hunger: Twelve Myths (Grove Press, 1998)

Prevailing wisdom indicates that developing nations who succumb to genetically engineered crops will only lead to further food insecurity through a dependence on monoculture and the biotech corporations, besides the evidence of decreased soil life and devastating health effects for humans and wildlife we are already seeing from glyphosphate (Roundup).

Scientists are now seeing the herbicide in GE food in the bloodstream of pregnant women and in umbilical cord blood. In many parts of the world, there have been enoughdocumented cases of infertility, miscarriage, and birth defects from the glyphosphate that accompanies genetically engineered crops that strongly suggest we should be concerned.

Furthermore, leading scientists agree that we don’t know enough about more long-term effects of eating and growing genetically engineered foods, which is exactly why the thought of deregulation of certain GMOs is so scary. We just don’t know what we don’t know. Science has not yet been able to produce a large enough body of peer-reviewed study into the health and environmental effects of genetically engineered foods.

All of this is not to say that there may be some benefit to GM technology, but the issues surrounding glyphosphate, Monsanto, and scientific determination of risk are too great to ignore completely. Once we unleash GM seeds, it is highly unlikely that we can turn back and run the great risk of losing our small, organic family farms due to cross-contamination. We should then proceed with caution when approving any new unlabeled GM crops such as 2,4-D corn.

Just Label It

Whether you feel we should continue to develop genetically engineered technology for food crops or not, the majority of Americans, an estimated 92%, think we should be able to decide whether or not to eat them.

I believe we all have a right to make the choice whether we feed our families genetically engineered foods or not. I also believe that the U.S., like Japan, Australia, and the European Union, should require labels on the 80% of packaged foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients and are already on shelves.

“Today the vast majority of foods in supermarkets contain genetically modified substances whose effects on our health are unknown. As a medical doctor, I can assure you that no one in the medical profession would attempt to perform experiments on human subjects without their consent. Such conduct is illegal and unethical. Yet manufacturers of genetically altered foods are exposing us to one of the largest uncontrolled experiments in modern history.”

–Dr. Martha R. Herbert, pediatric neurologist

What You Can Do

Donate your voice. Tell the FDA we have a right to know and to require a label on genetically engineered (GE) foods. Call, e-mail, or mail U.S. state and federal elected officials and government agencies.

Vote with your wallet. Avoid the packaged, processed foods that are likely to contain GE ingredients. Look for a certified organic label, the Non-GMO Project Verified label, and/or avoid the top GE food crops: corn, soy, canola, and beet sugar. Some say, if you have to ask, avoid it.

Occupy your food supply. Take the ultimate control of some of your food supply by growing a food garden, joining a CSA, or buying directly from a local farmer you can trust.

Learn more. Educate yourself, your family, your friends on this issue.

What are your thoughts about where genetically engineered foods are headed and the campaign to label them?

Note: All quotes were from a look at both sides of the GE foods issue from PBS’s Frontline.

The Problem With Genetically Engineered Food is a copyrighted post from: Almost All The Truth - Exploring how to improve and protect the health of our children and their world through living, learning, and parenting…
Come join the conversation (I love your comments!) on Almost All The Truth, and connect further on Facebook, and twitter!

The following is a piece of incredible investigative journalism focused on a blow-out two years before the horrific Deepwater Horizon spill. This story would be unreal if we were not already aware that when we are talking about industry that sees incomprehensible amounts of money, there is often a darker side to the story: Big Oil and Big Ag to name two.

Read on with an eye toward understanding how this tragedy happened, how it was covered up, and how BP should have prevented the Deepwater Horizon blow-out saving lives, jobs, and a whole economy.

***

BP Covered Up Blow-out Two Years Prior to Deadly Deepwater Horizon Spill

Two years before the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP off-shore rig suffered a nearly identical blow-out, but BP concealed the first one from the U.S. regulators and Congress.

This week, EcoWatch.org located an eyewitness with devastating new information about the Caspian Sea oil-rig blow-out which BP had concealed from government and the industry.

The witness, whose story is backed up by rig workers who were evacuated from BP’s Caspian platform, said that had BP revealed the full story as required by industry practice, the eleven Gulf of Mexico workers “could have had a chance” of survival. But BP’s insistence on using methods proven faulty sealed their fate.

One cause of the blow-outs was the same in both cases:  the use of a money-saving technique—plugging holes with “quick-dry” cement.

By hiding the disastrous failure of its penny-pinching cement process in 2008, BP was able to continue to use the dangerous methods in the Gulf of Mexico—causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. April 20 marks the second anniversary of the Gulf oil disaster.

There were several failures in common to the two incidents identified by the eyewitness. He is an industry insider whose identity and expertise we have confirmed. His name and that of other witnesses we contacted must be withheld for their safety.

The failures revolve around the use of “quick-dry” cement, the uselessness of blow-out preventers, “mayhem” in evacuation procedures and an atmosphere of fear which prevents workers from blowing the whistle on safety problems.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of Waterkeeper Alliance and senior attorney for Natural Resources Defense Council, said, “We have laws that make it illegal to hide this kind of information. At the very least, these are lies by omission. When you juxtapose their knowledge of this incident upon the oil companies constant and persistent assurances of safety to regulators, investigators and shareholders, you have all the elements to prove that their concealment of the information was criminal.”

The first blow-out occurred on a BP rig in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Baku, Azerbaijan, in September 2008. BP was able to conceal such an extraordinary event with the help of the ruling regime of Azerbaijan, other oil companies and, our investigators learned, the Bush Administration.

Our investigation began just days after the explosion and sinking of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010 when this reporterreceived an extraordinary message from a terrified witness—from a ship floating in the Caspian Sea:

“I know how …. Would not be wise for me to communicate via [official] IT system, ….”

When the insider was contacted on a secure line, he stated that he witnessed a blow-out and the panicked evacuation of the giant BP “ACG” drilling platform.

To confirm the witness’ story, British television’s premier investigative program, Dispatches, sent this reporter under cover into Baku, Azerbaijan, with a cameraman. While approaching the BP oil terminal, the Islamic republic’s Security Ministry arrested the crew.

To avoid diplomatic difficulties, we were quickly released. However, two new witnesses suddenly vanished, all communication lost with them, after they confirmed the facts of the 2008 blow-out. Both told us they had been evacuated from the BP off-shore platform as it filled with methane.

Furthermore, witnesses confirmed that, “there was mud (drill-pipe cement) blown out all over the platform.” It appears the cement cap failed to hold back high-pressure gases which, “engulfed the entire platform in methane gas,” which is highly explosive.

In both cases, the insider told us, BP had used “quick-dry” cement to cap their well bores and the cost-saving procedure failed catastrophically.

We have learned this week that BP failed to notify the International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC)

On April 20, 2010, BP's Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 oil rig workers, injured 17 others and released about 4.9 million barrels of crude oil for three months into the ocean. This disaster devastated the Gulf region's economy, and threatened—and continues to threaten—the health of its residents and the environment.

about the failure of the cement. (British companies report incidents as minor as a hammer dropped.) Notification would have alerted Gulf cement contractor Halliburton that the process of adding nitrogen to cement posed unforeseen dangers.

In fact, this past December, BP attempted to place the blame and costs of the Gulf disaster on Halliburton, the oil services company that injected quick-dry cement into the well under the Deepwater Horizon. BP told a federal court that Halliburton concealed a computer model that would show that, under certain conditions, the cement could fail disastrously.

Following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, it became clear that nitrogen-laced mud can leave “channels” in the cement, allowing gas to escape and blow out the well-bore cap. However, that would have become clearer, and risks better assessed, had Halliburton and regulators known of the particulars of the Caspian blow-out.

We have also just learned that the cement casing itself appears to have cracked apart in the Caspian Sea. The sea, we were told, “was bubbling all around [from boiling methane]. You’re even scared to launch a life boat, it may sink.”

This exposed another problem with deepwater drilling. BP had promoted Blow-Out Preventers (BOPs) as a last line of defense in case of a blow-out. But if the casing shatters, the BOPs could be useless.

BP has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the story of the first blow-out, and for good reason:  If the company deliberately withheld the information that it knew “quick-dry” cement had failed yet continued to use it, the 11 deaths on its Gulf rig were not an unexpected accident but could be considered negligent homicide.

Kennedy told me, “This is a critical piece of information. The entire government is basing its policy on the assurances of this company that this process can be done safely and it never failed before. This is what they were telling everybody. Yet, the whole time they knewthat this was a process that had failed disastrously in the Caspian Sea.”

Why haven’t these stories come out before? This week our witness explained that in Azerbaijan, “People disappear on a regular basis. It’s a police state.”

But even in the U.S. and Europe, BP and other industry workers are afraid to complain for fear their files will be marked “NRB,” for Not Required Back­­—which will end a workers’ offshore career. Jake Malloy, head of the Offshore Oil Workers Union, reached in Aberdeen, Scotland, independently confirmed statements of the whistleblowers. He noted that companies create an atmosphere of fear for one’s job with the “NRB” system and its latest variants, which discourage reports on safety problems.

BP refused an interview for this investigation, though the company responded to our written questions regarding the Caspian blow-out. Notably, the company does not deny that the blow-out occurred, nor even that it concealed the information from U.S. and UK regulators. Rather, the company says there was a “gas release”—a common and benign event, not a blow-out. As to the accusation of concealment, BP states:

“BP has shared findings from its investigation into the incident with the Azerbaijan government, [Azerbaijan] regulators, its partners and within BP.”

While BP says it issued a press release at the time of the September 2008 Caspian blow-out, the company did not tell the whole truth as reported by workers and witnesses.

The BP press release of that day admitted only that, “a gas leak was discovered in the area of” the platform when, in fact, it was an explosion of cement and methane, say our witnesses, “which engulfed the platform.”

BP later stated that all operations on the platform were suspended as a “precautionary measure,” suggesting a distant, natural leak. In fact, the workers themselves said that, like the workers on the Deepwater Horizon, they were one spark away from death, with frightened minutes to escape.

While BP called the evacuation a by-the-textbook procedure, in fact, said our witness, “It was total mayhem,” and that a lifeboat rammed a rescue ship in the chaos. U.S. government investigators in the Gulf cite BP’s confused and chaotic evacuation procedures for possibly adding to the Deepwater Horizon’s death toll. Information about the 2008 blow-out should have led to improved procedures and possibly could have saved lives.

More seriously, BP PLC’s official filing to the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission, which requires reporting of all “material” events in company operations, again talked about a “subsurface release,” concealing that the methane blew out through its drilling stack.

Both the safety of quick-dry cement (which some drillers won’t use) and deep water drilling itself were in contention before the April 20, 2010 Gulf blow-out. In fact, the U.S. Department of Interior was refusing BP, Chevron and Exxon the right to expand the area of their deep water drilling in the Gulf over safety questions.

However, BP and the industry conducted a successful lobbying campaign to expand deep water drilling. BP’s Vice-President for operations in the Gulf, David Rainey, testified before Congress in November 2009, five months before the Deepwater Horizon explosion that, “Releases from oil and gas operations are rare.” Rainey assured Congressmen that reliable “well control techniques” such as cement caps will prevent a deep water disaster.

Rainey made no mention to Congress of the blow-out in the Caspian Sea which occurred a year before his testimony.

BP itself states that if not for Halliburton’s quick-dry cement failures, the Deepwater Horizon would never have blown out.  Halliburton defends itself by saying that BP’s methods created air channels in the cement that caused it to fail.

Notably, BP’s court Motion states, “Halliburton has deprived the Court and parties of uniquely relevant evidence.” BP claims that hiding the information about problems with the cement caused the loss of lives.

Kennedy suggests that if Halliburton’s withholding evidence was deadly, so was BP’s concealment of the cement failure in the Caspian.

Stefanie Penn Spear, editor of EcoWatch.org, says that BP’s hiding evidence ultimately led to, “The biggest oil spill in U.S. history. It entirely turned the Gulf Coast economy upside down and threatened—and continues to threaten—the health and livelihoods of the people in the Gulf region.”

How is it that a major oil disaster, a blow-out that shut down one of the world’s biggest oil fields and required the emergency evacuation of 211 rig workers could be covered up, hidden from U.S. regulators and Congress?

The answer: pay-offs, threats, political muscle and the connivance of the Bush Administration’s State Department, Exxon and Chevron.

For that story, read Part 2 of Greg Palast’s investigation BP Covers up Blow-Out—Bush, Big Oil and WikiLeaks on EcoWatch.org.

This article has been re-printed with permission from EcoWatch.org and the author, Greg Palast.

***

My question for you after reading this is: What do you think concerned, thoughtful citizens could (or should) do moving forward to try to prevent this type of incident from ever happening again, in any industry?

Deepwater Horizon Should Have Been Prevented: BP’s Lie of Omission is a copyrighted post from: Almost All The Truth - Exploring how to improve and protect the health of our children and their world through living, learning, and parenting…
Come join the conversation (I love your comments!) on Almost All The Truth, and connect further on Facebook, and twitter!

Maurice Sendak 1928-2012

Maurice Sendak was a true visionary, mildly subversive, and literary magician in the world of children’s books. Sendak’s work celebrates and encourages imagination. His realm was picture books, but as evidenced by the popularity of his darker, dramatic stories and illustrations, he was certainly no ordinary picture book author.

I write about books a lot. You may wonder why an environmentally focused writer would spend so much time on children’s books. Books create a thinking population. Children who can think critically are going to go out into the world and make it a better place.

Sendak’s enduring body of work will live on through the children it was meant for (honestly, go back and read some of his stories as an adult and you will have a widely different perspective). I hope these books live on through my own children.

Thank you for everything, Mr. Sendak.

Top 7 Children’s Books by Maurice Sendak

“And now,” cried Max, “let the wild rumpus start!”

“She climbed backwards out her window into outside over there.”

“Bumble-ardy had no party when he turned one. (His immediate family frowned on fun.)”

“Did you ever hear of Mickey, how he heard a racket in the night?”

“Each month is gay,
each season nice,
when eating
chicken soup
with rice.”

“What would you like to eat?”
“I don’t care!”
“Some lovely cream of wheat?”
“I don’t care!”
Don’t sit backwards on your chair.”
“I don’t care!”
“Or pour syrup on your hair.”
“I don’t care!”

“Alligators All Around, Bursting Balloons, Catching Colds.”

***

Read with a child’s eye, read with wonder, just read.

Do you have a favorite Maurice Sendak story and is it different from when you were a child?

**There are affiliate links to make it easier for you to find these books to add to your bookshelf, but I encourage you to seek them out at your local library as well.

Maurice Sendak: Author, Illustrator, Artist is a copyrighted post from: Almost All The Truth - Exploring how to improve and protect the health of our children and their world through living, learning, and parenting…
Come join the conversation (I love your comments!) on Almost All The Truth, and connect further on Facebook, and twitter!

What makes a mother?

A mother is unconditional love. (Love is a choice.)

A mother is warmth. (Warmth is human compassion.)

A mother is patient. (Patience is how the passionate can persevere.)

A mother is kind. (Kindness is love.)

We believe mothers should be all these things and more. In fact, based on our use of mother to mean the most significant of all, we believe mothers to be everything to us. Mothers as symbols; mothers as metaphors; mothers as living, breathing beings; mothers as our everything.

My wish for this upcoming Mother’s Day is to go big or go home.

I want to see an end to the economic penalization of motherhood and an end to the wage gap for all women. Motherhood should not be an indicator of poverty.

I wish for there to be a global commitment to the idea that society benefits when we help the most vulnerable: mothers and children. Mothers who are valued, children who are healthy, happy, and well-educated are going to be more productive.

I wish for mothers to sleep at night without worrying about their children’s health, their children’s hunger, their children’s safety. We have borrowed the earth from our children and when we give it back it will be unrecognizable. It is entirely possible that this generation of children will have a lower life expectancy than their parents and grandparents.

I wish for the world to be a better place for us all. I wish for love to be enough.

What is your Mother’s Day wish?

A Mother’s Day Wish For A Better World is a copyrighted post from: Almost All The Truth - Exploring how to improve and protect the health of our children and their world through living, learning, and parenting…
Come join the conversation (I love your comments!) on Almost All The Truth, and connect further on Facebook, and twitter!

The final day of Screen-Free Week always proves to me just how little my children need that time watching tv or playing video games. The week always goes so fast and we never even get to do half of the activities I present to them as options. Luckily we have plenty of time to keep trying more things that stretch our minds and bodies.

All three of the kids have managed to collect a fair number of seed packets, from wildflowers to herbs and veggies, they want to plant. When the rain lifts, we head out and do a little digging in the soil. We all do better with a little more connection to nature.

My children are now standing at the window watching an enormous crane lift an equally enormous fallen tree off a neighbor’s roof. That is perspective. Both in what is really important in life and what is interesting to small children. Most of the time they don’t need their days to be scheduled to the minute, nor do they need a plethora of activities to choose from at all times or large numbers of toys that only serve to make a mess (just ask the two who did not want to clean up after themselves yesterday).

Screen-Free Week brings awareness to parents across the country with some of the facts . It brings awareness to children by introducing a new way of thinking about their screen time and what other options are available. It allows for a new perspective.

This may be the end of Screen-Free Week, but it is still a good idea to have a list of activities at the ready for the protests of boredom

Screen-Free Week 2012 {Final Day of a Week-In-The-Life} is a copyrighted post from: Almost All The Truth - Exploring how to improve and protect the health of our children and their world through living, learning, and parenting…
Come join the conversation (I love your comments!) on Almost All The Truth, and connect further on Facebook, and twitter!

My perspective and my kids’ perspective is very different on just about everything in life. So it isn’t surprising that Screen-Free Week is another one of those things.

I took to the halls to find out what the kids here think about what has been the best and worst parts of this week.

Me – “What is the worst part of Screen-Free Week?”

3-year-old – “I don’t like Screen-Free Week.”

6-year-old – “That I can’t play video games.”

8-year-old – “Not getting to watch tv.”

Me – “What is the best part of Screen-Free Week?”

3-year-old - “Smoothies!”

6-year-old - “Nothing. Well actually getting to bake cookies is kind of nice.”

8-year-old - “It saves energy.”

Today’s baseball game reminded me that I believe all those who teach, whether they be parents, coaches, or school teachers, have to meet our children where they are while always challenging them to be more, do more, seek more. For this very reason, I also believe that no one should tell you how to parent, how to teach, because you will have to meet your own children where they are.

With the threat of rain and the very real cold, the middle boy and I decided to warm our kitchen and bellies by baking cookies. I love baking any time, but when it is with just one child at a time, it is even more special. This one loved talking about the math of measuring: fractions, halving a recipe, and what happens when you don’t have the exact right measurement cup/spoon.

Since the other two were clamoring for attention by the time the cookies were cooling, it was decided that a special treat deserved a special place in which to eat them. Can believe that such a fun mama like me has never really taught her children to build forts?

Fort building time it was. And as an example of me attempting to direct my children’s imaginations, unsuccessfully I might (needlessly) add, I thought this would be a great opportunity to sing campfire songs or . No, it had to be a haunted house with monsters lurking outside, ghosts hovering, and lions stalking. Sigh.

Our day was topped by the most American of spring pastimes, baseball. The crack of the bat is heard on fields all across the country. The sound of cheers, the excitement of a big hit or unexpected catch, the smile on his face when he reaches first base… That is the best thing ever.

What is your favorite activity to do with your child, any time?

***

I am partnering with Green Child Magazine to chronicle a week-in-the-life of a family experiencing Screen-Free Week. Each day I will highlight something our family is doing instead of watching tv, playing on the computer or video games. We will spend time together, time independently, time exploring, and likely a little time with not a thing to do. Join us!

Screen-Free Week 2012 {Day 4 of a Week-In-The-Life} is a copyrighted post from: Almost All The Truth - Exploring how to improve and protect the health of our children and their world through living, learning, and parenting…
Come join the conversation (I love your comments!) on Almost All The Truth, and connect further on Facebook, and twitter!

Past the newness of the experience, we are once again firmly down the path of finding our way without the luxury of any screen time. Some children, and adults, are doing better than others and on both ends of the spectrum I see why it is so important to unplug from the technology and plug-in to what is healthy for our hearts and minds.

For the one who hasn’t been too terribly affected by the course of this week, perhaps showing him that we really don’t need screen time at all is equally important with the recognition there are educational opportunities available on the computer.

For the one who is upset because his favorite thing to do after school is play LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean this week tells me that he needs to have other options that are just as pleasurable.

For the youngest who forgets every morning that it is Screen-Free Week, and who is still trying to figure out what constitutes a “screen,” this won’t last, but she has engaged in more independent play after her brothers board the bus.

Screen-Free Week Activities

Smoothies. Smoothies are an easy way to sneak in greens and other nutritious foods, but they are also an opportunity to learn about the aforementioned healthy foods and realize they are certainly delicious. Allowing your children to begin choosing their own ingredients (within reason of course!) and going slowly with the greens with reluctant children. I try to update my Facebook page with recipe ideas that can easily be tweaked for kids’ palates.

Science Experiment. Science can be fun for just about every child, especially when there are possibilities for explosions! My eldest reads about things like the periodic table just for fun and science experiments of any kind are right up his alley.

What I didn’t necessarily expect were the reactions of his brother and sister when watching him work with baking soda and vinegar while adding in a few variables: amount, container, added salt, added pepper, Dr. Bronner’s, and temperature.

I loved this because I could sit back and let them have at it. The ingredients they were working with were safe and they learned a few lessons about asking a question, developing a hypothesis, and testing their idea. For one child in particular, it was also a lesson in learning it is ok to guess wrong. Plus when they inevitably spilled, they cleaned the mess and the floor! Win-win. We did this organically, but it would be easy to take this further based on your child’s interest and age. Teach how to make scientific observations, record data, draw conclusions, and even more types of chemical reactions.

Library. Our family cycles through loads of books and the library is often an after-school or weekend excursion. It is quiet, full of books and puzzles, and keeps our reading lists fresh. many local libraries have several similar programs for kids to take advantage of on rainy days, hot day, or any day: storytime, performances, reading to therapy dogs, and special teen events.

Reading. After a busy afternoon, a little downtime is in order. A leading indicator in our children’s academic success is reading and being read to. Additionally, when children see adults reading for enjoyment, they internalize the belief that reading is fun and essential.

So I set to work on Mockingjay. It was a hardship I tell you. The little ones each curled up in their respective corners, propped with pillows, and quietly(!) read to themselves from the stash we brought home from the library.

Let’s get the conversation started! How is your Screen-Free Week going so far? If you aren’t participating, why not?

***

I am partnering with Green Child Magazine to chronicle a week-in-the-life of a family experiencing Screen-Free Week. Each day I will highlight something our family is doing instead of watching tv, playing on the computer or video games. We will spend time together, time independently, time exploring, and likely a little time with not a thing to do. Join us!

Screen-Free Week 2012 {Day 3 of a Week-In-The-Life} is a copyrighted post from: Almost All The Truth - Exploring how to improve and protect the health of our children and their world through living, learning, and parenting…
Come join the conversation (I love your comments!) on Almost All The Truth, and connect further on Facebook, and twitter!