Comments (5)

By Mom Unplugged, February 5, 2010 11:43 am

!!! Happy Birthday !!!

Three years ago today (February 5th, 2007) Unplug Your Kids was “born.”

Unplug Your Kids was originally supposed to be a shopping blog. My very first blog post ever was about the Skwish toy that all my babies have dearly loved.

Soon I also got into book reviews. Then I started talking about family life without TV. Next came crafts and other TV-free activities. Now I feel myself slipping into a new phase, although I am not exactly sure what that will be yet.

Like life itself, Unplug Your Kids has changed, hopefully for the better. I have changed also, again, hopefully for the better.

• In three years I have written 632 posts and received 4,136 comments.
• I have deleted 31,337 spam comments. (Thank you Akismet, I love you!)
• My teeny little counter at the bottom of my home page currently registers 331,690 visitors.
• My most popular day was Tuesday, October 21, 2008 with 4,166 visitors (crashed the server!).
• The most readers ever on line simultaneously were 248 on October 20, 2008 (nope, my web host was NOT happy with me in October 2008).
• My most popular post: Easy Homemade Musical Instruments with 24,246 views.
• My most commented post (that was not a giveaway or a TV Turnoff Challenge): Blog Fears with 41 lovely, supportive comments!
• For anyone who knows or cares about such things, Unplug Your Kids is a currently a Google page rank 4.

Astonishing!

Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who reads Unplug Your Kids and please join me for some virtual cake and ice cream!

Comments (0)

By Mom Unplugged, February 4, 2010 7:19 pm

Olivia the pig is in a play…does she earn the lead role of Fairy Queen? Umm, no. Much to her dismay, she is cast as Cow Number Two!

I recently agreed to review Simon and Schuster’s new Olivia book, Olivia Acts Out. When my copy arrived in the mail, we were all very excited.

Although my children and I love all the original Olivia books by Ian Falconer (we own them all!), this one is different. It is adapted by Jodie Shepherd and based on a screenplay by Pat Resnick (illustrated by Patrick Spaziante). Screenplay? It’s based on a TV show! Having no TV, I didn’t even realize that Olivia was now a show on Nickelodeon.

Although we were unaware of the television connection, I really did like the book as a book (rather than just a tie-in), and so did my children. It’s cute, it has humor, and Olivia is the same old funny, competitive, full of character piggy. There is no need to make a connection to a TV show to enjoy this book.

The format of the book is different from the original ones. Olivia Acts Out is a large board book. The cover is solid, and the pages are sturdy cardboard. This sturdiness is ideal for younger children.

The other new element that stands out are the illustrations. The book is in full color! The originals were mostly black, white, and red (red is clearly Olivia’s favorite color). Although I loved the simplicity of the original books, these illustrations are also very engaging. Olivia still likes red clothes and accessories, but multicolor makes the characters look more realistic. There is a texture to some of the drawings which should add extra interest for very young children. The cover is flocked for some fuzzy-texture enjoyment too.

Olivia Acts Out seems like a great book for younger Olivia fans. The humor is not quite as subtle as in the originals, and the colorful, textured illustrations add lots of extra interest for little ones. My kids enjoyed it.

Thank you Simon and Schuster!

Comments (1)

By Mom Unplugged, February 2, 2010 11:51 am

$1,350.03

That’s how much a class of thirteen 6 to 9 year-olds raised for

Partners in Health’s Haiti relief fund

with a simple Book & Bake Sale!

If they can do it, you can do it too!

How they did it:

Two weeks ahead of time:

• They hung a sign on the school door asking for donations of books and baked goods for our Haiti fundraiser.
• They placed an empty box in the school entryway for collecting the books.
• They also put a sealed box in the lobby for any impromptu donations.

Day before, set-up:

• The day before the sale they accepted baked goods.
• After school they sorted the books into children and adult piles.
• They organized the children’s books into separate boxes and baskets based on level (picture books, readers, chapter books).
• Everything was set up on tables in our tiny school entryway with a simple pricing system posted.

The Sale:

• The morning of the sale, they set up the baked goods outside the door on a table (it was so cold and snowy that there was no danger of spoilage!).
• The school is on a side street, so they put out a sign on the main road nearby. They also put signs in the grocery store and the library. All signs said clearly that proceeds would be for Haiti.
• The sealed box went to a prominent location on the book table, with a basket nearby with a few small bills and coins for making change.
• They hung a Haitian flag and also posted some information about Partners in Health so any interested people could read more about where their money would be going.

Post-Sale:

• I helped them sort through the leftover books and we separated the ones that were fairly recent and looked pretty new.
• We took these “good” leftovers to our local bookstore so the owner could buy any that would work for her used book section. She ended up buying almost all of them, and even gave us more than her normal cash price since we were doing this for Haiti! (Be sure to let a bookstore know that you are selling for Haiti)
• The kids packed up the other books and we put them in storage for our annual school yard sale.

Counting:

• Practical math lesson: The children counted the cash and were SO excited, especially when they found a $100 bill in the box!
• Their teacher counted the checks for privacy reasons (NOTE: For ease of accounting, we made sure people made their checks out directly to Partners in Health and not to our school).
• I took the cash to the bank and traded it in for a cashiers check made out to Partners in Health.

And voilà! Not a whole lot of effort really, but now we have a nice donation to send off to Partners in Health and the kids feel GREAT!

Why not try it with your school?

For more fundraising ideas, please read Help Your Kids Help Haiti.

Comments (14)

By Mom Unplugged, January 31, 2010 7:17 pm

Welcome to the new Monthly Unplugged Project!

February’s Unplugged Project theme is spiral. Remember, the theme will be up for a month now instead of just a week. I will close this linky on March 1st and also open up a new one for a new theme.

The “rules” are basically the same:

• If you do a spiral Unplugged Project, then please link to your project post, not just your blog. I am trying to build a library of project ideas, so we want people to always be able to find your project in the future.
• If you don’t do a spiral project, then please DO NOT LINK. I will remove any links that clearly do not fit the theme at all, no matter how nice your blog is. Sorry, nothing personal, but I just want to keep this organized.
• A link back to Unplug Your Kids in your project post would be greatly appreciated! :-)
• If you have the time, energy, and inspiration to come up with more than one project for spiral, then feel free to link to each spiral project separately in the linky.
• If you have no blog, then please leave a comment on this post with a description of what you did. The more ideas we get, the better!

The Unplugged Project is very flexible. The point is to be creative and have fun!

(I will have the buttons available later in the week.)

Gorgeous nautilus shell photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

THE LINKY IS NOW CLOSED. THANKS TO ALL WHO JOINED IN!

Comments (1)

By Mom Unplugged, January 29, 2010 2:03 pm

It appears to be unanimous! Thanks so much for all the great comments and feedback. We’ll keep the Unplugged Project, but it will become monthly instead of weekly.

• On the first day of every month, I’ll post the theme.
• Reminders: I’ll put the theme prominently in the sidebar and I can probably also put on one of those countdown timers to let everyone know how many days are left. I’ll also write a reminder post when only one week is left.
• Anyone who wants to do more than one project per theme can link to each of their projects.
• On the last day of the month, I will close down that project’s linky.
• I will make some sidebar buttons available to anyone who wants to take one, however you certainly don’t have to.

NOTE ON LINKIES:

A few of you mentioned that you were confused as to how to link. For anyone who has never linked before and who has been trying to link to an old project theme, you will find that you can’t. That is because I have shut down all the old linkies since I can’t monitor them all continuously for spam. Links already there can be followed, but no new links can be posted.

When the new, open linky is there I think you will find it fairly obvious. You just enter your name, and the link to your post, not simply your blog, so people can always find your project. To link to a post, click on your post, that should open up your post as a page. Copy the address from the address bar in your browser and paste it in my linky. The address should usually be something like http://www.”Your blog”/”Your Post,” (or other words, dates and numbers).

Thanks again, and I hope to see you all February 1st for our next Unplugged Project theme!