Saturday, October 24, 2009

PSA time!

PSA for Moms or anyone who's purchased Baby Einstein DVDs in the last 5 years. Baby Einstein is issuing a refund or exchange for their DVDs. The FTC has issued a complaint because of the movie's "educational" claims. Children under the age of 2 (the intended audience) are recommended to have zero screen time.

Print out the following form *at this link*, send in your movies and receive a B.E. book, CD or refund!

Unfortunately we have all VHS Baby Einsteins and can't take advantage of this. But we'd be willing to accept any donations from your refunds! :)

Sunday, October 04, 2009

An old story revisited

This morning our pastor spoke on a select few chapters of the book of Joshua. He briefly touched on the story of Jericho, but those brief moments were enough to bring back an unforgettable story from Evan's early pre-school years.

One spring our church offered a parenting class. Jim and I signed up, partly to try to gain new insights, but partly because they also offered free child care for the all day seminar! Evan and his friends had an entire unit that day on Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. They had the Bible story, they sang songs, they watched the Veggie Tale version of the story, they built a wall of cardboard and made horns to knock it down, the whole nine yards. By the end of the day the boys were thoroughly immersed in the tale of Joshua!

A few weeks later I was watching two boys about Evan's age who had also been in that class. With three boys in the three to four-year-old bracket eventually the noise and squirrliness level got to the point where I sent them outside. I gave them the following instructions, "go outside and march around the garage seven times shouting the entire time and see what happens!"

A little while later one of the boys came back in the house and told me that the garage window was broken! It turns out that God did not move the garage in the same way He moved the wall of Jericho so the boys took matters into their own hands. They found some plastic toy golf clubs and started trying to break down the "wall"!