QUESTION: Which one of these photos represents 120 calories?

ANSWER: All.

Do you feel the need to lose a little weight after the excesses of the holidays? Believe it or not, according to a new study, simply watching less TV could cause you to burn an average of 120 more calories per day!

That doesn’t sound huge, but according to the New York Times, that is the number of calories burned on a one mile walk.  It is also the number of calories in these servings of foods.

According to Dr. Jennifer Otten, lead author of the study:

“We need a longer-term study to see if this would be an intervention that would help with weight loss, or even weight gain prevention.  But if you add it up over time, it’s equivalent to walking eight miles a week.  Over a year, it might help prevent weight gain of 12 pounds.“

Why does unplugging have this effect? According to the study by Dr. Otten published in the December 14-28 of the Archives of Internal Medicine, adults who cut their TV viewing in half spent more time in light physical activities, or even couch-potato activities that burn more calories than TV-watching does (simple “unplugged” activities like reading, playing board games or scrapbooking!).  Their eating patterns did not change*.

The study was based on 36 overweight and obese adults who watched at least 3 hours of television per day.  20 of those people were asked to cut their viewing in half (enforced through a TV lock-out device).   Armband accelerometers measured the movements of all participants.

*NOTE:  An interesting inference from the NY Times Article is that children who cut back on TV actually DO EAT LESS TOO!  Would kids benefit even more than adults by cutting TV viewing in half??

Interesting links:

What Does 120 Calories Look Like? (Be sure to look at the 38 photos at the bottom of the page too)

What Does 200 Calories Look Like?

Click Off the TV, and Burn More Calories

THE STUDY: Effects of Television Viewing Reduction on Energy Intake and Expenditure in Overweight and Obese Adults – A Randomized Controlled Trial

!!! 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!

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!

$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.

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 you 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 seperately 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.

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!

Do your kids have questions about Haiti and the relief effort there?  Do they want to know more about how to mobilize their schools and communities to help?

Then they might be interested in participating in (or even just watching) an online discussion tonight with Dr. Jim Yong Kim, physician, president of Dartmouth College, and one of the founders of Partners in Health (PIH), a leading aid organization in Haiti.

My good friend (and the most well-informed person I know) Wishy,  just let me know about this great opportunity for students of all ages (elementary through grad school).  It will take place tonight at 5:30 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Students can even send in questions ahead of time by email to sdhr at dartmouth dot edu. The subject line should contain the words: “JYK TALK: Your name, your school”.

The talk will happen via live online video stream at the PIH website:

5:30 PM Eastern Standard Time

LIVE VIDEO STREAM LINK

++++++++++

PS.  Our “Book and Bake Bonanza for Haiti” is scheduled for this Thursday.  I’ll let you all know how it goes!  If you are interested in some ideas on how to get your kids involved raising money for Haiti, please read my post:  Help Your Kids Help Haiti.

I have been a bit burned out on the Weekly Unplugged Project lately.  We just don’t seem to get to it every week and it has become more of a Blog Burden for me, then a Blog Benefit.  Plus, public participation seems to be waning along with mine.  Sigh…  Time for a change.

I have heard from a few people who are still interested.  I am still interested too, but now that my children are older I can no longer get to it every week and it MUST NOT become a chore. The point is for it to be fun.   So, I have a new plan.

How about a Monthly Unplugged Project?  I will announce a theme on the first day of the month, and close the Linky on the last day of the month.  That will give everyone (including me) a month instead of a week to come up with a project, do it, write about it,  and link to our posts (and/or leave our project in a comment).  Those with more time and enthusiasm could do as many projects as they want for each theme.

Over the years I have also been contemplating creating “Unplugged Project Buttons” that people could download and which would link to the project.  Button display would be entirely optional of course, but I have had some requests from people over the life of the project, so I guess interest is out there.

After about two years, I am finally getting to the buttons, and have even created a few!  Once I figure out some of the technical issues, I’ll put them out for any interested readers to take.

How does it all sound?

Today we sit stranded at home after a week of snow days and over four feet of snow!  The hungry birds hop busily about the bird feeders trying to fuel up before a cold night’s sleep.  It seems a good day to write that post about edible ornaments for the wild birds.

As I mentioned not long ago, every Christmas Eve the kids and I sit down and make edible tree decorations to hang on our trees outside as gifts to our wild birds.  We call it our Bird Christmas, but you could have fun making these at any time of year.  The squirrels often make off with many of our treats, but I don’t mind!

(By the way, although wire and dental floss are easy, if I can, I like to use natural cotton yarn or string for hanging since this is recycled by birds in the spring for cozy nests!)

Classic Pinecone Feeders: Send the children out to collect pinecones.  The bigger and more open, the better.  Mix peanut butter and bird seed together in a bowl.  Tie string or yarn around the pinecones to use for hanging (I find that it is a bit less messy to do this step before covering the pinecones in peanut butter).   Roll the pinecones in the mixture using a spoon to push it down between the scales if necessary.

VARIATION:

• No pinecones where you live?  Then use bagels!  Spread with peanut butter, sprinkle on birdseed, and the hole makes them really easy to hang.

Orange Cup Feeders: An adult should prepare the cups. Cut oranges in half and scoop out the insides to set aside for a healthy snack or a fruit salad (a grapefruit knife makes this job easy).  Use a metal skewer, knitting needle, or large darning needle to poke three approximately equidistant holes around the edge of the orange cup, near the top.  Thread string or yarn through the holes forming a hanger made of three strings.  Now for the kid part: Fill the cups with a peanut butter/birdseed mixture.

VARIATIONS:

• Fill with softened suet and birdseed, although peanut butter is more kid-friendly.  Suet is a great alternative for kids with peanut allergies though.

• If you have orioles in your area, fill the cups with grape jelly.  Orioles like jelly and they are attracted to the color orange!

• Easiest option – Don’t hollow out the oranges and just hang orange halves as is.  Orioles, robins, mockingbirds, tanagers, grosbeaks and cardinals like the fruit.

“Bird Tinsel”: Decorate shrubs and trees with strings of cranberries and popcorn (no salt or butter).  Thread the treats using a large needle and string, heavy duty thread, or dental floss.  Our popcorn didn’t string so well this year for some reason (perhaps our needle was not sharp enough) so we ended up just doing cranberries.  Use frozen or fresh berries.  I prefer frozen.  Frozen are less messy to string and thaw quickly once threaded.

VARIATIONS:

• Try dried fruits such as cherries, craisins, blueberries, papaya, apples or apricots.  How about peanuts in the shell?
• String fresh orange slices.
• Try other fresh berries such as strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, or rasberries.
• Raisins come in many colors and sizes.  Experiment with different varieties to make pretty patterns.

FUN TIP:  When threading a variety of foods, have your children create repeating patterns.  The garlands will be pretty to look at and your children will exercise their art and reasoning skills!

Bird “Cookie” Ornaments: You can use cookie cutters to make shaped ornaments for your wild birds.  The easiest variety are made with stale bread (although fresh is fine too, but might be harder to cut).  Use a cookie cutter to cut shapes out of the bread.  Poke a hole near the top using a skewer or straw. String yarn, string, dental floss or wire through to make a hanger.  I have even hung these using a wire Christmas ornament hanger poked directly through the bread.  Very easy.

VARIATIONS:

• If you want to get fancy, you can decorate your “cookies” with peanut butter and sprinkle on birdseed designs.  The seed will stick to the peanut butter and you’ll have instant “fancy” ornaments that the birds will love!

• For those with peanut allergies, or for a change, brush the bread shapes with egg white.  Sprinkle with bird seeds and bake on a baking sheet at 300 degrees for about 5 minutes (this will cause the seeds to stick to the bread).

• Melt suet, mix with birdseed and pour into greased, shaped molds (or lined muffin tins).  Put in freezer to harden, or outside if it is very cold.  Use a skewer to poke a hole through when they are getting solid but not yet truly hard.  Remove from molds when frozen and hang outside.  (NOTE:  You can use commercially available rendered suet, get some from the butcher, or make your own suet mix from a recipe in the links below.  Be careful of vegetable based fats, they are not supposed to be as healthy for birds.  Also, ordinary animal fats can spoil and melt easily if the temperature is not cold enough.  Think – greasy mess on your deck and birds with indigestion.  More on all these issues here:  The Great Crisco Debate).

• Try wiping your bread ornament in bacon grease.  I once read somewhere that Blue Jays and squirrels love this.  Perhaps a good way of recycling sink-clogging bacon grease?  The bread plus bacon grease would probably work a lot better in summer than straight bacon grease which melts very easily.  Also, since bacon grease is salty, it is advisable only in moderation and when a fresh supply of water is available nearby.  I have a heated bird bath that is hugely popular with my birds in winter, since it provides fresh water when all other sources are frozen.

Bird Goody Bags: Save your nylon mesh produce bags (the kind fruit, tomatoes, or onions come in).  Stuff them with suet, seeds and dried fruit.  You could even put in shelled peanuts or other nuts, unsalted is best.  Make sure they can fit through the holes – crush them if necessary.  Hang outside.  You can decorate these with fancy bows if you want them to look festive.

VARIATION:

• Make a Spring Bird Goody Bag and stuff it with nesting material.

USEFUL LINKS:

• Try these fun bird recipes!
• More suet recipes
• The Great Crisco Debate

2010 WINNER – When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

2010 HONORS –

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip M. Hoose

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (YIPPEE!! Bought this for my 9 year-old for Christmas!)

Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick

2010 WINNER – The Lion & the Mouseby Jerry Pinkney

2010 HONORS –

All the World illustrated by Marla Frazee, written by Liz Garton Scanlon

Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, written by Joyce Sidman

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!!

PS: How well do you know your children’s book awards? If you can’t tell your Theodor Seuss Geisel Award from your Pura Belpré Award, then you can read up on them all here.