The National Football League has announced a new campaign to help reverse the trend of childhood obesity. The NFL Play 60 Program encourages kids to be active for 60 minutes each day through school and community events. They are also sponsoring the NFL Play 60 Invention Contest, to inspire kids 6-13 to invent their own game, activity, piece of fitness equipment, football-themed innovation, or training device for a chance to win $5,000, a 3-day/2-night trip for two to the Grand Prize Event, and an NFL Prize Pack. Two finalists and 12 semi-finalists will also receive prizes. The contest site offers brainstorming tips and inspiration to get you started.

Many NFL players and other athletes utilize a simple and extremely inexpensive piece of fitness equipment to help them stay in shape – a jump rope. Jumping rope has gone in and out of fashion since ancient Egypt, when both men and women jumped over vines. It wasn’t until the 20th century that jumpers incorporated the sing-song games and rhymes that many of us associate with childhood and particularly girls.

As a fan of simple and inexpensive games and equipment, as well as the origin and continuation of playground games that are passed down through the generations through oral history, I love everything about jumping rope. As inspiration, here are three fitness benefits to jumping rope. It can be easy to fit jumping rope into your 60 minutes of daily fitness. Below are some fun jump rope games that will keep you singing and laughing as well as help keep you fit. They are games my mom taught me and I taught my daughter. Who knows, you might invent the next jump rope or other fun game.

You’ll need:

One regular jump rope for one person, or a longer jump rope for two turners to turn, while a jumper (or more) jumps.

The jumper jumps over the rope each time it hits the ground. Jumpers can jump in one jump each turn or one big jump followed by one smaller jump each turn. A turn ends when the jumper fails to jump over the turning rope. The following are classic, easy jump-rope games. They don’t have tunes, so much as chants, so they are especially easy to pick up.

A My Name is Alice

This is a fun add-on game that also calls for a little creativity and is different every time

The first jumper starts with the letter A, and fills in the blanks in this sentence, however he or she chooses:

A my name is ____ and my husband’s name is ____ and we live in ____ and we sell ____.

For example: A my name is Alice and my husband’s name is Al and we live in Albuquerque and we sell Apples.

If the jumper hasn’t tripped up, he or she moves on to the letter B, such as:

B my name is Betty and my husband’s name is Bob and we live in Boise and we sell Beans.

Jumpers move through the alphabet as long as their turns last. New jumpers usually start with A (that makes it easy to compare how far each gets) and choose new names.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear

This jump-rope game is a little more advanced, as it requires player to pantomime the activity they are singing about (to the best of their abilities) as they are jumping.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around,

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground,

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, tie your shoe,

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, that will do!

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, go upstairs,

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say your prayers,

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn out the lights,

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say good-night!

The following games involve counting as far as jumpers can get during each turn.

Mabel Mabel

Mabel, Mabel, set the table,

Do it as fast as you are able,

Don’t forget the Red. (pause) Hot. (pause) PEPPERS!
On “Peppers”, start turning the rope doubly-fast, counting a point for each turn. The jumper jumps until they miss and are out.

Cinderella

Cinderella, dressed in yella

went downstairs to kiss a ‘fella.

By mistake she kissed a snake.

How many doctors did it take?

1, 2, 3, ..  (Count each turn of the rope successfully jumped.)

 Apples, Peaches, Pears and Plums

Apples, peaches, pears and plums.

Tell me when your birthday comes.

January, February, March, .. (Count one month for each turn of the rope successfully jumped.)

Have an idea for a NEW way to get active? Encourage your kids to enter the NFL Play60 Invention Contest! Enter today!

Want a free NFL Play60 poster? Email info@bkfk.com with your mailing address to request one!

These jump rope games were adapted from Fed Up with Frenzy: Slow Parenting in a Fast-Moving World, which contains this and 300+ more fun family activities.

This post is sponsored by NFL Play 60. The views expressed are my own.

Jump rope photo: Flickr Creative Commons

The post NFL Play 60 Encourages Kids to Be Active, Prizes Awarded for Original Games appeared first on Slow Parenting.

My family has long been fans of making and sailing paper boats, an idea we got from our beloved book, H.A. Rey’s Curious George Rides a Bike. In the book, George secures a paper route, which leads him to make and sail a whole flotilla of folded-newspaper boats. Over the years, we’ve taken our origami boats down to a local creek, where they indeed sailed along once released, on the gently flowing spring stream. We were thrilled to learn that our local Mill Valley Public Library was teaching kids how to make their own origami boats (which they cleverly dipped in wax), before holding a boat race in the local creek.

What better way to celebrate Children’s Book Week than by making a version of Curious George’s paper boat and joining local children in releasing the boats into a creek for a race?

Follow these directions to make your own paper boat.

You might also like:

How To: Make a Paper Boat
Celebrating 100 Years of the Mill Valley Libary
Rich in Kindness, Poor in Money: All-of-a-Kind Family Children’s Book

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

The post Origami Boat Race appeared first on Slow Parenting.

The At-Home Summer Nature Camp eCurriculum, from A Natural Nester, contains creative and easy-to-follow ways to keep kids engaged throughout the summer and to make the most of family time together.

The Curriculum includes 8 weeks of kid-friendly lessons, outdoor activities, indoor projects, crafts, recipes, field trip ideas, children’s book suggestions, and more in a full-color PDF you can read on your computer screen or tablet, or print out. The program is designed to be flexible and fit with your family’s schedule and surroundings, so you can incorporate the ideas any time it works for you.

Fun weekly themes to help kids discover and enjoy the natural world include:

While designed primarily for children ages 5-11, the ideas are fun and adaptable for all ages.

These are the talented and inspirational camp counselors:

I can’t wait for summer!

The post Have a Summer Nature Camp at Home appeared first on Slow Parenting.

I’m so pleased that Patty Born Selly, educational expert and consultant at Small Wonders, parent, Small Wonders blogger, and long-time advocate for early childhood nature play, has written a beautiful, inspiring and very thorough book, Early Childhood Activities for a Greener Earth.

After making the case for nature fun and offering tips for overcoming common obstacles to getting kids outside for exploration and play (“the kids are too wild”, “this is a logistical nightmare”, “we don’t have a nature area”), Selly dives into instructions for countless fun activities that inspire children’s exploration and care of nature and help them learn about weather, air, water, food, health and reuse. Each activity lists a recommended minimum age and offers detailed descriptions, as well as tips for further exploration. Many are very simple to do, such as a Sound Walk, a Color Search, a Seed Sort, or a Puddle Hunt, while offering windows to deep exploration and fun.

A few other wonderful projects include a Water Cycle Garden, in which kids create a greenhouse to observe the movement of water through plants and soil. Wind Ribbons, Kites, Rocket Balloons, and Paper Pinwheels are among the activities that help children explore air. Sunshine Sculptures, Shadow Tracing, and Raindrop Rainbows help children explore sun and rain. I love the Scent Chase, in which children experience their senses of smell with scent jars. I also love the Soap Making activity, which utilizes the melt-and-pour method and is part of a group of activities designed to help children think about healthy choices in cleaning and personal products.

Each activity includes the national science education standards that that activity meets. Each chapter includes information about the theme (such as “Weather, Climate and Energy”) suggestions for teaching and discussion of the impact of (weather) on people and of people on (weather), so that readers and the children in their lives can get a very clear understanding of the Earth’s ecosystem and their place within it. This is a very thorough, inspiring and fun book that will help parents, teachers, youth leaders and others spark children’s curiosity about and knowledge of the natural world.

Redleaf Press is offering a 30% discount on Early Childhood Activities for a Greener Earth from now through June 30, 2013. To take advantage of this deal, follow this link and enter the coupon code GREENEARTH.

You might also be interested in:

Patty Born Selly’s Top 10 Tips for Teaching Kids about the Environment
The Simple Joys of Tree Climbing, Small Wonders blog
Hear Patty Born Selly on the Mom Enough radio show
Felt a Bar of Soap
Have a Cloud Race
Keep a Moon Diary
Kids Outdoor Adventure Book Makes You Want to Go Out and Play
Children & Nature Network

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I have long had a deep and unexplained connection to the Kentucky Derby, culminating in actually getting to attend “Derby” in 1983. Horse racing is a grand and beautiful tradition which caps each year with the “Run for the Roses” on the first Saturday in May and the succeeding two races in horse racing’s Triple Crown. What do I love about the Kentucky Derby? The pomp and ceremony, the hats!, the sing-along of My Old Kentucky Home, the traditional juleps and foods, the perceived smell of Kentucky bluegrass, the beauty of horse country, the dedication of trainers, jockeys and owners, the history of “The Sport of Kings”, the spring in which it occurs, the trumpets that herald the start of the race, the breathless announcers (“and they’re off ..”), the names of horses and the fact that in some places you can bet on them, and of course the race itself: 1 1/4 miles, just over 2 minutes, of blistering thoroughbred beauty.

While I don’t watch a lot of TV, I love event TV and of course, involving my family in the event in kid-friendly ways, which we enjoyed for our Super Bowl party and our Oscar party and during the Summer Olympics. There are many ways to involve kids in a Derby party as well.

Have everyone wear a fun Derby hat, the more outrageous the better. Have a few hats for those who come without one.

Dress up in spring dresses, suits with bow ties, and gloves.

Write the names of all the Derby horses on slips of paper. Put slips of paper in a hat and have everyone draw one or more to root for. If you like, add a friendly wager of $1 or so to the pot for each horse and distribute the pot based on Win, Place and Show percentages (such as 10% for Win, 6% for Place and 4% for Show.)

Teach older kids some math by displaying a board with the names of the horses and the morning odds. Discuss how those odds impact the winnings.

Make and decorate with tissue-paper flowers in spring colors or Derby-rose-red.

Everyone loves dainty, fun and kid-friendly finger sandwiches.

Make and serve yummy blueberry corn muffins.

Bake and serve soft pretzels so people can feel like they are at Churchill Downs.

Derby parties call for a classic pecan pie.

Mint juleps have been a mainstay of Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby for nearly a century. Make kids’ versions with lemonade and mint.

You might like these other Slow Family posts:

The Roses of Sonoma

Photo Friday: Gather ye Rosebuds

Celebrate May Day with Floral Wreaths, Crowns and Baskets

 Photos: The Polo House, Now You Know, New Braunfels Feed, Boston.com MyRecipes.com, Jeffrey Snyder

The post Host a Kid-Friendly Kentucky Derby Party appeared first on Slow Parenting.

Brightly colored tissue- or crepe-paper flowers make a cheery gift or decoration for May Day, Mother’s Day or any time in spring and are a great way to fill a May basket. These are so easy to make, and the results are so pleasing, don’t be surprised if you end up creating a whole bouquet.

You’ll need:

Sheets of tissue paper or crepe paper, in a variety of colors, any length
Pipe cleaners or wire
Wooden dowel or cardboard tube from a dry-cleaning hanger
Floral tape or green paint

Wrap floral tape around the dowel or tube, or paint it green and let dry.

Layer 5-6 sheets of paper.

Fold the pile accordion-style (the long way, if there is one), approx. 1” thick, if using standard sheets of tissue paper.

Wrap a pipe cleaner or wire around the center of the papers, leaving two equal-length ends.

If desired, cut the ends into round or jagged shapes to create decorative petals.

Gently separate the layers of paper and fluff them until they are fairly evenly distributed.

Attach the flower to the stem with pipe cleaners or wire.

Note: Smaller flowers make great embellishments for gifts. Skip the stem and tape or tie flowers to gift wrapping or ribbon.

This craft is adapted from Fed Up with Frenzy: Slow Parenting in a Fast-Moving World, which contains this and 300+ more fun family activities.

Other Slow Family posts you might like include:

Celebrate May Day with Floral Wreaths, Crowns and Baskets

Loom and Finger Weaving

Make This Easy Tie Dye Project

The Roses of Sonoma

The post Make Tissue Paper Flowers for Mother’s Day and Spring appeared first on Slow Parenting.

When I speak to families about slowing down and enjoying family time, one of the things that comes up over and over is screen time. Screens dominate many of our lives, often to a greater degree than we wish. While many of us parents can attest to the addictive nature of technology, we struggle with ways to reduce it in our children’s lives.

It is perhaps a bonus, then, that the wonderful Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has proclaimed April 29 – May 5 to be Screen-Free Week. Sometimes this kind of added incentive is all we need to inspire us to action. More than once, parents have told me that their children’s favorite memories include episodes of family game nights by fire- or candlelight during power outages. You can create your own “power outage” by participating in Screen-Free Week. And, even if you don’t go completely screen-free, you might want to pledge an hour or so a day or night to have some good screen-free fun. Who knows? That fun might just become a habit or your own favorite family memory.

Here are 12 ways to celebrate Screen Free Week:

Make a Paper Boat and sail it in a creek, pond or bathtub.

Make a Bird Feeder. Our local birds have gone nuts for ours and we plan to make more.

Make easy Wreaths, Crowns and Baskets to celebrate May Day.

Enjoy Loom and Finger Weaving. You can do this anywhere!

Keep a Moon Diary as a way of observing the night sky.

Slow your pace and have a Cloud Race.

Get a jump on summer by making S’Mores. Camp under the stars if it’s warm enough.

Start a Backyard Garden.

Bake your own Soft Pretzels. These are really easy and fun.

Play a different fun board game every night. We like Boggle, Sorry, Taboo, Pictionary, Scrabble, Mancala, Masterpiece, Monopoly and Hi-Ho Cherry O.

Discover The Joy of Quiet.

And, if you’re really missing your screen? Make your own Shoebox TV!

You’ll need:

Shoebox or a square-shaped box and lid
Cardboard tubes, from paper towels, foil or plastic wrap, or wooden dowels
4-10 pieces of printer paper (8 ½ x 11”)
Drawing materials
Scissors, craft knife and tape

Cut a large opening for the TV screen into the bottom of the box, leaving an even border of 1” or more all around.

Holding the box horizontally, cut two holes on the top, each about 2” the side and 2” back from the cut-out section. Your dowels or cardboard tubes should fit into the holes.

Cut two bottom holes that line up with the top ones.

Cut the cardboard tubes, if necessary, so that about ½ “ sticks out on the bottom and 1-2” on top.

Decide on a story you want to tell that primarily uses pictures.

Place the paper horizontally (cutting, if necessary, to fit the tube length) and draw one picture on each page, adding words, if desired. Leave at least 1” on each paper edge and at least 2” on the left edge of the first picture and the right edge of the last picture.

Lay the pictures out, left to right, in the order they will appear. Turn them over and, keeping the order, run a piece of tape down each back seam where two pictures come together.

Tape each end of the paper story scroll around a tube or dowel and roll  on the back sides of the scroll, so that the paper image is at the front of the tubes and the paper is tight and sized to the box.

Place the tubes into the holes and place the lid on the back. Decorate the front of the TV, if desired.

Gently turn the tubes to make the pictures move.

Slow Tip: You can also use images from magazines or comic-books to create your story.

You can make multiple story scrolls and change them through the back of the box. In doing so, you’ll join nearly every ancient civilization in telling stories using scrolls, starting with the Egyptians, who created them on papyrus.

The Shoebox TV craft is adapted from Fed Up with Frenzy: Slow Parenting in a Fast-Moving World, which contains 300+ more ways to enjoy screen-free family fun.

 Related posts from Slow Family Online:

Eight Fun Things to Do While It’s Still Summer

Six Fun Family Activities to Enjoy This Weekend

Hooray for Low-Tech Toys

Graphic: Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, Photos: Susan Sachs Lipman

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Bullying is defined as aggressive or unwanted behavior. Most school-aged children find themselves on one end of a bullying relationship at some point in their lives. Bullying can take many forms. Abuse can be physical or verbal. It can take place in person or online. It often takes the form of social isolation.

Beyond Differences is a teen-led grassroots organization that was formed in Marin County, CA, specifically to combat social isolation, which is often a precursor to more aggressive bullying behaviors. The group leads powerful peer assemblies in middle and high schools. I’ve had the privilege of seeing the very impactful work that the Beyond Differences leadership accomplishes. Social acceptance can make the difference between a pleasant school experience and a torturous one. Here’s one message on the Beyond Differences site from parent Sheri Mowbray:

Their message of inclusion and care helped bring my daughter out of a serious depression and allowed her not only to feel less socially isolated, but empowered her to want to take a leadership role to help others in the same circumstances.

A cornerstone of Beyond Differences’ work is the No One Eats Alone program, which encourages students to include others who might be experiencing social isolation. The educational and psychological benefits of the program go far beyond the week in which it typically occurs. Schools report more compassion and inclusiveness among students year-round. Using tool kits on the Beyond Differences web site, the program can be replicated anywhere in the world.

Here are tips for parents with adolescents who suffer from social isolation from Amy Wilner, PsyD.

You can take a stand against bullying by learning more about Beyond Differences and similar groups. Please join me in taking this pledge from Take Part to add your name to the growing list of people who pledge to end bullying and social isolation.

The post Beyond Differences: Pledge Now to End Bullying and Social Isolation appeared first on Slow Parenting.

Many of us are trying to do our part to help the planet. In our family we’ve seen that thoughtful consumption, use and reuse can also help us lead slower, less expensive, more purposeful, and more family-centered lives.

The biggest influence on my relatively green habits has been my daughter, Anna. From a young age, she showed great concern about our environment and the world she would inhabit.

Plastic waste in the oceans and in our landfills upset her so much that she embarked on a lifestyle of extremely limited consumption of plastic, oil, paper, water and other non-local or non-sustainable goods, which she has followed for about the last eight of her 17 years. She bikes to school and errands.

She buys little and often reuses or upcycles clothing and other items, by embellishing them or piecing them together to create new items.  She uses reusable bags, water and food containers, and water-bottle holsters, like these:

Dovetailing with Anna’s desire to use less is a desire to spend less. She sees these two practices as intertwined. Saving resources results in financial savings, and vice versa. Both also result in time savings, and the ability to spend precious time engaged in fun hobbies and with friends, rather than shopping and consuming.

Through Anna I’ve learned that, as conscious as many of us try to be, there is much work to be done, if we really want to change our habits and be thoughtful consumers and good stewards of the Earth. She recently sat down with me to offer her top ten suggestions for reuse, using less, and ultimately saving money, while conserving natural resources.

1. Bring your own shopping bag, instead of using plastic

“Only buy as much as you can carry.”

2. Bring your own utensils

“Camping sets are very inexpensive at army surplus stores.”

3. Turn off faucets and lights when they’re not in use

4. Don’t spend money just because you can

“You will end up wasting money. Focus on what you really need. Put yourself on a budget. Sometimes you have to decide whether you want one large thing or multiple smaller things.”

5. Try to go to local stores and buy local goods

“This eliminates imports and the transportation they require.”

6. Bike or walk instead of driving

7. Get out in nature

“This will immediately make you want to recycle and help our environment because you’ll appreciate where you are.”

8. Use your local library

9. Buy second-hand clothes and upcycle them

and the most important thing you can do:

10. Stop buying plastic bottles

Americans purchase 29 billion plastic bottles of water each year. This takes 17 million barrels of crude oil to make, enough fuel to keep one million vehicles on the road for a year. The energy used to pump, process, transport and refrigerate bottled water takes an additional 50 million barrels of oil each year.

The creation and transportation of plastic causes much of the world’s pollution. Bottles in the landfill take centuries to decompose and many end up on our beautiful shores and in our oceans. It’s easy to see why limiting plastic consumption figured in three of Anna’s ten recommendations.

It’s been humbling and refreshing to be enlightened by my own daughter and to watch her grow into a thoughtful and resourceful young person. I’m delighted to think that there are many more like Anna who are conscientious consumers and educators. Her tips can easily be put into practice by anyone who wants to make small changes that will have large ripple effects on their lives and the life of the planet.

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman and Poor Planet

This post originally appeared in Frugal Mama.

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The Lyrid meteor shower is due for its annual appearance, and is expected to peak late Sunday night, April 21, and early Monday morning, April 22, over North America. Even though the near-full moon may render much of the annual show invisible to us, Space.com tells us that away from city lights, 20 meteors per hour could be visible.

The Lyrids (pronounced Lie-rids) have been observed for more than 2,500 years — during 687 B.C., Chinese records noted that “stars fell like rain”. Aside from some similar key years, notably last year, when my family scanned the skies and then joined many other enthusiasts for NASA’s Up All Night NASA Chat, and 1982, when 90 and more shooting stars were seen for a period of hours, the Lyrids have been a minor meteor shower.

Can’t watch it at the exact time? Don’t worry — astronomers tell us that meteor showers can last for hours before and after the peak time.

What is a meteor shower?

Meteors occur when the Earth passes through streams of dust and debris from ancient comets which have entered the Earth’s atmosphere. (When the comet has flown close to the sun, its dirty ice evaporated and that, in turn, caused the comet dust to spew into space.) The Lyrid meteor shower hails from the comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher, which orbits the Sun only once every 415 years, even though we see the Lyrids that result from it annually. The orbit of this comet appears to lie in the constellation Lyra, the source of the name Lyrids.

How to watch the Lyrid Meteor Shower

Meteors are best viewed with the naked eye. Sky watchers should grab a chair (ideally one with some neck support), and a blanket if it’s cold, and head outside where you can see the largest patch of night sky possible (with as little city light as possible), and look up.

Because meteor showers last for days before and after the projected peak, try to scan the skies during the surrounding days, if you can.

This American Meteor Society page is a great site for exploring more about the Lyrids and where and when to see them in your local night sky. Their Meteor Shower Caldendar lets you get ready for future meteor shows, like the popular Perseids, which will hit this year on August 11-12.

Photo: Composite of 2009 Lyrids over Huntsville, Ala. (NASA/MSFC/Danielle Moser)

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