The Give-away Winners are......

The give away winners are:

Heather, Mandie, Angelica and Anna.  Congratulations!  Please email me your addresses and I'll get them sent to the publishers who will mail you your CDs.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Cathy

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A Give-Away is Here!

I'm feeling guilty because I have 4 CDs I haven't given away yet.  So here's your lucky chance to win a free Christmas gift!

Eclipse is a great acapella men's choir. The album features "ten new arrangements that are both inventive and engaging".

Wee Jambore and Playground
Hootenanny are two CDs that are
produced by musical parents whose children
attend the same preschool together.
Really fun to listen to.




Last, but not least is another Daddy plays guitar lullabies. This daddy really know how to play them!

 

 If you haven't been a winner before, please leave me a comment before Thursday.  Some of my readers have mentioned that they can't leave a comment.  So if this is happening to you--I'm sorry.  Instead you can email me at: cathyplaysmusic@gmail.com and I'll enter you into the drawing.  I like comments--hint, hint, so please email me or leave a comment here.
Thanks!
Cathy

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Parenting Tip - Boycott Commercials-Make Your Own!

Commercialism.  Oh my gosh.  Are you sick of the tv commercials showing every toy imaginable and tired of your children begging you for everything they see?  If only you could ban tv watching from Oct through Dec.  I know lots of you do ban tv watching, and I applaud you.  But when you take something away, sometimes you have to put something back in.  Here’s an idea.

 

Let your kids watch videos.  NO, NOT VCR movies on tv. I’m talking about home videos.  All those videos you take at picnics and birthdays and holidays.  Make a folder of them and let your children watch them over and over again.  That’s what one of my daughters does.  She doesn’t have a tv, but her children love to watch family videos.

 

With this idea, you are actually dovetailing in several areas.  You are promoting and preserving family history by helping your children bond with the cousins and grandparents and their siblings they see on the movies and by reminding them of family traditions and family fun times.

 

You are encouraging memory recall and sequencing skills.  Kids are great at remembering details and when they watch the same family videos over and over again, they notice more details, recall the sequence of events and can see cause and effects that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

 

But what if you don’t have any family videos?  Start taking some!  Better yet, let your children take some.  Give them your camera (not an expensive one, of course) and have them make a home tour video so you can remember your house in years to come.  Have them make a video of a sibling singing a song or saying the Pledge of Allegiance or reciting a poem.  Have them make an informational or educational video on “How to Make a Peanut Butter Sandwich” or “How to do a Somersault on the Trampoline.”  Let them make their own commercials trying to sell something.

 

Hey wait, what a great gift idea.  Buy an inexpensive camera for your child and see what fun he will have.  Creativity will ooze from his snapping photo finger tips. You never know, this just may be the stimulus for the next great Steven Spielberg.

 

Parenting Tip - The 12 Days of Christmas

Tis the Christmas season.

 

When  I look back on Christmases when my children were at home, the Christmases I remember most with fond memories are the years when we did the 12 days of Christmas for someone.  Several years in a row we did what we called, The Funny 12 Days of Christmas.”  My friend told me about it and I’ll pass it on. If you decide to do this, make sure you buy everything you need for the 12 days to begin with and type out the message for each day in advance.  That way you won’t be scrambling at the last minute to buy something and find you’ve run out of time (I speak from experience!)

 

On the first day of Christmas, your pixie friends gave to you,

Some pear treats from the tree the partridge flew away from. ( a can of pears or fresh pears)

 

On the second day of Christmas, your pixie friends gave to you

Some  yummy turtle doves (candy turtles on top of a bar of dove soap).

 

3^rd day….some chicken noodle soup, compliments of the three French hens.

 

4^th day…a telephone message pad designed by the four calling birds (telephone message pad)

 

5^th day…five golden rings ( a can of sliced pineapple rings)

 

6^th day... the eggs we found when we were looking for the six geese that laid them

 

7^th day…the bubble bath left over from the seven swans after they went swimming.

 

8^th day…the chocolate milk we got from the eight maids milking eight brown cows .

 

9^th day…some canes used by the nine ladies who were out dancing all night—they needed the canes to get home! (candy canes)

 

10^th day…some vitamins recommended for use by the 10 Lords we saw out leaping (or give them Ben gay instead)

 

11^th day… some pickles since the pipers stopped piping and started picking a peck of pickled pickles (we changed it to whistle suckers one year and other years used candy bars and said the pipers decided to “hum a few bars”)

 

12^th day…the drumsticks we wished the drummers had used when they were drumming (pretzels sticks—plain or dipped in chocolate).

 

Whatever you do this year to celebrate, make it simple, involve your family and enjoy it.