I use Environmental Working Group’s Cosmetics Safety Database (also known as Skin Deep) to find safer products for my family. If you’ve been following me, you know I spend a lot of time moving the chemicals out and the safe stuff in. Take some time and check the products you use often, you’ll be surprised at how many are linked to cancer. As Annie says, don’t let the words “natural” or “organic” fool you. Currently, there is no law regulating cosmetics and that needs to change.

Along with Annie, I encourage you to join the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. Let’s make our products safe. Democracy in Action makes it super easy for you to let your elected officials know that you want them to support the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010. Please go send your message! Then spread the word about Annie’s film to your friends and family and get them to pass the message on as well.

Go, watch, NOW!

At first thought, it looks perfectly fine and innocent. What a great picture, right? What a lot of us don’t realize is that those goals are actually quite dangerous. If not anchored properly, they can tip over and do at times result in death.

To quote Anchored for Safety, “A gust of wind…a young player…an uneven playing field…In their current design, only 22 pounds of force can bring a 400-pound goal crashing down, injuring – even killing – a player.”

Take a moment to educate yourself on the dangers of soccer goals. Then contact your club to make sure they’re doing what they can to keep all kids safe on the field, both during games and during practice.

Here’s my previous post – Soccer Safety

Homeschool Skedtrack is a FREE online lesson planner, scheduler, and tracking system rolled into one. The heart of the system is the automated scheduling of activities that frees you from the headache of rescheduling everything once an activity/lesson is missed.

You can put in your “students”, all of their courses, they’re schedule, track grades (if you wish), create report cards and transcripts. I spent a month getting everything put in for the next school year, well, not quite all assignments yet. I knew that having a kindy now, the big kids would need something to track what they need to do each day as I would be too busy with the little ones. This is helping TREMENDOUSLY. Each student gets their own log in. They log in each morning and see what assignments are to be done, they check them off when completed. I log in when I can and approve things. I can edit assignments as needed. Subjects can be scheduled whatever days you want, so they don’t have to be done each day. If something isn’t completed, it shows up the next time that subject is scheduled.

To be honest, it was very confusing to figure out at first, but once I got the hang of it, I love it. The kids do as well. They’re no longer waiting for me to decide what subjects to do or make the necessary copies (did all of that at the beginning as I put the assignments in). They’re pretty much on their own, they just need to make sure they grab me when I’m free for those subjects where they need me. My oldest son, T1, knows what is expected of him and for the most part gets it done! I’m not hounding him to stay busy and stop getting distracted. He knows what he has to complete each day, he can do it in the order that satisfies him and he can see what he’s done and what’s left to do.

To continue my lovely organization attempt, I did my own version of Sue Patrick’s Workbox System. She has a great system, but it required too much of me and too much space in my house so I modified it. I bought each child a 30qt Rubbermaid tote to keep all books, binders, papers, pencils, crayons, everything together. They just grab their box and go. When not in use, the boxes go next to my desk so that as I have time, I can look through completed work. No more searching the house for an hour to find that missing book or pencil (yes, that has happened quite often!) I’m finding though, as we’ve used for a few months now, that T1 is getting a bit lazy with returning his books to his box. It’s still better than before though so that’s a plus.