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Winner: Crayola CreativityCast

I am totally amazed at the number of people that came to my blog for this Crayola Giveaway!

Crayola CreativityCast – #73

Shelly said… 73
I buy whenever I see great prices – and stock up. If I don’t need it I then donate it to a drive etc

Don’t fret, you still have another week to try to win my:

Simple Green Pet Stain & Odor Remover

Also, check in next week for ANOTHER Crayola Giveaway!

Congrats, Shelly!  I will be sending you an email asking for your complete mailing address.

Thanks so much to everyone with their great tips!

Fave Fridays – July 31st

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Ok gals, I am walking out the door in just a minute so this Fave Friday will be short and sweet.  Also, the giveaways won’t end until later today so as long as it doesn’t say “closed” it is still open :-)

1.  Beauty Salons – I don’t go very often, like once a year, but I love being pampered when I do go. :-)   I have an appointment in the morning!

2. Shopping – yep, I am going shopping for MYSELF!  How exciting is that?

3.  Date Night – we only have it twice a year and tomorrow night is it!  Yes, that is why I am getting dolled up. LOL!

4.  Dinner Out – no cooking, no planning, no cleaning up!  Plus, this one comes with no kids… man, I am lucky. :-)

5.  Friends – we are going to a small party tomorrow, so will be around lots of adults and zero kids.  It really doesn’t get much better than this!

*Guess what, starting next month I have some giveaways planned for Fave Fridays!  Aren’t you excited?

Easy and Cheap Field Trips!

By: Jean

I am so amazed by the sheer talent of these TOS Crew Homeschooling moms! As a whole, they have brought some very interesting and informative information to my blog and I don’t know what I am going to do when I run out of them! Jean brings us some wonderful information on easy and cheap field trips… this is one massive list of ideas worth keeping! ~Kelli

Summer’s a good time to get out and about. The sun is shining (ok, it might be raining, so make plans to go on an indoor field trip), you’re not doing a lot of academic work or perhaps even following the school calendar, meaning you’re on summer break. Now is a good time to explore.

There are so many opportunities! The girls and I got excited just talking about the things we’ve done, and the things we’d like to do. Putting “easy cheap field trips” into an Internet search engine will yield a lot of possibilities to explore. Just to get you started, here are some ideas, not only for the summer but also the school year.

Community Helpers: Younger children, especially, love to visit places that spark their imaginations. (Question and answer heard around our house when our girls were younger: What do you want to be when you grow up? A fireman-helicopter pilot-farmer!) Call your local fire station to ask when you can visit. One of the moms at our homeschool group recommended that all small children get the opportunity to see a firefighter dressed in rescue gear so that in case of a fire, the child won’t hide from this scary looking person. Other community-helper field trips might involve visiting your local police station, a ride-along with someone from the sheriff’s department, a visit to the food bank (collect a bag of canned food from your neighbors and bring it with you), or a tour of the animal shelter.

Museums, re-enactments, and historical interest: Research your area’s history. Get a map that shows “points of interest,” pack a picnic and take a driving tour of historical markers. Find out about re-enactments in your area and make plans to attend one. (Even though we live on the West Coast, there’s an annual Civil War re-enactment in our area in July. It’s fascinating to wander the camps and talk to the soldiers, and to watch the staged battle.)

Call area museums to find out if they have any free days. There are lots of historical sites in our area, one farm that is set up as it was in the 1880s, another that brings back the 1920s, a grist mill restored to its original 1870s state, and more. Some of our local museums are open free to the public once a month, on varying days. Check with your library for more resources. (Friends of ours who live in a neighboring county can get free museum passes at their public library. Sure wish we could!)

Contact your local chamber of commerce to find out more about your area. You might have some interesting museums and collections that you didn’t know about! For example, in our city, there’s a museum dedicated to Elvis, and a hat museum. Try these phrases in a web search engine to get you started: “(your state or community name) museums” or “(your state or community name) historical society”. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) has lists of museums for a number of states. Just put your state name and the word “museums” in the Wikipedia search box to find local listings.

Group tours: Some places offer special group rates. Find out what minimum number you need and call friends to put together a group. In this way, we were able to tour the Rembrandt exhibition at our local art museum for a fraction of the usual price.

Library and bookstores: The library can be a wonderful place to go on a rainy day. (In our case, it’s a great place to go on a hot day—our local branch is air-conditioned, unlike our house.) Libraries often have special events. At our library, there are read-aloud days, the read-to-the-dogs event, craft activities, a summer reading program, and more. Bookstores, too, often have special events, whether reading aloud, a book club, or a visit by a children’s author or illustrator.

Parks, wildlife preserves and sanctuaries, botanical gardens: Pack up your field guides, binoculars (or a magnifying glass) and a picnic and take a walk on the wild side. Find a trail and take a nature walk. Go to a park and have a contest to see who can identify the most trees, or bugs, or birds, or…

We’re blessed to have several places in our local area that have been set aside for wildlife. Some have self-guided tours, some have park rangers and regularly scheduled tours, some have nature trails with educational markers.

Our local zoo has one free day a month, on a Tuesday. The zoo has so much to see that we usually have to decide ahead of time just which animals we’re going to visit. Our zoo provides handouts for educators; if your local zoo doesn’t do this, you can make up your own, or find a form on the Internet to fill in, concerning an animal’s scientific name, habitat, diet, habits, and more, with an area for a student’s drawing of the animal. Bring a sheaf of forms and a clipboard for each child, and you have an educational experience as well as fun.

Check out county, state, and national parks in your area. As a matter of fact, the National Park Service designated three free weekends this summer, when you could visit any national park without paying a fee. The next (and last, for the summer) date for free access to national parks is August 15-16.

Businesses: What interests you? How about your children? What kind of work do friends, relatives, and acquaintances do? Contact local businesses and ask for a tour. In this way, we’ve toured a shop that builds and restores stringed instruments, a candy factory, a cheese factory, a large-scale bakery, a factory that produces chips and snacks, a newspaper office, a pet store, a veterinary hospital, a symphony orchestra rehearsal, and more. An online resource that connects educators and local businesses is the Field Trip Factory (http://www.fieldtripfactory.com), but you can also call businesses yourself, or talk to friends to find fascinating field trips.

Community Events: Check with a local radio or television station for their community events calendar. In some communities, you’ll find an event calendar in a local newspaper or family-oriented magazine. In the summer months, you might find free concerts or plays, craft days, festivals, celebrations centered around local crop harvest times (have you ever had garlic ice cream at a garlic festival?) and markets. A farmer’s market makes a fascinating field trip!

You can add spice to your study of geography and cultures by checking out local ethnic festivals. Just a few of the festivals in our area include Scottish, Polish, Chinese, Greek, Swiss, German, Vietnamese, Hispanic, and African American.

Volkssporting: Go for a walk! There are walking clubs all over the world. We were first introduced to Volkssporting in Germany, where you could find walking, biking, and swimming events. You can find year-round walks and special events through the American Volkssport Association (http://www.ava.org/). You don’t have to be a member of a walking club to walk. You can keep track of cumulative distance and even get souvenirs for completing a walk. When you participate in a Volkswalk, you follow a marked trail or map. Some walks are 5 km (3 miles), some are 10 km (6.2 mi) and some are longer. We’ve been on walks through scenic areas, public gardens, historical locations, and festivals (Oktoberfest, a Crab Festival on the coast, a Huckleberry festival in the mountains, and Christmas lights walks, for example).

Virtual Field Trips: Probably the most convenient, least expensive field trip is the virtual field trip, armchair travel that takes you to faraway places at the click of a mouse. You can explore museum collections on the other side of the world! Many museums and historical sites offer online educational programs. Type “virtual field trips” in an Internet search engine and away you’ll go.

With all these opportunities, you could take a field trip every week for a year and only have scratched the surface! Why not get started now?

About Me: I am a homeschool mom of 3 girls, ranging in age from 11 to 24. We’ve been homeschooling 16 years (I can hardly believe it!). Some of the things we enjoy doing include doing handicrafts (knitting, crochet, sewing) and learning to be interpreters at a local historical site, walking, swimming, horseback riding, reading, writing, and making music together. You can find some of my homeschool curriculum reviews at http://eclectichomeschool.org/reviews/reviewer2.asp?reviewer=50 and more on my blog at: http://homesweethomeschool.wordpress.com/ — Stop by and drop me a line!


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Giveaway Tuesdays – July 28th

Can you believe this is the last Tuesday in July?  Yikes!  Anyway, don’t forget to list your giveaways and check out the others listed. :-)

Crayola CreativityCast giveaway – ends July 31st- USA & Canada

Simple Green Pet & Stain Remover – ends Aug 7thUSA & Canada

Sorry this is late, y’all!  With me being out of town again, I just plain forgot. LOL!  :-)

Don’t forget the rules:

1.  To list your direct giveaway link on my site, your giveaway must say “This giveaway listed on 3 Boys & a Dog” with link to my site: http://momof3boys3702.blogspot.com

2.  Name section should include blog name, giveaway title, end date

3.  Link section should include direct link to your giveaway

4.  Giveaways should be family friendly

If the rules are not met your link will be deleted.  Have fun with it and don’t forget to sign up for all the other listed giveaways!  Also, tell your friends! The more the merrier!

Simple Green Pet Stain & Odor Remover Review & Giveaway

**THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED**

How many of you remember my last post on Simple Green cleaners? I still use them, but Denise sent me something that is a perfect compliment to their existing line… Simple Green Pet!! *Available for Dogs and Catsprod_pet_dog_lg

This stuff is amazing! It cleaned my carpet and left a pleasant smell. You know all those sprays that say they get rid of smells so you buy yet another new product? You go home, scrub the floor and spray everything in site: couch, curtains, floor, air, etc and take a whiff… everything smells nice like a hospital or lilacs. Then, you go into another room or outside for an hour or so and go back into the afore-mentioned room and find that it once again it smells like 12 dozen wet puppies live in there? Well, let me tell you girls, this stuff actually works!

A Few Hot Specs:

  • Non-Toxic
  • Biodegradable
  • Prevents resoiling
  • People, pet, and surface safe
  • Works on new AND old stains

What does it clean up?

  • Urine prod_pet_cat_lg
  • Vomit
  • Feces
  • Scent-Markings
  • Mud
  • Dirt

What do you think? What to get your hands on some?

TO BUY: Visit www.simplegreen.com

To win your very own:

#1. REQUIRED - leave a comment telling me why you need Simple Green Pet and if you have a dog or cat.

#2. Put an article on your blog telling your readers to come check out my review and contest. Be sure to link to this post as well as to Simple Green’s website: http://www.simplegreen.com/

#3. Spread the word about this review by: email, forums, twitter, or putting the link in a meme.

#4. Follow my blog.

#5. Subscribe to my RSS feed.

#6. Follow me on Twitter

#7. Fave me on technorati

#8. Put my button on your blog.

#9 & 10. Get green and clean e-mail updates, including Good News and special offers. Bottom left of the page. (2 chances!)

*Be sure to leave a comment per each thing you do

Winners will be chosen using Random.org from all qualifying comments. Winners will be announced on Friday, August 07, 2009.


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