Pin It to Win It from www.pinterestmama.com #1: Willow Play Kitchen

Hello Readers! 

If you were directed here by http//www.pinterestmama.com or if you came by way of @pinterestmama on Twitter, you are in the right place!

It's me! I am @pinterestmama and www.pinterestmama.com is my new venture!

What is Pinterest Mama all about?

Well, let me tell you:

Pinterest Mama is a place you can use as a go-to source on how to make the most of your Pinterest experience. For those who are already familiar with Pinterest, you know how awesome it is!
I'm un-offically the world's biggest Pinterest fan and want to help you make the most of your Pinterest experience.

But for those who are not yet familiar with Pinterest, here is the exact quote of what Pinterest has to say about themselves from their own website (This is the exact quote from their own website):

"Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard. "

"Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests."  Source: www.Pinterest.com 

Simply stated, Pinterest is an awesome place where you can Dream BIG!
You can dream - pin - plan - organize - make a reality!
So my thought was to create a place to share ideas on how to make the most of Pinterest.
There are so many possibilities for using Pinterest!
Well, as an intro. of what Pinterest can do for you, here is a beginning idea for those of you who love giveaways:

Giveaway Prize:
Willow Wooden Play Kitchen and Metal Utensils Set.
Perfect for a an unschooling family, or a Waldorf - Play Based - Reggio Emilia  - or Montessori inspired classroom or homeschool!
Also would be great for a nonprofit that works with young children!
This is just a gorgeous set, has two shelves for storage, is made of pine and is 37" tall 22" wide and 12" deep. No ply wood or MDF. Solid, sturdy, and handcrafted.
The Willow Wooden Play Kitchen retails for $250.00
The Stainless Steel Cookware Set retails for $22.50
So, the prize package is a wonderful prize worth $272.50!!!
Wow!!!

Here is the thing:

You have to either pick this up locally or make plans for shipping or pick up. 

This package does not include shipping or packing.

If you live somewhere that is not close to where we are near Tampa, Florida, then if you want to win, you will have to make your own arrangements as far as how this awesome prize will get to you! You could pay to have it shipped or you could make arrangements for it to be picked up on your behalf if say you have relatives or friends planning to head to Florida during the next few weeks.

A little on the back story of this lovely set:
Had purchased this set thinking that it would be something neat for some friends of mine, but the shipping was going to be somewhat cost prohibitive.
So when I contacted Pinterest, purchased www.pinterestmama.com and set up @pinterestmama, decided that what might be a great way to get the word out about Pinterest would be to give this away to a lucky winner!!!

Update: 

This giveaway is now closed. Comments are now closed.
The winner, as determined by Random.Org, is comment #19, submitted by tlb.

Congrats to tlb!

tlb said...

Would Love to Win! Enjoy your blog!! and pinterest looks very informative and Fun for all! Willows products quality look wonderful and play stands could be used for so much imaginative play, Thanks!

Drawing started 11/10/2011 and ended 11/25/2011.
Winner, tlb,  will be notified on or by 11/28/2011 following the review of all submissions.
Winner was chosen randomly via Random.Org


Some Disclaimers are here, but for the complete disclaimer post, please click to read here.

Contacted Pinterest and have permission to go as Pinterest Mama, @pinterestmama and www.pinterestmama.com as long as it is very clearly stated that I am not an employee of Pinterest.

Also contacted Willow Toys and have sent them a link to this giveaway!

Here are some photos of Big Bro and Little Bro in our kitchen with this lovely prize! 

 

Wouldn't this be awesome to win???

Fabulous Willow Kitchen Set!

Stainless steel utensils set is in this bag.

Gorgeous Willow Play Kitchen!

Stamp from Willow showing that it is authentic.

My goal is for all of you to want to Dream BIG...
Follow your heart and pin what makes you happy and what you feel passionate about as far as creating - visualizing - and learning for your family and for yourself.

Reggio Emilia Wednesday: A Little Something to Think About...(Thanks, Alfie)

As I was working on preparing my post for Reggio Emilia Wednesday, happened to come across some You Tube clips of Alfie Kohn. Very interesting to think about what he is saying in his talks.
Here is one that resonates in my soul: Achievement vs. Learning.
Kind of hit home this week, as recently, while we were eating dinner, Big Bro posed the question,"What does A, B,C, D mean"?
Asked him to elaborate a bit, as I did not know if this was his attempt at a joke along the lines of, "Why was 6 afraid of 7?...because 7 8(ate) 9...ha ha ha...or his attempt at a math question, or a reading question...so, he added, "You know, what the kids in public schools get...the letters...does B mean Bad? Or does it mean Better"? at which time, Little Bro chimed in that B cannot mean bad, as there is a B in his name...B must mean better.
Then, Big Bro continued,"What happens if a kid gets one of the letters"?
He was curious bordering on nervous about what these letters would mean.
Was along the lines of his curiosity about what happens when a kid gets chicken pox...
Asked him why he had a sudden interest and he said he heard neighbors talking about the letters at the park and he wanted to know what they mean and why a kid would want a particular letter.

At that very moment, it dawned on me that the boys have absolutely no concept of grades. 

They just learn for the sake of learning, and they love learning for the sake of learning, not for some arbitrary letters. 

The only thing that came close to a concept of grading for Big Bro is that when he went to VPK (preschool for 4 year olds here), back when we still worried about socialization so we thought sending him to VPK would be a good thing for him, right???, his teacher used to put smiley faces on the tops of all of his papers. She also gave all of the "Good Boys & Girls" a Skittles candy every day that they were "Good"...
Big Bro liked that at first but then, since he was getting Smileys & Skittles all of the time, and he finally asked if he could please do something a little more interesting, she brought in a second grade math workbook and started giving him sheet after sheet after sheet from the workbook to keep him busy while the others finished their work...
Big Bro went from being happy doing the math he enjoyed to totally dreading it and actually, when we started homeschooling, he told me that he loved learning about everything but math...
His interest and love for this subject had been sucked right out of him.
It has been so refreshing to see Big Bro come full circle and love math again.
He loves learning for the sake of learning and so does Little Bro.
Homeschooling drawing on inspirations from Reggio Emilia, Montessori, and a few other approaches thrown into the mix has made this a way of life for our family. We work on projects as a family. We see the value in lifelong learning and learning while living.
Experiential learning, not workbooks and skills and drills.
The children look forward to their work, which is largely play based, and get up happy and ready to take on the day.
Well, later in the day, will post some photos our family completing the final steps of the project we have been working on since shortly after Thanksgiving. It has been an awesome, long range project for our whole family and we look forward to sharing it with you...just need a little more time to wrap the last bits of the project up enough for some photos...
Until then, here is the You Tube clip of Alfie Kohn and his very wise two cents regarding achievement vs. learning, plus a little cheer for this wise man:
Go Alfie, Go Alfie...
Go, go, go Alfie!!!



Please feel free to comment on this post, as well as to link up if you have anything related to Reggio Emilia or even something related to Alfie Kohn and Unschooling, as he is more along the lines of Radical Unschooling, but hey...just gotta love the guy for his thoughts on education...and a shout out to a new blog I discovered called Homeschooling Belle. Jenny has a big family and she and her hubby homeschool via un-schooling, and are Radical Unschoolers. Her take on life is very interesting, so be sure to pop by and check out her nice blog and her thoughts about un-schooling. She actually has a different Alfie Kohn clip embedded in her blog, so pop over and hear more from Alfie.
Also, for this week's link ups, though, please just add your links through the comments section, as I have yet to decide whether to continue with Linky for weekly link ups or whether to try out something new like Inlinkz...if you have thoughts on using either link up service, please leave your thoughts about this too:)

Fun with Friends and A Little Bit about Planning & Themes

Recently, some wonderful friends came to visit us.  
We all had a terrific time, if I do say so myself...

This was their first time to Florida so we tried to show them the sites and sounds of the Sunshine State.
From Orlando to Clearwater, from Disney princesses to Florida Aquarium fishes, from splash parks to fireworks, we covered a lot in a little over a week.
We had a great time, but would you believe that it was warmer in Canada than it was here for most of their visit???

Manitoba was warmer than Florida...for real!!!

The cooler temps made it more possible to do more, as heat was not really an issue here...just trying to dodge some storms here and there.
We had an awesome time together, as the kids got to hang out and be kids, the daddies got to play some golf, and the mommies got to get in some time shopping and drinking coffee drinks. Both families had a ball checking out what Disney has to offer, as well as watching some great 4th of July sky shows that made it worth the rain delay. 

In addition, we actually got to work a bit on some plans for next school year...

We both decided that in a home setting, whether a family is homeschooling or doing a smaller in-home preschool program, that themes help with organizing the materials.

Realistically, in a home, you only have so much space to have materials...you cannot possibly have out everything unless you either have a huge space or very limited materials.

Since my dear friend and I have both accumulated many resources (we both feel very blessed by the materials we have for our children), we both decided that using a theme approach would help with organization.

Much has been written about themes in early childhood and elementary school programs, as well as the stand that different philosophies of education seem to take either for or against using themes. 
But for homeschooling families, regardless of a family's educational philosophy, organizing by theme can make the load lighter when it comes to having an orderly, functional, home learning environment.

Where things get tricky is the concept of who drives the theme...the adult or the child....I am going to dive into this a little more in-depth over the next few days, but for now, here are a few thoughts:

With Reggio Emilia, it is the classroom community as a whole that drives the theme.
Things are much more spontaneous and not as much advance time is spent planning themes, although far more time is spent observing. Themes do pop up in a Reggio Emilia inspired program...more on this soon...


With Montessori, some who fully embrace the Montessori philosophy will argue that it is not theme based...I say yes and no to that...it is not all cutesy themes but realistically, if you are learning about parts of the frog, you are going to want to bring in some books to your room about frogs, along with having works out on the shelves like frogs three part cards, nomenclature cards, frog puzzles, and some other frog items, such as maybe a model of a frog skeleton. The same would apply if you are learning about the parts of a bird, horse, flower, apple, fish, etc. so maybe the themes are not as overt, but you most likely will see some logical connections (I say themes) in Montessori classrooms.

With Charlotte Mason, to me, from what I understand about Charlotte Mason education, themes tied in with nature make sense, as do those with themes tied in with virtues. So, if a child is doing a nature study and is interested in the birds or wildflowers seen while spending time outdoors, then it would make sense to then tie these in as themes into the homeschooling day, right?
Living books with themes that relate with a child's nature study and copywork...seems to work well together...

With Unschooling, generally, a family ideally is following the child's interests, passions, and pursuits, so in these homeschooling situations, there very well might be themes if the child is absorbed by a certain topic of study. The underlying idea is that everyone in the family is held as an equal and that it is a very democratic, loosely flowing sort of way to learn, where the passions drive not the curriculum...
In public schools, there was a popular silent reading program that went by the acronym "DEAR", which stood for "Drop Everything And Read."
I always think of Unschooling more as "Drop Everything And Do", although that comes out with the not-so-nice sounding acronym!
But for those who actually take Unschooling to its purest form and really follow the child's lead, and embrace whatever it is that the child is most passionate about at the moment as what is the course of study, then this is what they do...the only thing is that for me, if we actually were 100% Unschoolers and actually did "Drop Everything And Do" each and every time Little Bro or Big Bro wants to explore something new and different, the acronym might prove to be reality, as I think that I would drop of exhaustion trying to run out every day to just be able to go with the flow and come up with totally awesome experiences that tie in with ALL of their interests day to day....

With Classical Education, themes are global and rotate on a multi-year cycle. The focus is on ancient times so you have to make some sense of this massive timeline and having a theme for the year becomes a necessity.

With Waldorf, from what I have been told and have read, you follow the natural rhythms, so in a sense, there will be themes tied in with the seasons.

So, in one way or another, the concept of organizing by theme could feasibly work in most homeschool settings...now, to make sense of how to do that and to decide who and what drive the themes, well more on that soon...