Pachas Pajamas Double Album Review and Giveaway!

This a Sponsored Post. I received compensation in return for an honest review. All opinions are my own

As parents we want our children to be creative and explore their talents. Technology offers opportunities that past generations couldn't have envisioned. Unfortunately it is also creating a generation of kids who more connected with electronic devices than they are with nature. A team of creative minds have developed a way to use entertainment to educate children about some of the most pressing environmental issues of our time.

Pacha's Pajamas: A Story Written By Nature, is an enchanting story told through lively musical narration tracks and 12 inspiring songs. Pacha falls asleep in her animal print PJs.  In her dreams she is transported to a place where all the plants and animals on her nightwear are alive and she is disguised as a little gorilla. The jungle creatures are sad because their world is being destroyed before their eyes. Pasha and her new friends need to use all their talents and creativity to in order to bring balance to Planet Earth.

This fun and inspiring soundtrack features 70 diverse artists from 4 generations. Some are established performers like Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Cheech Marin. If you have young children you are likely to also recognize Genevieve Goings from 'Choo Choo Soul' on Disney Jr Channel. A good number of artists are up and coming young performers with amazing stories of their own.  Album one has already won both the 2013 Peoples' Choice Fan Favorite award and the 2013 Parents Choice recommended award.

Our favorite track was ‘Horses Don’t See Colors’ (featuring Felecity).  It is a catchy country tune that sends a simple but moving message about racial harmony. You can listen to a sample here.

 

I have caught myself singing this song and humming the theme song on several occasions. The music and narration makes the kids feel like they are part of the show. It is not a difficult task to imagine the vibrant world that Pacha is seeing. The kids loved the Platypus and his song ‘Use What You Got’. I loved the message of embracing what makes us unique instead of trying to change to fit in.

Other themes in the album include the conservation of the Earth's Resources, healthy living, and problem solving. The songs allows kids to comprehend some important topics and gives them a way to express their own concerns about the planet . It has already inspired some great dinner conversations in our home! I would recommend this album to all families and educators.  Adults will love the values it promotes and Kids will have a blast rockin' out with nature.

Be sure to visit the Pachas Pajamas website, while you are there...

• Sample some of the tracks
• Download a free song
• Print off Coloring Pages featuring the characters in the Pasha's Pajamas book
• Play Nature detective and spot the differences in scenes from the book
• Buy a cd or digital copy of the album

Win a copy!!

We are excited to be able to be able to offer 10 readers a chance to own a digital copy of Pacha's Pajamas: A story written by nature. These have been generously provided by Balance Entertainment.
The Giveaway is open to readers any where in the world, it will end at 12am CT Nov. 19. Please use the Rafflecopter form below to enter.


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all images used were from

Butterfly Unit Study & Lap Book

Our Earth day inspired project focused on helping local Monarch butterflies. If you haven't seen all the fun and learning we have been having then please go and check out Our Save the Monarchs posts and Pinterest board.

Miss K wanted to know more about all the local butterflies not just the Monarchs. All her reading and observations culminated into a colorful lap book.

The final product contains the printables from two free lap book as well as some of our own mini books.

Free Butterfly Mini Helper lap book by Home school bits

Butterfly Lap book from Home school Share

Title Page

We had just finished with a Hans Christian Andersen unit so Miss K added this quote from 'The Butterfly' to her title page.

The Lifespan tri-fold book was for Miss K to record the number days 6 different species spend in each stage of their life cycle. The Host plant flap book listed 20 different plants and the Caterpillars that use them as food sources.

Life cycle, Host Plants, Life span

Anatomy, Anatomy Glossary

The Anatomy of the Butterfly had us all amazed. Miss K would have happily spent several weeks learning about each species. A trip to Butterfly house got everyone even more excited!

Butterfly feeding

Butterfly or Moth, Wingspan, Texas Butterfly species.

Miss K is on the look out now for a pocket Butterfly Identification guide (and a flower guide...and one for trees). At the moment I am trying to decide between the Caterpillars, Bugs and Butterflies: Take Along Guide for younger kids or get one that will be good for years to come like the Peterson First Guide to Butterflies and Moths.

Mini Piwi had a week of Butterflies too!

Preschool Butterfly science and Food art

We have been seeing a lot of Monarchs and Painted Ladies in the park this week. What Butterflies have you noticed near you?

Preschool Butterfly Science Unit

The Piwi''s just can't seem to get enough Butterflies and Insects. It seems our Save the Monarch project has ignited a shared love of (most) things creepy and crawly - Hairy spiders, Scorpions, Worms and Fire ants aren't so popular...

Everyday for nearly two weeks we have been moving our Milkweed seedlings into the sun in the morning and putting them undercover at night. While we are outside the kids have taken to observing the Roly poly bugs and Lizards that are out basking in the spring warmth. Some days they collect some beetles to watch for an hour inside other days they just like to watch them go about there work in the bark chips.

 After reading Eric Carle's Hungry little Caterpillar we used the cutting practice printable to make a poster of the caterpillar/butterfly life cycle (she also added some extras because 'they are 'friends'). We loved this Bug tot pack from 3 Dinosaurs.

The Dollar store had these cute Spring Sun catchers. There are so many great things there at the moment, little gardening aprons, bug study kits, kids garden tools, seeds.....we had to get out of there fast before I had the urge to fill up my basket. I only went in to get art supplies for a parcel we were sending overseas...

 I hadn't been printing out too many worksheets lately because Mini Piwi wasn't enjoying them. I added a couple this week to my folder of 'stuff' and she spotted the cute pictures and asked to do them. I was amazed how much more control she now has over the pen she insisted on using! These sheets are from 3 Dinosaurs and Two Teaching Mommies.

While tidying up the bookshelves the Piwis found books they hadn't read for awhile. Mini Piwi was fascinated by a kids cook book. She actually slept next to it for a few nights and would wake up asking to make something out of it. Her favorite creation was a Yogurt & Berry 'Butterfly' 

My other Dollar store find was a little bug observation set.  Mini Piwi loved finding this in her tray. It included a 'bug catcher', plastic magnifying glass and magnified bug holder. She just used the catcher on the pretend bugs because I was worried she might squash live one with it.

'Plastic Bug catching'

 By the end of the week our 'Sharing board' was full of color!

I captured my favorite moment: Here are two friends sitting by the window..Perry is pretending to be part of a Montessori activity while Mini Piwi is playing the Hungry Little Caterpillar app.

What is the warmer weather inspiring you to do?

Happy Earth Day: Planting our Milkweed seeds

For Earth day we are sharing our progress in our 'Save the Monarch' Project. For the original post about our plans click on here or on the picture.

This past weekend we planted all our Tropical Milkweed seeds. Thank to the inspiration from Organic Aspirations we planted them all in mini 'greenhouses' made from plastic berry containers. The kids had a fun evening scooping and raking dirt.

Here is our little nursery of 100 Pink Tropical Milkweed seedlings.

We already fully grown plants waiting for the Monarchs because these seeds won't be ready for hungry caterpillars for at least 45 days. We ordered the plants from Educational Science. They arrived very quickly and were nice and strong.

  Even Perry was satisfied with the packaging....

They have a nice sunny spot and are just beginning to flower.

So long as the sunny spring days continue, we should have lots of strong seedlings to feed the caterpillars. There should also be plenty left over to re-pot and give to our neighbors. As Miss K pointed out, by doing this, even if we move before next spring the Monarchs will still be able to visit our neighbors' plants.

We have been reading a lot since we started this project and as we were about to plant the seeds we read something that made us have second thoughts...

In March Texas Butterfly Ranch posted about the efforts of the Native American Seed Company to restore Native milkweed.

'Gardeners and butterfly fans committed in theory to propagating and planting native milkweeds (and I consider myself among them) have been vexed in practice by their persnickety ways.   That’s what often drives us to plant Tropical Milkweed, the nonnative Asclepias curassavica that is easy-to-grow, widely available and the favorite of Monarch butterflies for hosting and other butterflies for nectar. While the practice bothers some scientists and native plant purists, our rationale is that Monarch caterpillars need to eat.   In short, it’s better to provide SOME host plant for migrating Monarchs than NONE as they pass through Texas.' Source

 We decided to check the nearby parks and green belts for Native Milkweed. We have yet to find any. Talking with the locals it seems that a lot of the area has been cleared for new Houses, Apartments and Retail expansion. We felt, like Texas Butterfly ranch, that the Monarchs will need something in in our part of Texas even if (for the present) all we have to offer is the tropical variety.

Source

We are going to spend some weekends a bit further from home looking for Native milkweed to collect seeds from. However it looks like this could be easier said than done....
Persnickety Texas Milkweeds may not lend themselves to Mass Seed Production

We also intend to contact our local council about the issue of Milkweed depletion.

How is the Native Milkweed doing in your area? If you need some help, to identify the native milkweed in your State, the University of Minnesota has some good resources here.

A great Earth 'day' project: Save the Monarchs!

Source

We had been planning a unit on recycling to celebrate earth day this year. That, was until I recently I read an article about the decline in Monarch Butterfly numbers.

We love Butterflies and I couldn't imagine not seeing Monarch's in our gardens or at the park in the Summer!

Butterflies were also the reason we began this blog nearly two years ago. For Easter 2011 the Piwis received a butterfly garden. The blog was a way to show family how our painted lady caterpillars were growing. Each day Miss K would type a few words into the title of the post and I would add a picture. Eventually we released the butterflies in the Community gardens.

I showed Miss K the article about the Monarchs and she asked how we could help.

To get a better idea of the reasons for the decline we visited Monarch watch. MW is a group that  monitor the numbers of Monarch and their amazing Migration. They have also begun a program to help gardeners set up 'way stations' for the butterflies.

We have learnt so far that the Monarch Host plants (Milkweed) are less abundant. There are apparently multiple environmental and social reasons for this. Thankfully there is still hope: Chip Taylor (Monarch Watch Director) summarizes the situation:

"All in all, it was not a good year for monarchs. While some of the present decline can certainly be attributed to the seasonal conditions last summer, it is the decline of monarch habitats in the United States and Mexico that is the major concern. The good news is that we can do something about the habitats in the United States and Canada – we can plant milkweed. That said, in order to compensate for the continued loss of habitat we need to plant LOTS AND LOTS of milkweed. To assure a future for monarchs, conservation and restoration of milkweeds needs to become a national priority." (source).

With a bit of planning we came up with:

The Piwi Kids 'Save the Monarch Plan'

Research:

• Produce a Lap book that will outline everything we learn about:
• The Monarch lifecycle and Migration
• Native milkweed vs. Tropical Milkweed
• The causes of the decline in Monarch numbers
• The causes of decline in host plants.

Projects:

• Purchase fully grown Milkweed plants. These are on their way  have arrived from Educational Science.
• Look into the possibility of  hosting a way station and encourage people and public gardens in our community to also host them.
• Propagate Milkweed Plants from seeds to give to gardeners in our community. You can find these at Live monarch.com  for a small donation. We are waiting for ours to arrive.
• Make lots of Butterfly crafts!

Field trips: 

• Visit local community gardens to observe butterflies and identify host plants
• Visit a Butterfly sanctuary
• View 'Flight of the butterflies'

To date we have ordered our Milk weed plants and seeds. Next week we begin our research for the lap book. Should be a lot of fun and learning!

I will be pinning resources for this project on our Pinterest board:


What plans do you have for Earth day?