I have been meaning to write up a review of this lunchbox… which I bought many moons ago when they first hit the market. But I rarely have time to pack lunches AND snap pictures in the wee hours of the morning. Some days I cannot even believe I used to have a bento lunchbox blog where I blogged daily pictures of my son's lunches. The addition of a second child to the mix is throwing me off my game. But Mondays are much more nice now that my husband is home for them (at least for now) so I actually had time to throw a quick lunch together and take some pictures! 

The lunchbox we used this morning is the Goodbyn. I grabbed it because I had personalized it with an "I love you" message that I felt my daughter needed to see. Yes, mommy was feeling major guilty this morning over her own bad behavior. So I grabbed the "I love you" box and already that is a major plus for Goodbyn. The stickers may not be eco friendly, they are probably plastic based, but the idea that you can personalize the lunchbox is a big hit in this house.

On the menu: Banana, baby carrots with hummus dip, green smoothie in a bottlle, PB&J Lara Bar, Strawberries, dried blueberries, and goji berries chilling with two fruity cubes to keep them cold, Brazil nuts, and two fair trade chocolate earth balls. Everything is raw vegan except the chocolate. The container with the Hummus is not from Goodbyn… I borrowed it from one of our Laptop Lunchboxes.

The whole concept of this lunchbox is awesome… BPA free (safe) plastics, compartments to eliminate the need for plastic baggies and single serving packaging, and it is a pretty hip looking bento. You know me.. I LOVE bento. I also like the carrying handle and the ability to use the stickers that come with it to make it completely unique to your child. There are even stickers for kids with allergies. It is dishwasher safe if you happen to have one (I don't) and you can recycle it if need be later on down the road.

The Goodbyn does have a pretty big drawback though. You have to instruct your child on the proper way to open and close the lunchbox to avoid spilling the contents everywhere and even when adults do it I am not so confident it will stay closed. I have yet to buy some rubber bands because I have a fear of them after an "incident" with my toddler but ideally I hope to get a rubberband to wrap around the box so my daughter can actually use the carrying handle to carry it. Every time she takes this lunchbox I worry that I will find out she had to eat her lunch out of the bottom of her backpack. The closure mechanism just isn't very secure… a rubber band would fix it though and I hope Goodbyn addresses this issue some day. Another drawback is that the box is heavier than her other lunchboxes, like the afore mentioned Laptop Lunchbox and her Yubo. I also find the side compartments a bit too small. This morning I wanted to add a few more greens but the side compartments are just teeny.

All in all, we like the Goodbyn and think it has some awesome features. The execution is a bit flawed but it is also workable. While it isn't my personal favorite it does make my daughter happy and that counts for a lot.

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You already know I have a bit of an "attitude" about video games. I used to flat out insist no video games would ever enter my house. Nowadays I am eating my words as my oldest son has accumulated a few consoles, we got a Wii for the family, and my kids play educational games on my computer. We don't spend a lot of time on them… maybe a few hours a week but I am happy with these changes because they have enriched our lives instead of detracted from them. I am not feeling that same love for TV but I have loosened up on the games even though I would say I have/had good reason to feel the way I did. I have a family member who is addicted to gaming. It can be just as bad as someone addicted to alcohol or gambling. When someone in your life can spend 40+ hours a week (as in ALL their free time, not spent sleeping or working) you begin to despise the object of their addiction.

BUT a couple games have changed my thinking on gaming.. as long as it is kept to a healthy minimum. I guess I am now thinking more about how gaming can be enriching as long as it doesn't replace REAL things like human contact, hobbies and activities. In fact I require that games in our house "encourage" these things, IRL.

Last year my kids started playing Magic Artists Deluxe, Kid Pix, and JumpStart World. The first two are not so much games as they are art programs. My kids REALLY enjoy them because it allows them to create paintings and pictures with all sorts of different tools and techniques… media art. At least two of my kids are very artistic (drawing, painting, sculpting) and I am not. Giving them tools to express their art has been a wonderful thing. Imagine how fun it would be for a child to take a blank piece of paper, color it their favorite color, use 5 different paintbrushes to swirl accent colors around, maybe take a sponge to blend some colors, then paste little hearts and stars all over it, and sprinkle with glitter or chocolate chips. Doing all of this on a computer allows for that wonderful experimentation. They use what they learn via these programs to create art offline too.

The last game is something we played while homeschooling. It encourages reading and math by making it a game.

This year we got the Wii and found a wonderful way to exercise and play active games like bowling and golf right from home. It even got my oldest son interested in running. And yet my kids still spend lots of time outdoors because the Wii only contains their adventurous spirits for a few hours a week. Keeping the Wii stored away when not in use helps with that I think.

The latest game we have been playing is on Facebook… Farmville. It got started when my mother introduced my daughter to the game and set her up a farm on my account, without my knowledge. At first I was not too happy because this was around New Years and I had read the resolutions of several bloggers to abandon Farmville because it was taking up too much of their time. Grown adults were having problems keeping their activity in check!

But all things considered it has been a great thing for my daughter and now my oldest son. They are learning so much about managing a farm, planting things, harvesting, taking care of animals, etc. They are also chatting with and "playing" with family members they don't get to see often, like their Aunts, Uncles, and cousins. It has helped them form personal connections with people, not a disconnection. It has also given them big dreams of gardening this spring and trying this Farmville stuff for real.

So I guess that is it in a nutshell… using media to enhance our lives not just entertain us. It is a tall order in this day and age but it can be done. Is it healthy? Well, that's a stretch. Is it educational? It can be. It is at all bad? No. Its all about turning something that can be lemons, into lemonade.

What are your thoughts about kids and gaming?

The benefits of children meditating are well documented. It provides instant stress relief, it helps with their ability to focus and concentrate, it develops their memory, and it can have a calming effect on hyperactive kids. All these potential benefits and it can easily be incorporated into their everyday lives with a little help.

Sensational Meditation for Children is the 2009 Nautilus Silver Medal Winner in the Parenting and Family Category and the 2009 Living Now Bronze Medal Winner in the Meditation Category. It provides parents with the necessary skills to teach their children how to meditate. Adults who are unfamiliar with meditation also use it.

It gives a wealth of information about meditation and also benefits from supporting science, practical examples and the philosophy behind it. The book contains 12 easy to learn meditations, such as Sleeping Cloud, Grounding Cord, What Does My Body Have to Say, Healing Heart and The Happy Tree. Also included are fun-filled exercises for before and after the meditation.

Right before Christmas a reader (thanks Erin!) emailed me about a book she thought I would like. I was looking for a book for my nearly 6 year old daughter as a gift and thought this would be perfect. On Christmas Day my daughter ended up getting The Apple Pip Princess by Jane Ray and we read it this week. It is a very lovely story, one that my daughter listened to in eager anticipation and it is one I am sure I will be asked to read many times over.

The story is about a sad King whose land and heart have been barren ever since the death of his beloved wife. Concerned about the future of his kingdom he challenges his three daughters to do something important to make their mark and after 7 days the King will see what they have accomplished and decide who the next ruler will be.

The two older sisters decide to build tall towers as monuments to their own beauty and accomplishment. One tower is made of wood and one is made of metal. They both command their subjects to bring them raw materials even if doing so poses a hardship for them. The youngest daughter, Serenity, chooses to utilizes her mother's box of nature's treasures including a tiny Apple Pip (seed). She plants it in the ground and every day she plants more trees, cherry, olive, plum, orange, etc. Seeing what she is doing, the villagers volunteer to help her with the planting and share their wisdom and knowledge about farming. With the help of the other items in the box the land becomes a lush and fertile paradise again and Serenity shows that she is the one worthy to be the new leader.

The story was beautiful and so is are the illustrations. My daughter was oohing and aahing quite a bit. I also loved that the princesses were not the sterotypical blonde, cookie cutter princesses either, even if the older two sisters were on the vain side and slightly scary with their tendencies to throw people in the dungeon! But if they were as empathetic as their younger sister we wouldn't have as dramatic a story. The main character is kind of shy and unsure of herself but willing to follow her heart.

I think any little girls will love this story but if you like underlying eco themes than this book is perfect… a good story, great characters, and no gloom and doom. An eco fairy tale… A++

We love to  play games in this house or uh… couldn’t tell ya by this post on educational games, or this post on eco theme board games? Until my kids can give me a run at Gin Rummy, Hearts, or Bonco then board games do the trick.

For MANY months now the favorite for my kids has been The Farming Game. Mom was getting mighty board with it and I thought they might never find a new favorite. I hate to even say that since it is an awesome game that teaches the concepts of farming, farmer’s markets, and food value and it is great for teaching math at many levels. But playing it over, over, and over… can wear on you.

But no worries, they have found a new favorite and this one I can see us playing for a very long time. No doubt the weekend tradition that will be with us all winter will be a couple rousing games of Wildcraft and I am THRILLED because I love this game as much as they do. In fact I am thoroughly convinced this is the coolest game ever… no seriously… coolest EVER. This purchase was well worth the money, even if it was a hair pricier than CandyLand.

It is a gorgeous game that teaches the players all about herbs and how useful they are. The players are on a mission from grandma to go and pick wild Huckleberries. They have to go up and down a long mountain path to get them and along the way they find herbs (plants cards) and they they even run into some trouble (trouble cards). Some of the trouble you find would include sore muscles, an earache, a toothache, a hornet sting, diarrhea, splinters, and much more. But thanks to the herbs you have been collecting you may just have an herbal remedy to help you.

On the trouble cards it has little pictures of herbs and you must identify what they are. I love that it doesn’t just give you the name of the plant, it makes you look closely at the leaves and flowers so you can visually indentify the plant. That feature makes it easy for non readers to play and it ensures that older players are really learning these herbs and their uses. If you get a hornet sting you look in your collection of plant cards to see if you have the herbal remedy and if you don’t you must wait until you do before you can discard that trouble card.

Another cool feature is that there are cooperation cards, yes the entire game is cooperative instead of competitive. The whole mood that it created was wonderful. I admit I went overboard with the imitations of pain and anguish when I got a sunburn or a toothache but it was still lovely to see my kids so worried about getting to their turn so they could help me (or another player) out with an herbal remedy they had in their own stash that I did not.

As you play you risk backsliding down streams or landing on “moon” spaces. The moons then have to cover the suns at the top of the board game, giving you less time to finish the game. Everyone has to get back to grandma’s house with two buckets of Huckleberries each before nightfall. The cooperation cards (or rainbow cards as my kids call them) can also be used to move a player that is far behind forward so that the game can be completed on time… its all about cooperation!

I love that we learn about the medicinal uses of plants as we play and learn to identify them by eye. Hearing my kids talk about how they can use St. John’s Wart for this and Dandelions for that is just amazing. So many kids grow up thinking over the counter medicines are required for healing and soothing but it just isn’t so. And for all of us to learn to identify edible plants that can be eaten when hungry is incredibly useful. The earth has always provided what we need if we care to educate ourselves and look. I love that this game was invented by a Dad who just wanted his kids to play something more valuable than Candyland.

This game is also eco friendly! Box/board made with 100% recycled chipboard, printed with vegetable oil based inks, water based coating on paper, no varnish. Forest Stewardship Council certified paper. All material is 100% recyclable.

Wildcraft is a real gem and one that I think every natural, holistic, green, family is going to want to play.

Also available at Amazon