In So Many Words

Have you noticed how much college textbooks cost these days? And did you know that you can actually rent them instead of buying them?

Since I graduated with my bachelor’s over 20 years ago, I haven’t paid much attention to the cost of college textbooks, so hearing from friends what their children are paying now sends a real shock through my system!

Luckily, another thing that has changed since I got out of school is the advent of textbook rentals. (If they existed at the time, I wasn’t aware of them and they certainly weren’t promoted at my school.)

Enter CampusBookRentals.com. This is a great site to check out if you or someone you know are heading off (or back) to school. They offer a ton of benefits:

They also offer scholarships and monthly giveaways, in addition to partnering with Operation Smile to provide cleft palate surgeries to children who need them.

This is definitely a service I wish had been around when I was in school!

Thank you to CampusBookRentals.com for providing a product compensation for this review.

I recently had the opportunity to get one of the cool sensory products from National Autism Resource to review for my blog. After looking at the items, I immediately knew what I had to choose – one of the Squishy Dinos.

Why that one, you ask? Well, we have a new kiddo coming to the Friendship Station (special needs classroom) at our church who is obsessed with dinosaurs, so all of the teachers in the room have been picking up toys and puzzles from dollar stores, yard sales or wherever we can find them to help him be engaged and occupied while he is there. Plus this one had the extra bonus of providing sensory input, so I was sure it would be a hit.

And it was! The boys have integrated him happily into the battles and rescues and other games they love to play, and they don’t realize we are sneaking in some extra sensory input along with it. Even the parents can’t resist picking him up for a little squeeze therapy.

The one we got is the stegosaurus, which you can’t see in the picture unless you look very closely in the upper right corner of the box. He has a rubbery body which you can pull and squeeze, as well as a squishy middle that is very satisfying to play with when you’re bored or a bit stressed out. (Can you tell I have played with it almost as much as Michael has?)

National Autism Resource is one of the neatest sites I’ve seen of this nature, as it combines helpful articles for both parents and teachers with recommendations of books, toys and other items that correspond to the topic of each article. As it says in their mission statement…

National Autism Resources was born from a dream to make the world a little easier for people living on the spectrum and their family members. We strive to empower our community by providing excellent information, helpful links, and affordable books, games, toys and therapy products for people on the spectrum.

I think the dinosaur will be staying at church, but I love the idea of having sensory toys that look like regular toys for Michael to use at school or other places where he needs a little stress relief but doesn’t want to look different from the other kids.

When you have a moment, I would encourage you to check out this site. They have a ton of sensory friendly items as well as other products designed to help with social skills, emotions, learning and educational supports.

Disclaimer: I received one of the dinosaurs from the Squishy Dino set to review. No other compensation was given, and my opinions are my own.

Other than going to church last night, we totally crashed yesterday. So I was happy that I had a pretty productive day today – I am on track to finishing 4 loads of laundry, and I have the bingo cards for Friday’s school party over halfway done. I think they are going to be cute; I’ll post a picture of one once they are done.

I am actually looking forward to the party now that the homeroom parent helped me with what we should do. Plus, we are going in early to help the kids get their costumes on for the school parade. I love that I was scheduled for the first party of the year, so I didn’t have to worry about any duplicating anything that had been done before! (Okay, I know I am overanalyzing again, but at least I put myself out there knowing that it would be stressful but would make Michael happy.)

Bob took Michael out while he ran errands this afternoon, and they not only returned my books to the library for me, but they also picked up Michael’s Halloween costume! He had wanted to be Spiderman, but came home with a completely different costume instead that’s not even a superhero. I’m leave you in suspense on that one for a couple of days as well.

All this productivity is not to say that I didn’t goof off today. A couple of days ago, I heard about the Fancast website on 5 Minutes for Mom. They have full length episodes of various TV shows available online, so I just had to check it out.)

To my surprise, I was able to find The Next Iron Chef and catch up on the episodes I have missed due to The Amazing Race going late because of football. It figures, the only two shows I make a point to watch are scheduled back to back. So now I am all caught up on that , and it looks like both shows are on schedule for tonight. (I know, this is just so NOT important in the grand scheme of life.)

Well, I’m off to put the last load in the dryer. Hope everyone has a great night!

Many of you know that I am a big fan of the parenting site Root & Sprout, and the related social network Grow Together. Over the last few months, Root & Sprout has experienced much growth and many changes, including hiring a core team of writers while still providing opportunities for both paid articles and voluntary submissions to the ezine.

Starting this month, articles will be published one or two per day instead of all on the first of the month. They will continue to range in category, covering ages from pregnancy to the teenage years and including other topics relevant to parenting. There will be giveaways each week, too, so subscribe to the feed today to stay informed!

Now that the site is using a blog platform (where you can also comment on the articles – hint, hint!), each post has its own permalink, which is great for referencing previous articles and sharing them with others. My newest article has just published today, and I have written two previous articles:

• Potty Training Your Special Needs Child – May 2009
• Using Play Dough as a Therapy Tool – February 2009
• How Did You Know? Early Signs of Autism – August 2008

I am hopeful that sharing our potty training experience will give some hope to other moms who aren’t sure it will ever happen, whether your child has special needs or is just not responding the way you think they should be. I’d love to hear what you think!

I got a twitter from spotobe the other day (yes, I am on twitter now) and decided to check it out. I am glad I did!

Spotobe is short for “the spot to be” and is actually a very cool website about places to go and things to do in central Pennsylvania. Here’s a brief description from the site:

Whether you’re looking to visit Central Pennsylvania, move here or already live here, bookmark this site to keep up with what’s going on in the region. Spotobe aggregates all the events—from concerts to exhibitions to hockey games, and much more—so you can view all your options in one convenient place.

Besides the About/FAQ page, there are four main parts to spotobe:

• events – choose ongoing or upcoming and then browse, search or filter by category or date if you wish
• locations – here you can search or select from eight different categories. Clicking on view details takes you to a page with the address/directions, any events at that location, and a list of other places you might be interested in. Hmm, I wonder if they will ever offer a rating or comment system to viewers??
• my spots – once you register (very simple and fast), you can add locations or events to your personalized list for quick reference. Features include creating multiple lists, printing your lists and even sending them to a friend.
• area map – dynamic map with events marked based on the date selected, can zoom in and out and access details right from that page, can also filter by category

When viewing the site, you can also choose which region you are interested in – Central PA, Harrisburg, or Hershey. The site is visually appealing and well thought out; there is even a feed that you can subscribe to for notification of upcoming events. The feed can be customized by category and time frame, although, despite a very thorough explanation of the RSS process in the FAQs, the only place I saw to access this is a tiny Subscribe link at the bottom of the page, and I didn’t see a subscribe by email option.

They have plans to expand into other areas, but in the meantime, all you non-central Pennsylvanians should check it out and then come visit us!

I will post some book reviews soon of what I am reading now, but in the meantime I wanted to share this awesome website I found recently called Shelfari. It is a site where you can catalog all of the books you have read or plan to read – you can tag them with whatever labels you want and give them ratings and write reviews. You can also see other members’ books and ratings/reviews and ask for recommendations about whether to read a certain book. Another neat feature is groups where people either share what they are reading with the group or read a book together for discussion.

I have to warn you: if you are a reader, this is an addicting place. I am not putting everything I’ve ever read, partly because I could never remember them all and partly because some are not worth sharing, but I am almost up to 1100 books so far! They even supply a widget for your blog or other type of social website. Feel free to browse my bookshelf; if you decide to create your own, I would love to know about it.