Have you had a chance to watch “Mary Poppins” and “Nanny McPhee” yet? Which of them would you want for a nanny or a teacher?

Nanny McPhee comes back again in the video “Nanny McPhee Returns.” This time is long ago, but not as long as long, long ago. In World War II England a farmer’s wife is having a hard time taking care of her three children, their two spoiled city cousins, a not-nice brother-in-law and the farm while her husband is a soldier fighting in the war.

Guess who comes to the rescue ad helps magically to tame the children who are being naughty and she take a hand in helping with the household chores? Yes, it’s Nanny McPhee and she teaches the five children important lessons and she oversees everyone’s ability to grow up in Nanny’s usual no-nonsense way of hers. She even keeps the uncle from selling the farm.

I head even grownups like this video. The kids learn how to share, stop fighting, help one another, have courage and “have faith.” They also learn that gambling is bad, that borrowing clothes without asking is inconsiderate and that sometimes other people have harder lives and so they shouldn’t complain.

I think the kids finally understood the lessons Nanny McPhee taught when the piglets escaped from their sty. The kids had to work altogether to recover the family’s most valued assets or risk losing everything their father had worked to make before he went to war.

Again in the end like in the last movie Nanny McPhee told the children that when they want her but don’t need her, she must go. And when they don’t need her, she goes. I hope she comes back in another movie.

See You All,

Chrystal

Wow, writing about Mary Poppins made me think of Nanny McPhee, another nanny, who outwardly looks nothing like Mary Poppins.

Nanny McPhee has way of making children behave that are much more effective than a time-out.

This story takes place a long, long time ago. The father, Mr. Brown, has seven children and his wife has died. He is trying to do his job while taking care of the children, who are very, very naughty. They have run off 17 nannies. Their father finds Nanny McPhee to help out.

Nanny McPhee is a strange-looking woman with a large nose, protruding teeth and pock-marked skin, but it doesn’t take the children long to realize that she has magic powers that she isn’t afraid to use to get the children to behave.

But the children have more things to worry about than saying “please” and listening to adults. Mr. Brown has an Aunt Adelaide who tells him that he has one month to get married or she will take away one of the children and take away Mr. Brown’s inheritance.

There is a nice woman that the children like, but Mr. Brown is too shy around her. Meanwhile, the children realize that Nanny McPhee can help them as they learn to use her talents to become nicer children. And there is something else, the better they behave, the less frightening Nanny McPhee looks.

Will Mr. Brown lose his inheritance? You’ll have to watch the video and see.

See You All,

Chrystal

Gizmo and I like playing Thumb War. We use our thumbs as fighting men. The winner is the one who pins the other one’s thumb to a count of three.

Here’s what we do. Gizmo and I face each other and each of us holds up our right hand with our thumbs pointing up. We link our hands together with our other fingers. Then we both say together, “One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war”. While we are saying this, we dance our thumbs around each others. Then we try to pin each other’s thumb. Sometimes one of us “plays possum” to confuse the other or we might aim for a knuckle instead of pinning the nail.

Another fun game is Rock-paper-scissors. In this game the hand of each player is made to look like one of the three items. A closed fist is the rock which beats the scissors made by holding out two fingers open like scissors and holding the others with the thumb.

Scissors beats paper which is made by holding the hand out flat with fingers together over the floor. Paper beats rock. Gizmo and I play this when we have to decide who is going to go first sometimes and sometimes we just play it for fun.

We each start with our hands in a fist and we say, “Rock, Paper, Scissors” while we swing our fist down on each word. After the word “scissors”, we each make one of the three gestures. Then we see who has what gesture and the one that beats the other is the winner. “Rock breaks scissors. Scissors cut paper. Paper covers rock.” If we both choose the same gesture, the game is tied and we throw again.

Have fun.
Bart

Do you like animal stories? Have I got a book for you and it’s true.

The title of this book is “Bulu: African Wonder Dog” by Dick Houston.

This true story takes place in Africa where Steve and Anna Tolan have moved from being police in Britain to become wildlife protectors in Zambie, Africa. They love their new life except they miss having a dog.

People in Africa try to tell them not to get a dog because there are so many wild animals that dogs get hurt, but the Tolans adopt a scrawny runt, a Jack Russell mix. They name him Bulu, which means wild dog, but Bulu isn’t wild at all. In fact he is a big help in the job of taking care of the wildlife. He helps raise orphan warthogs, vervets, a baboon, a bushbuck and an elephant.

He has a gift to help calm anything animal from a lion to an alligator.

Life is not easy for Bulu. In protecting his family, he is almost blinded by cobra venom, infected with a deadly virus from a tsetse fly and barely survives a lion attack.

Though out everything Bulu shows the heart of a dog—strength, love and courage for his human and animal family.

This is a great story if you love animals, adventures and Africa.

Happy reading,

Mort

It’s a little late for me to collect autographs from Mary Poppins, but I just love this video. It’s considered one of the best Walt Disney personally supervised.

The story takes place a long, long time ago in Great Britain where the Banks family are having trouble keeping a nanny. Oh, this reminds me of two more videos, the ones with Nanny McPhee. I’ll tell you about them later.The Banks father works in a bank of all things and the mother is trying to get women the vote. What, did you know that there was a time women could not vote?

Anyway the two children decide to write their own advertisement for a nanny, one with a little kindness and imagination. Mary Poppins answers their ad by parachuting from the sky using her umbrella. The children are enchanted. The next day they meet an old friend of Mary’s Bert and they all have adventures together.

Mr. Banks is pleased that his children are better behaved, but he doesn’t like the stories he thinks they are making up. To give them a taste of reality he takes them to his bank; but a series of disasters happen and Mr. Banks gets fired. It looks like Mary Poppins is going to be fired, too; however, since she is magic, all her mistakes lead to a happy ending.

If you love to sing along with the music, there is a special video that has sing-along words across the bottom. I just love doing that. My favorite song is “Chim-chim-in-ey.”

See You All,

Chrystal

Bart here with some fun things I just learned about.

My little sister Honey and I were visiting our Granny. She has this big old attic way upstairs in her house and she never lets anyone in there. She says it’s full of so much fun that a person could go up there and never ever come down.  Granny says that’s not a good idea because there are lots of things that are not in the attic that a person would miss if he never came down. Things like bubble gum ice cream, swimming in the pond or going to the fair.

So sometimes when we go visit Granny we find out that she got something for us to look at from the attic.

Honey had brought her Barbie Dolls, which I think are kind of lame, but then Granny brought out some of her Barbie Dolls and I thought I was going to go outside. Granny said she had some things to show me and that I might want to stick around.

First we looked at the difference between Granny’s Barbie and Honey’s Barbie. They didn’t even look like they were related. Granny’s doll came from 1959 and was called “The Original Teenage Fashion Model Barbie Doll. Honey’s doll is “Barbie Beach Barbie Doll-Pink Swimsuit.”

Granny’s doll had dark blonde curly hair, eyebrows that had a sharp point in the middle, squinty eyes with lots of eyeliner on top and a small closed mouth in bright red.

Honey’s doll had light blonde long straight hair, curved eyebrows, opened eyes with eyelashes and eyeliner on the top and bottom, and an opened smiling mouth with pink lips and white teeth.

Granny said that the differences had to do with what was considered beautiful then and now. If I had to say anything, I’d say the now one was better looking.

Then Granny brought out a G.I. Joe from the 1970s. Wow. I thought the2009 movie “G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra” was based on the comic books, not action figures from the dark ages.  Both of our Joes were 12 inches high. I have the G.I. Joe Army Paratrouper. I love to throw him high in the air and watch him come down with his parachute.

I played with both Joes while Granny and Honey played dress-up with the dolls. One of these days I am going to sneak up into the attic and see what else Granny has hiding up there.

More later,

Bart

I was visiting the home of a friend who knows that I am trying to save our environment. He asked me to explain was a carbon footprint is. He wondered if he made one on a rainy, muddy day.

I told him that a carbon foot print is the measure of what we do affects the environment. It is a question of how much carbon we make when we burn fuel to make things.

Did you know that it takes fuel to make your clothing? Yes, it takes electricity for the sewing machines. The electricity is made by burning fuel to heat water to make the steam that makes big motors go to make the electricity.

Our carbon footprint is made by the use of electricity, gas and coal used in our homes. It includes the gas we burn in our cars as well as to heat the foods we eat.
People can calculate their carbon footprint on the internet and learn ways to reduce their carbon footprints.

My friend went on line and calculated his carbon footprint. He was amazed at how much fuel was burned for him to live his life. He was even more amazed that he could change his footprint.

Go online and see for yourself. Google “carbon footprint.”

Yours truly,

Sean

Mort here with another cool book to tell you about.
The book is called “Bones and the Big Yellow Mystery” and it’s written by David Adler.

I have to admit that I am a mystery lover. That’s why you find me in the Haunted Mansion so much, and that’s why I like this book.

‘Bones,’ Jeffrey Bones, that is, considers himself a boy detective. He claims that he can solve any case no matter whether it’s a big one or a small one. Mr. Green has a case for Jeffrey, a BIG case. Mr. Green has lost his BIG yellow school bus.

Does Jeffrey have something in his bag of detective tools that will help him follow the clues in this puzzling case? How do you lose a BIG yellow school bus? Will ‘Bones’ be able to uncover this mystery?

If you like funny detective stories that will have you laughing out loud, you need to read about Bones and the Big Yellow Mystery. And if you enjoy this book, you will want to read “Bones and the Math Test Mystery” and “Bones and the Dog Gone Mystery.”

Happy reading.

Mort

It’s me,Gizmo.

I have some more to report on the cameras we have been experimenting with.

Bart took the Vivitar Vivicam 5024 5.1 MP Digital Camera, 8X Digital Zoom, 2.4 screen, SD card. It already had everything and he got some great shots with it. It cost $39.95 and he said it was worth every penny.

The next camera came in a vivid purple and Flora Preen scooped it up before anyone else could (or would). It was also a Vivitar Vivicam 5018 5.1 Megapixel Digital Camera, 8X Digital Zoom & Red Eye Reduction. This purple gem cost also $39.95. It really did work at getting the red out the people’s eyes, which was a good thing because she liked to get very close with her camera and left everyone seeing stars, not the musical kind neither.

Crystal went after the coral Polaroid CAA-3300CC 3MP CMOS Digital Camera with 1.8-inch LCD Display. For what it looked like, I thought $36.52 was high, but this plain-looking camera had some surprises. It had 8 MB of built-in storage and a workable web cam. It was a little slow about how long after you pushed the button it would take to take the picture. But Crystal loved it. I would have screamed.

See you next time.

Gizmo

Floyd here with some more cool info on why music classes are good for you. I don’t mean like Brussels sprouts are good for you. Brussels sprouts, yuck. Music, yay.

Taking music classes helps you do math. What does music have to do with math? I’m glad you asked. Music is full of math. Keeping time, reading all those funny little notes, paying attention to others to know when to breathe—that’s all math, guys. And if you are good in math, you will do great with our technology—the stuff we have now and the cool stuff that will be in our future. We might even be the ones inventing it because of our music classes.

If you are not so good at math, music can help you get good in math. How’s that for good news?

Music class helps us concentrate, which is a good thing to be able to do so we can learn to read. You know how your baby sister plays with one thing and gets up and goes after something else? She doesn’t know how to concentrate on one thing for long. When we make music we are concentrating and when we learn reading we already know how to concentrate.

One more thing, you know how bullies scare you? Music can help you can make friends with people who might be bullies because they are lonely. Music class helps us work together to make music and put on shows. It brings us together, we become friends and we can’t be mean to our friends.

That’s why I like being in the band. I have made some great friends. And I will probably be good in math and reading, too, because of it.

See you on the flip side,
Floyd