Sunday, June 27, 2010

ASL helps

LDS.ORG Primary Program Music Page

The Church's page for the primary program has the ASL video of a child signing the song for the required program songs. I've had people contact me about various songs to see if I will put them up for learning these songs.
I don't actually know ASL myself. I talk to the interpretors I know and I use online sources and figure out my own simple way of teaching the signs to the children. I think it is wrong to teach them had motions (beyond being a baby and just fun motions) for the songs that they will be singing over and over- unless they are learning actual sign languages.

That said I don't claim to have the best signs, only semi accurate signs. I am working on a 'Come Follow Me' simple signs for children, just for the first verse. Since this was not in my plan for our children, this is taking me longer to get it together. I will post it here when I get to that point.

"I Am a Child of God" Spanish

SR primary is learning to see the first verse and chorus of "I Am a Child of God" in Spanish.

This is Brother Ryan Despain in our ward singing it for the children to learn from. Unlike the German video I didn't  put the words phonetically, I used the actual Spanish spellings. I broke them up either the way the Spanish Primary book did or if there was a break that I felt the children needed to see. SR primary can mostly read well enough to follow the words. They were very jealous when they learned that JR primary was learning German, but thought it was the COOLEST that they were going to learn Spanish.

Weight Watchers Update

I am fully down 30 lbs. YEAH. I want to increase this greatly still. Whenever it comes time to loose a point, I have fast weight loss for a few weeks. Then I go over a month on those last few pounds, they just don't want to come off. I've been looking at ways to try to fix this. Some suggestions have been: decrease the fat intake of the items I eat, exercise, mix up my point intake by spreading out my weekly points, try the CORE plan for a week (a nutritionist friend of ours does this whenever she hits a plateau and says she always looses 4-5 lbs that week, all the other weeks she just does their normal average plan). I finally got below that 29 lb mark by exercising more during that week. 
Define CORE plan: A Weight Watcher's plan that doesn't count daily points. You can eat all the fruits, veggies, pure whole grains (NO FLOURS or ENRICHED ie no refined grains), and lean meats that you want. No non-natural sugars or fats (ie- non that aren't found in the items already said you can eat). You can eat all the Fat-Free dairy you want, and you can use up to 2 Tbs of oil in your cooking a day. You still have your 35 weekly points and that you can use to intake any item that doesn't fit into the above restrictions. Cheese, fats, sugars, ice cream, going out.  My husband has been against doing this. He wants to do it all with out confusing himself on what he can or cannot do. But lately he has also been hitting a hump that he can't seem to get over and is becoming open to trying this for a week. 
So we'll see what we do. I know that 30 lbs is a huge achievement. Of all people who are proud of me, I am so proud of myself. This is a HUGE accomplishment for me. Before counting points I was never able to loose 10 lbs, let alone 30. But my goal is loose it before we go on our cruise in October. Or a more important goal is before the next time we get pregnant. I still have 20-30 lbs to go. That makes me half way. It took me almost 7 months to get to this point. If I am to loose it by the cruise than I have 3 1/2 months or 16ish weeks to loose the rest of it. That's slightly under 2 lbs a week. Which would be healthy weight loss, but I haven't been loosing that fast. I need to do something to help this along. Anyone out there who also does Weight Watchers have any ideas for getting over those humps?

Saturday, June 12, 2010

I Am a Child of God (German)

Our JR primary are learning to sing 'I Am a Child of God' in German. The SR primary will be learning it in Spanish. This is Bro. Anderson in our ward. He served his mission in German. He is helping the JR primary learn to sing in German. We made this video so that the JR primary would watch and practice at home. I hope to make one for the SR primary also.