Food Dyes Free

So, I have been diligently working this past week to clean my cupboards and remove all food with dyes in it. Why you may ask? I have a very hyper active child so I did some research and found that food dyes could be affecting his behavior. Now we still have many talks about behavior at home and about making the right choices. After all the talking and disciplining still did not work, we sought out extra help to ensure our child was successful.
 I talked with many friends and several had already cut dyes out of their children's diets for the same reasons, some did this 10-20 years ago and it is still working with their kids.
Here is a link to an article a friend sent me. It explains not only dyes but other things in the foods that we feed our kids.
http://healthychild.org/blog/comments/which_food_additives_make_kids_behave_badly/
So for now cupboards are being cleaned and we are getting rid of dyes.
We have done this for a little over a week. It has been 7 school days, our son has received 3 green days, 3 yellow days and 1 one red day. Before that he had only had 3 green days the whole school year and he got 3 in one week. I also want to note that the red day came after a day that he was fed dyes at school during snack time.

Here is a list of some of the food that we have gotten rid of and also next to it is the alternative that is dye free.

Gogurt  instead he gets Danino yogurts in his lunch, they are smaller and have less yogurt in them, but are dye free.
Name Brand Marshmallows believe it or not these have blue dye in them, we switched to store brand which is dye free
Mac and Cheese this is a favorite of his and mine but totally not good for us even not counting the dyes. We now serve just noodles and shredded cheese melted on top, not the same thing but he doesn't mind.
Doritos this was a hard one for him to give up, but thanks to a friends mom he discovered corn chips. Still not healthy but they are dye free and he will use them instead when we have one of his favorite meals, nachos.
Fruit Snacks you have to watch these, some have dyes and others do not. Currently we are buying Mott's medleys fruit snacks, he loves these.
Sugary Drinks like Hi-C and Koolaid he loves these kind of drinks even though they are full of sugar. Of course we limit these but I have found an alternative he can have. Capri Sun is dye free.
Candy most candy is not ok and has dyes in it. It is not good for him anyways. However he can still have chocolate and we have found that white chocolate chips work well as a reward for him. Plus side is the store had a huge sale on them so we stocked up.

Most of the things he can no longer have are not good for him anyways, so it was a good thing to get rid of them anyways. We are starting with dyes because it is extremely easy. This is not the end of our journey just the beginning.

Daily 5-update

So my goal this year was to use Daily 5. It has not happened the way I thought it would. After surviving through the first several weeks of school. I think I finally have things the way I like it, which means I can start adding in Daily 5 and Cafe.

I am using Daily 4 during my Intervention time. This is where I see my group of guided reading students for 45 minutes in the afternoon to work on skills. We use the daily 4 because on the fifth day we do comprehension and Fluency Checks.

When they arrive I do a CAFE mini lesson. On work on writing days, we do a writing extension of this lesson. This is taking 15-20 minutes right now, I've only been doing this for a week. I am hoping with time we can get it down to a 10 minute lesson. So for the other 20 minutes that we have left, (more like 10 or 15) I have been conferring with students. In the past two weeks I have still not been able to meet with all 12 students, but I have one on the calendar and he keeps asking about when he is meeting with me :) SUCCESS!

As for Daily 5 during my core instruction time with my whole class. I am working on this. We have a lot to do during core. I am trying to at least do a small mini lesson, then have more work time, so eventually I can get to conferring and small groups.

So today we did a writing lesson from voices. Then they had to finish independently after we brainstormed and did the lesson together. I was able to complete one small group lesson on introductions. I kinda did a talk a loud for writing I think. We used introductions from text and modeled our introductions after the authors. The kids thought it was great to write like authors.

It has been a great experience trying to implement this with my kiddos. By the end of the year, we may be pros at this.

Scrapbook Post- Master Crafter

Pink by Design had a Master Crafter Challenge. I decided to participate even though I am not even close to being a master crafter. This past month has not been a good one for me though. I have lost both my grandparents so this kinda got put on the back burner. And then one of the tools that came with my Master Crafter Challenge broke while using it :S It's just been one of those months.

So the word "Inspire" came on a small stamp that I wasn't able to incorporate so I used the word instead. The paper is from DCWV mat stack that came with my master crafter box. The green bling on the side also came in my master crafter box. I also had a pretty bag that I am still working on incorporating.
The canvas is melted crayon art.