One of my favorite parts of schooling the way we do is that we have the ability to take learning everywhere. Instead of just being limited to reading about things, we have the freedom to experience things up close and personal.

As a former classroom teacher I know how important field trips are. Kids learn by doing, by experiencing, by touching and feeling. Sadly, classroom fieldtrips are one of the first things to get cut with the mighty budget ax.

What I really love about this campaign is that Lunchables is sending my family and one of my readers families on a fieldtrip to the Denver Aquarium.

This is how it is going to work.There are two ways to enter:

1. Watch the video and and then head to Lunchables.com to nominate a classroom. OR
2. Watch the video and think about your favorite fieldtrip moments (yours or the kids)

Leave me a comment stating that you either nominated a classroom OR tell me your fieldtrip story!

You can earn an extra entry by posting this on your FB page or sending one tweet out with the URL to this  contest. Leave me a comment with your ID’s to qualify for those extra entries.

*This is only open to readers over 18 in or around Denver  because you would be responsible for your transportation to the Aquarium. I will bring lunch (Lunchables!) and pay for the admission to the venue using the gift card sent to me from Oscar Mayer.

I am flexible with the date of the fieldtrip so the winner and I can coordinate our schedules to take the trip sometime in the summer. In addition, if the winner would rather attend the Zoo or Museum I am open to that as well. Please know that the winners pictures will likely end up here on the blog without identifying winners kids.

I will close the contest May 20, 2010 at 11:59 PM MST and will contact the winner shortly after.

Hurray! You know we have a big Disney fan in this house and since we moved to Denver, Disney on Ice is as close as we have come to our beloved characters. I love Disney on Ice. It is such a wonderfully magically little break in our lives.

Mom Central and the Feld Family Activators are again giving me a rock your socks discount code to share with you all! The coupon code will again be MOM — four tickets for $44 for Monday-Friday matinee shows, and $4 off Friday night and weekend shows; any additional weekday tickets are still priced at $11.

For those of you with Princess fans this show has something special: Arrive up to one hour early to tour the display of gorgeous gowns and meet a real princess! This is free to all ticket holders!

Rev up for non-stop fun with four of your favorite Disney stories at Disney On Ice presents Worlds of Fantasy. Thrill to high-speed stunts as Lightning McQueen, Mater and the crew of Disney/Pixar’s CARS race across the ice. Dive into The Little Mermaid’s enchanting undersea kingdom and experience the ‘Circle of Life’ with The Lion King. Then enter into the magical world of Pixie Hollow with Tinker Bell and all her fairy friends as they make their world premiere on ice! From wheels to waves, Pride Lands to pixie dust, your family’s favorite Disney moments come to life at Disney On Ice presents Worlds of Fantasy with dazzling skating, special effects and beloved characters certain to create a lifetime of memories.

I am able to give away a family 4 pack of tickets for opening night to one of you lucky Denver area readers! Want them?

Prize: 4 pack of tickets for opening night. You will need to claim at box office will call with a photo ID.

How to Win: Just leave me a comment telling me why this would be a special family event for you.

Contest Ends: Thursday, November 26th, 10 AM MST. Winner will be contacted via email. I MUST be able to get a hold of you to ensure your tickets are delivered to will call within 24 hours of contest end

The Rules:

Disney On Ice Giveaway

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY

Promotion is open to U.S. residents 18 years of age or older as of November 19, 2009 except employees and their immediate families of Chaotic Communications, LLC .

Void where prohibited. All federal, state and local laws apply. All taxes are the sole responsibility of winners.

Sponsor is not responsible  for any technical problems, malfunctions of any telephone lines, computer systems, servers, providers, hardware/software, lost or unavailable network connections or failed, incomplete, garbled or delayed computer transmission or any combination thereof. If, in the Judging Agency’s opinion, there is any suspected or actual evidence of tampering with any portion of the sweepstakes, or if technical difficulties compromise the integrity of the sweepstakes, the Judging Agency reserve the right to modify the sweepstakes in a manner deemed appropriate by the Judging Agency, in its sole discretion. By participating in this promotion, entrants agree to be bound by the Official Rules and the decisions of the Judging Agency.

JUDGING: Chaotic Communications, LLC (”Judging Agency”) will choose a winner based on a random drawing of all qualifying comments.   Agency reserves the right to disqualify any entry that, in the sole opinion of the judges, refers, depicts or in any way reflects negatively upon the sponsor, the promotion or any other person or entity.

SPONSOR:

Feld Family Activators through Mom Central

Disclosure: Feld Family Activators provided me with a family four pack of tickets to this event.

Winner was Fiona. Thanks for playing!

OK, just because I am thankful for each and everyone of you that take time out of your crazy lives to come see what is happening in mine, I am going to run a giveaway for 4 movie tickets!

General Mills has an awesome promotion going on right now that they want you to know about for movie cash: Starting in November, you can receive a free movie ticket when you purchase two specially marked packages of General Mills´ Cereals. After purchasing two cereals, visit generalmills.com/moviecashto enter the code found inside each box of cereal and print your free movie certificate good for admission to any movie.

Participating brands include select sizes of: Honey Nut Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms, Trix and Reese´s Peanut Butter Puffs.

To find a participating theater near you, log onto
http://emoviecash.com/dis_locator/.

Prize: “Movie Moment” prize pack that includes 4 e-movie cash certificates ($12 each) and one (1) free coupon for a General Mills cereal.

How to Win: Just leave me a comment telling me which movie your family is anxious to see this holiday season. We are looking forward to using our tickets on Old Dogs.

Contest Ends: Sunday, November 29th, 10 PM MST. Winner will be contacted via email.

The Rules:

Movie Moments Giveaway

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY

Promotion is open to U.S. residents 18 years of age or older as of November 19, 2009 except employees and their immediate families of Chaotic Communications, LLC .

Void where prohibited. All federal, state and local laws apply. All taxes are the sole responsibility of winners.

Sponsor and Judging Agency are not responsible  for any technical problems, malfunctions of any telephone lines, computer systems, servers, providers, hardware/software, lost or unavailable network connections or failed, incomplete, garbled or delayed computer transmission or any combination thereof. If, in the Judging Agency’s opinion, there is any suspected or actual evidence of tampering with any portion of the sweepstakes, or if technical difficulties compromise the integrity of the sweepstakes, the Judging Agency reserve the right to modify the sweepstakes in a manner deemed appropriate by the Judging Agency, in its sole discretion. By participating in this promotion, entrants agree to be bound by the Official Rules and the decisions of the Judging Agency.

JUDGING: Chaotic Communications, LLC (”Judging Agency”) will choose a winner based on a random drawing (utilizing random.org) of all qualifying comments.   Agency reserves the right to disqualify any entry that, in the sole opinion of the judges, refers, depicts or in any way reflects negatively upon the sponsor, the promotion or any other person or entity.

SPONSOR:

General Mills through MyBlogSpark

Disclosure: General Mills provided me with the free coupon, information, and prize pack through MyBlogSpark as well as providing the prize pack to the winner of this contest.

*Winner was Lolli. Thanks for playing everyone

If you have know my family for 5 years or 5 minutes, one thing you know is that someone in our house is a Build A Bear fanatic! With well over 100 of them, Carter has been collecting since he was 2. One of the really cool things that I love about the bears though is that I have been able to motivate Carter to learn his states with them and learn about endangered animals. See, many Build A Bears are specific to a certain area. Here in Colorado you can get the Buffalo. Arizona has the coyote, Maine has the lobster and so on. You can click here to see more of them.  In order for Carter to get the stuffed animal, he had to learn about the state it was from. Sometimes the stuffed animal would inspire research, “What makes an alligator different than a crocodile”, “Why is a lobster red?”, and “Why are lowland gorillas endangered?” are all questions are Bears have inspired us to answer. So, when I was contacted by the PR reps at Barkley on behalf of Build A Bear, we jumped at the chance to share with our long standing love of Build A Bear with you. Carter was sent this adorable snowy owl, which he named Feathers and a 3-D Treasure Hunt for BuildABearville.com (which has been a BLAST for him to play each day) and a $25 giftcard to give away! To show you how I have tried to make his obsession for Build A Bears as educational as possible I thought we could play a trivia game to determine the winner!

*the funny thing about this video is he just happened to be wearing that t-shirt! It was not a set-up, I swear!
So, want to take your kiddo(s) on a trip to Build A Bear? Here is how you can win a $25 giftcard!

You get ONE entry for EACH correct answer to the trivia questions. That means you can enter 5 times per family. Have your kiddo’s read this page: Snowy Owl Facts and then help them answer the questions below. Leave a separate comment for each question and make sure to let me know what number question you are answering!

Let’s play Snowy Owl Trivia:

1. When do snowy owls sleep?
2. What do the circle of feathers around the owls eye’s help it do?
3. How many mates (breeding partners) do snowy owls usually have in their lifetime?
4. Where are snowy owls most commonly found?
5. What movie in the theaters now features a snowy owl as a working pet? (ok, so that is sort of a freebie!)

Rules:

To keep this fair, all comments will be held in moderation until the end of the contest. Please leave a separate comment for each entry. Giveaway is open to US and Canadian Residents only. Must be 18 years of age or older. Winner will be drawn by random.org according to their comment number. We reserve the right to remove any entry from this giveaway that doesn’t have the requested information. This giveaway ends July 30, 2009 11:59 pm EST. Please allow up to 4 weeks to receive your item. If the winner does not respond within 48 hours another winner will be chosen.

PS..Carter does more silly bear video’s on his blog if you have not visited there. He LOVES comments to his blog from friends!

Winner announced! Congrats to Angie @pricousins

Fill out the information here to claim your prize.

Second Edition of Loot Lovin’ Linky here.  Happy Hunting and Good Luck!

My current giveaways! Right now I have the Years Supply of Kraft Mac&Cheese going on ending on Saturday!

Bloggers: List your giveaways! I only have 2 SIMPLE rules, if you don’t follow them I will just delete your entry.

1. Your link must go to your giveaway, NOT to your blog
2. Your giveaway MUST BE Family Friendly!

This is the preferred format but I am not overly picky as long as you have the end date in it!  Your Site NAME – Prize Name (6/1)

Thanks for enduring the move with me. All contest comments were imported so you are good to go PLUS now there are even more ways you can win ’cause those links changed. All the older comments count! I extended the time out to give everyone a few more days to catch up with me

Yes, baby! The mother load of all Mac&Cheese giveaways is here but there is so much more to this! This is a chance for all of us to help Feeding America receive a donation of 1,000,000 boxes of Mac&Cheese. Can you imagine how that would help some families out? So, this is your chance to do something super easy, and super great and perhaps win a years supply of Mac&Cheese for your family!

Here is what you can do to help!
Kraft will donate a FREE box of KRAFT Macaroni & Cheese to Feeding America each time you:

* visit the Share a Little Comfort site and click on the donate button (you can do this once per day and there are COUPONS there too!)
* use #bluebox in your twitter message
* Share a Little Comfort on Facebook

But wait, I want to Share a Little Comfort with YOU!

I am so happy to be giving away a years supply of Mac and Cheese to one of our lucky readers. That is 50 boxes for you and a donation of 50 boxes to Feeding America in your name.

How do you win???

REQUIRED Initial Entry: Leave a comment telling me something you have done to share a little comfort with someone else (keep it clean, of course!). I am looking to hear your stories of what you have done nice for someone else lately.

Optional Bonus Entries:

* Receive 1 Entry for following @chaotic_barb on Twitter (Leave your Twitter ID.)
* Receive 1 Entry for adding me to your blog roll (leave a link to where)
* Receive 1 entry for stumbling Elementary Spirits and reviewing (Leave your Stumble ID)
*Thumb up on Digg
* Receive 1 Entry by Faving me on Mom Faves (Leave your Mom Faves ID) * Receive 1 Entry – (You may do this FIVE times per day, we want those boxes donated!) Tweet about this Giveaway. Copy and paste this —–>@chaotic_barb encouraged me to help Kraft donate Feeding America through #bluebox program. Get involved http://bit.ly/MBbpK & RT!

*Receive 1 Entry- (leave your ID)

*Bookmark the http://elementaryspirits.com on delicious

*Subscribe to my new feed

*Adding one more way to gain an entry: Go vote for my friend @complicatedmama to get to BlogHer. All you have to do is click the “I Like It” button right under where it says See the Rest of the Story

Please leave a separate comment for each entry. Giveaway is open to US Residents only. Must be 18 years of age or older. We reserve the right to remove any entry from this giveaway that doesn’t have the requested information. This giveaway ends July 4, 2009 11:59 pm EST. Please allow up to 4 weeks to receive your item. If the winner does not respond within 48 hours another winner will be chosen.

*This post graciously sponsored by Kraft

Here is a way to video games as an educational tool. Can’t get a better game for deductive reasoning than this!

In Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek, players find Nancy far from home in the middle of the Canadian Rockies where she is investigating several suspicious accidents that have occurred at Chantal’s normally cozy Icicle Creek Lodge. To make matters worse, an eerie wolf’s howl in the distance is haunting the guests at night, causing Nancy to wonder if the accidents and the mysterious wolf are connected.

Playing as Nancy Drew, you embark on a mystery adventure that will tax deductive reasoning skills as you tackle intricate puzzles and master a variety of gesture-based mini-games with the Wii Remote™.

Need a clue on how to win??

Here is the deal:

INITIAL ENTRY: Leave me a message and tell me who your favorite female role model is or was and why. You must complete this entry to be eligible for the Bonus ones listed below. *You do not need to be a homeschool family to win!

Bonus Entries: You can do any of these that you want. Do 1 or do all!

1. Follow me on Twitter @chaotic_barb (leave your Twitter ID)

2. Tweet This Giveaway. You may do this once a day. Just Copy and Paste this —-> @chaotic_barb is giving away a Nancy Drew Wii Game and I want to win it http://bit.ly/Df42r

3. Blog about this giveaway. (You must leave the link to the post, not your blog)

4. Stumble this giveaway. Leave your stumble ID.

5. Favorite this site in Technorati. Leave your Technorati ID.

6. Digg the site. Leave your Digg ID

The fine print: Please leave a separate Comment for each Entry. Winner chosen by random.org by comment number. Giveaway is open to anyone 18 years of age or older. Any posts not including the requested information will be deleted. I reserve the right to remove any entry from this giveaway. This giveaway ends 6/15 at 11:59pm est. Please allow 4-6 for mailing.

Disney on Ice is coming to Denver! Not only do I have a family four pack of tickets to giveaway but I also have a discount code from MomCentral for those of you who don’t win the tickets!

Denver Disney On Ice Flyer
Find out more about this years show here!

To Get Your Discount:

For a 4 pack of tickets for $44 by logging onto http://www.ticketmaster.com. Select a show and in the MomCentral Promotion box, enter the coupon code: MOM.

Show Dates
Thursday March 12 7:30pm
Friday March 13 11:00am, 7:30pm
Saturday March 14 11:30am, 3:30pm, 7:30pm
Sunday March 15 11:30am, 3:30pm, 7:30pm* *Spanish Performance
Get 4 tickets for just $44 by entering the code “MOM” at select ticketing channels**. Offer good on all performances, minimum purchase of 4 tickets required; additional tickets above 4 can be purchased at $11 each. Not valid on Front Row or VIP seats or combinable with other offers.

To Win A Family Four Pack From Me:

INITIAL ENTRY: Leave a comment telling me about your favorite Disney moment (mine was watching my youngest son walk for the 1st time down Main Street at two with his little walker)! You must complete this entry to be eligible for the Bonus ones listed below. *You do not need to be a homeschool family to win these

Bonus Entries: You can do any of these that you want. Do 1 or do all!

1. Follow me on Twitter @chaotic_barb (leave your Twitter ID)

2. Tweet This Giveaway. You may do this once a day. Just Copy and Paste this —-> Colorado! Win Disney on Ice Tickets from @chaotic_barb here: http://elementaryspirits.com/ PLS RT

3. Blog about this giveaway. (You must leave the link to the post, not your blog)

4. Stumble this giveaway. Leave your stumble ID.

Please leave a separate Comment for each Entry. Giveaway is open to Colorado, USA Residents 18 years of age or older. Any posts not including the requested information will be deleted. I reserve the right to remove any entry from this giveaway. This giveaway ends February 20th at 11:59pm est. Tickets are good for the Thursday or Friday night show only. They will be at will call for you!