Category: activities

Designing with DwellStudio at CMOM

by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

In the NYC area and looking for something fun to do with the kids tomorrow? Check out this fun Meet the Artist program at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan.  Kids 4 and older can enjoy an art lesson on Still Life by DwellStudio Founder/Creative Director, Christiane Lemieux.  In the lesson, kids will explore shape and color through painting/drawing everyday objects in nature.

I can’t get enough of DwellStudio and I love nature, and I’m sure this fun program will be a hit with the kids!

Meet the Artist: Designing with DwellStudio will be held at 2pm, Saturday, January 29 at Children’s Museum of Manhattan, 212 West 83rd Street, New York, NY 10024.

Cooking Connections Launches Today

by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

As you all know, food has become a significant part of my coverage on NKT.  The foods we eat and cook and the eating habits we display, ultimately, help our kids to make healthier choices.

For me, cooking resources on the internet and tv help me to navigate in the kitchen.  I’ve always been big on cooking, baking and eating, but online sites, magazines and shows underscore just how much I enjoy being in the kitchen.  I could seriously watch Food Network for hours and daydream about these professional cooks and chefs coming to my house to cook for me!  But good news, though these fantastic chefs can’t come to my house, but there are “real” parents who can—well, sort of!

TheMotherhood’s Cooking Connections, an awesome and innovative eight-week series of virtual cooking classes is launching today.  In this series of virtual cooking classes, “real” moms and dads will lead us in their kitchens, to help us learn more about topics relevant to parents.  The conversations, led by some of my favorite bloggers, will leverage social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and TheMotherhood.com.

Sponsored by ConAgra Foods, Cooking Connections is launching today, actually at 1:00 pm at the Blissdom Conference that’s going on right now in Nashville.

I love, love, love TheMotherhood and all the wonderful things that they’re doing around our community.  Cooking Connections will, no doubt, be just as successful as their other projects.  I’m excited to be participating in the cooking class that focuses on picky eaters.  “Placating Picky Eaters” will take place in a few weeks, and I’ll be sure to share more about it soon.  By the way, TheMotherhood, Emily McKhann and 77Kids by American Eagle got a nod in Forbes for the inspiring Do Good Day campaign that tapped bloggers around the country to pay it forward.

Join the conversation!  Want to learn more about Cooking Connections and/or register to participate?  Be sure to sign up here at TheMotherhood.

Check out Cooper and Emily’s announcement video for even more details!

Snowy Days Mean More Game Play

by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

Have you had enough of the snow and cold already? I think we’re tired of the work and obstacles that snow brings with it, but “sleighing” down our hill certainly doesn’t get old. Like most of you, because we can’t get outdoors as much on snowy days, we’ve got a little bit of cabin fever going on.

Being indoors much more than we’d like has meant we’ve had to adjust our normal routine. I monitor and limit tv and screen time throughout the day, and so, we’ve found ourselves playing more games, doing more crafts, cooking, reading and just playing whatever comes naturally. Here’s are just a few activities, crafts and toys that’s been keeping us busy.

LeapFrog Interactive Map

I’ve said it before, but LeapFrog, to me, is one of the frontrunners in innovative, educational toys. The LeapFrog Tag Interactive Map is no exception. The Interactive Map, paired with a Tag Reader, has been keeping us busy on these snowy days, teaching us cool facts about states we’ve visited, where our relatives live and helps us visualize where we hope to visit! After locating cool spots on the map, we like to try to put our new geographic knowledge to good use and and find the same locales on our globe ($1 garage sale find.) The Interactive Map is a great way to engage imagination, curiosity while throwing a bit of geography into the mix.

Jigsaw Puzzles


Who doesn’t love puzzles? Puzzles are a great activity for kids and parents to interact. It involves logic, teamwork and patience, characteristics that have surely been put to the test with all this cabin fever! Our favorite jigsaw puzzle right now is this Super Why Hidden Word puzzle. This puzzle is a fun way to enjoy one of our favorite shows and their characters, and not having to stare a screen to do so! The Why Finder (magnifying glass) to help locate hidden words is a very fun added element that gives even more engagement after the last piece of the puzzle is put into place.

Crayola Color Wonder


Crafts, especially drawing, has been one of the best ways to pass time these days. The kid loves markers; my new area carpet and furniture does not. Our compromise is Crayola’s Color Wonder markers and paints. If you’re not familiar with the awesomeness that is Color Wonder, the geniuses at Crayola have created a line of products that only color on special paper. The markers, paintbrushes and paints only show up on the Color Wonder paper, which means no mess all over your stylish white couch. Santa was so kind to bring the boy Toy Story and other Disney themed Color Wonder coloring books. I will probably never buy another kind of marker again–we love these things so much! No mess=happy family!

WonderForge What’s in the Hat Game

Here we go-go-go! Do you guys watch Cat in the Hat on PBS? We sure do! So, when WonderForge told us about their new Cat in the Hat games, we were all about them. The What in the Hat game, though, is THE funniest game to play with preschoolers, espcially the ones who don’t know how to keep secrets. It’s a simple guessing game that involves hiding everyday items within the Cat’s hat, but it never fails, we get big laughs from this game!

What are your favorite snowy/indoor activities?

Full disclosure: Select samples were provided for editorial review. As always, opinions on NKT are my own.

DIY: Animal Pumpkin Stencils from WWF

by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

Ever wonder how people carve such intricate Jack-o-lanterns and pumpkins?  Me too!  I’m a classic pumpkin carver myself, but have always wanted to be adventurous and do a cool design.

Good news, you don’t have to be an artist to carve super-cool pumpkins.  You can be the envy of the neighborhood with these fun and easy to follow stencils from the World Wildlife Fund.  You can download these free PDF stencils of interesting animal-inspired designs like a tiger, butterfly, a rhino and more.  Show your support for WWF while turning heads for Halloween.

Carving pumpkins is always a fun family activity, albeit a messy one, but the end result is so worth it!  If you carve any of these designs, be sure to share!

As always kids, take care when handling sharp objects!

 

The Ultimate Block Party Set for Oct. 3 in NYC

by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

“How you play is who you become,” is the convincing tagline for this weekend’s Ultimate Block Party in NYC.  With playful learning in mind, Play for Tomorrow, a nonprofit organization dedicated to shedding light on the crucial role of play in children’s development and education, is hosting the Ultimate Block Party in Central Park this Sunday, October 3.

Described to be the first “play date” in a national education movement, the Ultimate Block Party is poised to transform the Bandshell area of Central Park on Sunday, October 3, into the world’s most innovative playground by demonstrating the power of fun and games for learning and helping to reinforce that how we play as children helps form who we become as adults.

As a champion of playtime and getting outdoors here at NKT, I was so thrilled to learn about this fun event from some of my colleagues. In fact, if our schedule permits, I’m hoping to bring our family out to the Ultimate Block Party on Sunday to take in some playtime of our own.

Play for Tomorrow, together with their partners, are inviting families with kids 12 and under to head to Central Park on Sunday to join in the fun.  The rain or shine event, which goes from 11am to 5 pm by the Naumburg Bandshell (Enter at 72nd Street and Fifth Ave), will have a myriad of playful activities and mini-master classes with leading architects, scientists, engineers, musicians, artists, inventors and business leaders from around the City.  Best of all, it’s free.

Free fun for the kids in NYC: it doesn’t get any better than that!

The sponsors and activities* that will be at this fantastic event include many NKT faves such as KaBoom!, Crayola, CMOM, Imagination Playground, Chicago Children’s Museum, Legos, Electric and many, many more.  If you’re in NYC, come join us!  If you’re not in the area, don’t worry, word is, there are already plans to launch the Ultimate Block Party in other U.S. cities and internationally.

Giveaway

One of the sponsors of the event and NKT fave, Lego, will have a LEGO imagination construction zone at the Ultimate Block Party.  And for those of you not in the area, LEGO isn’t forgetting you.  To encourage personal LEGO imagination construction zones at home, they are kindly offering one NKT reader a LEGO DUPLO Play with Numbers set.

Want to win the Duplo set? Just tell me what sort of things do you and your kids like to build with Legos.  Please comment below.

*Want to see small a sampling of the activities planned for The Ultimate Block Party?  Click after the jump.  I’m getting even more excited just reading about all the fun!  If you’re planning on going, let me know!

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Party On with Perfect Piggies

by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

It’s a sunny Monday in our part of the world; what a great start to another week.  This week marks the kid’s last week as a two-year old, and so in the week leading up to his birthday, I will be spotlighting his favorite things à la Oprah.  Unlike Oprah, I won’t be giving away a bazillion and one things to all NKT readers, but I will be hosting some exciting giveaways and downloads—fun toys and goodies that have made our lives a little sunnier.

One of the kid’s favorite authors, Sandra Boynton recently released a fun new book, Perfect Piggies.  If you love Boynton’s books as much as we do, then I’m sure you’re familiar with classics like Moo, Baa, La La La and Barnyard Dance.  Many of her books have a sing-song appeal that’s catchy and memorable, just like this instant classic.

“We are all perfect piggies and we know what we need.  It’s really very simple, very simple indeed: a troughful of food, a place in the sun, and a little bit of comfort when the day is done.”

Perfect Piggies, a simple celebration of being unique, echoes the same, fun rhythm and rhyme that Boynton on Board books are well known for, but better yet, this one has a downloadable song that goes along with it.

The Perfect Piggies song is sung in a cappella, and has a sweet swing to it.  It’s catchy enough to induce some toe-tapping, finger-snapping and definitely kid-dancing.  The song reminds me so much of one of my favorite groups, Straight No Chaser, an a cappella group that’s been known to make people laugh and swoon with their fabulous performances.  And no doubt, the Perfect Piggies song and book make us swoon just as much, if not more.

Want to check out the song for your crew?  Download the Perfect Piggies song for free here.  Oooh, and there’s more, since we’re in party mode, have your own Perfect Piggies themed party, too!  Download some activity and craft sheets, a party poster and even the song sheet, and throw yourselves a party that’s perfect for all piggies and kids alike.

 

Download me!

 

Perfect Piggies is published by Workman Publishing and retails for $6.95.  The song can be downloaded for free online, and the book is available in bookstores now.

Yo Gabba Gabba! Live! Tour Launches Cool Tricks Contest

by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

Tons of great things happening with NKT fave, Yo Gabba Gabba! Live! Tour.  The tour, which is set to kick off on August 27 in Bethel, NY, just announced a Cool Tricks contest.  The Cool Tricks contest gives fans a chance to unveil their, well, cool tricks.  Beat boxing, breakdancing, playing the piccolo—be sure to share it to win cool prizes for cool tricks.

Fans can upload a :30-:60 second video demoing their Cool Trick for a chance to win a VIP Family 4 Pack and have their winning video played during intermission at the Yo Gabba Gabba! Live!: There’s a Party in My City show closest to their hometown. Oh, and it doesn’t end there, fellow Gabba friends, all participants are also entered into a sweepstakes where one fan will receive a five night trip for four to the Caribbean or Mexico and a three-month supply of organic snacks and meals from Plum Organics and Revolution Foods.

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Yum Food & Fun for Kids: New Resource for Food Revolution

by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

Magazines: I know many of you love them as much as I do.  There’s truly nothing like flipping through glossy pages and indulging in feature stories, cool products and advice columns.  In my case, I’m always looking for inspiration, whether it’s for writing, design or to just shop.

DSCF5403

On one of my recent trips to Target I found a new magazine called Yum Food & Fun for Kids.  Always, in search of new ideas on how to improve my efforts in the kitchen and at the dinner table, especially where the kid is concerned, I think this new publication fills a void at the newstands.

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Noodle and Doodle to Debut on Sprout in September

by Jen Rabulan-Bertram

Of the hundred or so exhibitors at this year’s BlogHer conference, since it was a blogging conference geared to women, the booths were geared to moms and families.  Sprout was onhand to share all about their latest programming, and even distribute a few cool branded notebooks, coloring books, cups.  My guy is sort of obsessed with Chica, so we’ve set aside our Chica cup to use to organize pencils and pens in his new room.

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Freezer Fruit Pops Make for Healthy Summertime Snacks

by Jen Rabulan-Bertram


Summertime snacks for our family are often synonymous with fresh, ripe fruit and chilled frozen yogurt or ice cream.  Actually, with all this heat we’ve been enduring this summer, anything cold sounds good right about now!

This post and activity was inspired, in part, by Healthy Child Healthy World’s weekly twitter party, and by a recipe I stumbled accross on one of my favorite kiddie cuisine sites, Weelicious.

Since we’ve been staying with family for the past few weeks, with three kids in the house and a Costco down the street, we’ve been stocking up on all the delicious fresh fruit.  And fruit from Costco…you know what that means.  We had a ton of it!

 

We had a surplus of strawberries and mangos; meaning, we had more ripened fruit than we knew what to do with!  Cue in Weelicious’ yummy recipes!

With all the extra fruit that was on the cusp of getting too ripe, I enlisted the two bigger kids to help me make some fun homemade popsicles!

I used:

1 set of Tovolo Groovy Pop molds, which yield 6 bigger fruit pops
2 ripe mangos, sliced into thirds and then cubed and pureed
1 cup of ripe strawberries, pureed
1/2 cup of blueberries, pureed
1/2 cup of Mott’s Medley’s juice

I mixed and pureed fruit for each pop, personalizing each flavor for each kid.  Since these fruits had so much of their own fruit juice, I only had to add a few splashes of the juice to help solidify the mixture once frozen.


It was fun to get creative with the kids and let them mix, then help pour each pop.  The making of the pops was a fun outdoor activity, and I’m sure it’d make a great (albeit messy) indoor or rainy day activity too.

 

The beauty of the Tovolo freezer pop molds is that each container is a good size and actually stays put.  I’ve used other molds in the past that used questionable plastic and the sticks never stayed in place.  Plus, Tovolo has a bunch of great shapes to choose from.

Looking for more healthy summer snacks?  Check out Healthy Child Healthy World’s Twitter Party (tonight at 9-10) and their site for more great ideas!