Archives for February 2009

Some of you may have seen this article in Tuesday’s NY Times about the academic and health benefits of recess and unstructured play for kids. Obviously this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. So here’s a bit of grist for the mill. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/health/24well.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Our walk in the woods just west of the small lake. Nice crowd today. 10 families, 20-odd kids, lots of off trail exploring and adventuring. I’ll let the pictures say it this time.

Westmoreland Sanctuary is a really special place. We started our morning at the Sanctuary’s museum and nature center, which is the former Presbyterian Church of Bedford Village. The 200-year old building was dismantled and reconstructed in 1973 at it’s present site. There we met up with Adam Zorn, resident naturalist and guide for the morning’s hike. Adam was patient and enthusiastic with the kids, a fountain of knowledge about the flora and fauna of the Sanctuary, and obviously passionate about {Read More}

This morning we were off to the Teatown Lake Reservation for Wacky Wednesday Walks. I bumped the time to the morning being vacation week, and am glad that I did as the timing was just about perfect with the weather. The flurries were just starting as we left around 12:45. We started in the nature center where the kids checked out Teatown’s pretty extensive collection of native species–corn snakes, rat snakes, red-eared sliders, wood frogs, and more are there for {Read More}

My oldest daughter began Suzuki violin lessons this year. My husband, a musician and music teacher, and I were a little hesitant to start the program as it is a bit of a time commitment. But you start very slowly. So far it’s been going pretty well. Anyhow, last week one of the teachers gave the parents an piece written by a fellow violinist in which she discusses the physical relationship that one has with live music. She is sharing {Read More}

Welcome Mrs. Thaw! There’s a great book by Swedish author Elsa Beskow called Ollie’s Ski Trip in which a young boy anxiously awaits the arrival of King Winter so that he can try out his birthday skis. In the book there’a a character called Mrs. Thaw. She is a confused old woman who struggles to know when to come and begin her work of melting away the winter snow and ice to clear the way for Spring in her butterfly-drawn {Read More}

Sitting on my spinning bike at the Y today, a friend and I were chatting. During the conversation she mentioned that her husband, flying solo with the kids on Saturday morning while she did some nursery school volunteer work, took the kids to Eaglefest. “They had a great time!” she said. They watched the puppet show, listened to the storyteller and saw eagles flying overhead. She told me that if I hadn’t sent out the information about the event they {Read More}

I’m excited to report that after forwarding to Patty Cohn, the children’s librarian and interim director of the Warner Library, the Kids Unplugged information, she replied enthusiastically about making the library a venue to get the word out about the group and its mission. We decided an appropriate way to do that would be through a book discussion group open to the public. So, beginning in April, Kids Unplugged will be hosting a series of book talks–No Child Left Inside— {Read More}

This past Monday at 11:30 it was 52-degrees and sunny. I called my daughter’s school to ask if the kids were, finally, after weeks of indoor recess, going to go outside. The answer was no. Reasons? There may be some ice on the playground. (I’m sure that it’s all slushy by now, not at all dangerous). Not all kids have boots. (Couldn’t a note be sent home asking that kids please come to school prepared to play outdoors. Couldn’t we {Read More}

This morning we walked in Rockefeller State Park along the Pocantico River Trail, and, while it was a bit blustery (this time it was Nola who was the unhappy adventurer–even magic crackers couldn’t cheer her) it was beautiful and the kids had a ball. In the space of an hour they gathered some big sticks, found a frozen area along the trail they deemed a pond and proceeded to chop at it to make holes for ice fishing, fished in {Read More}