Activities

This Saturday, July 24th, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance is coordinating the City of Water Day events at Governor's Island. From Red Hook to Spuyten Duyvil and beyond, the waterfront is an integral part of NYC history - all 578 miles of it. City of Water Day is a festival on Governors Island that brings together everything fun and exciting about the water surrounding our city. According to Metro NY, this event was the second-most attended day on the island last year.

There's no place better to be on a hot day than in or on the water, and a day on GI is always fun, so go check it out! Click here for complete event info.

As for me, I'll be at Drupal Camp 8 in downtown Brooklyn.

I've just added a bunch of new links to sites about getting kids outdoors, and wouldn't you know it, that's the topic for today's post in the Sierra Club's Green Life blog.

The annual Great American Backyard Campout happens June 27th. Have fun!

I got this from a National Wildlife Federation newsletter.

As part of their Be Out There campaign, NWF is participating in a multi-organizational challenge to map 100,000 play spaces in the next 100 days, led by the playground organization KaBOOM!®.

Today's NY Times Well column reports that "The best way to improve children's performance in the classroom may be to take them out of it.... "The researchers found that a dose of nature worked as well as a dose of medication to improve concentration, or even better."

But we knew that already :-)

Here's something fun and non-traditional (or start a new tradition!) to do for the Christmas holiday - get involved in the annual Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count. Go to the Audubon site for details.

Spring is here, so naturally gardens and gardening are coming up all over (puns intended!). Not that I've done anything with my own garden yet. Slate has a couple of very good, recent articles – one on creating a habitat garden to shelter small creatures, birds, and butterflies, and one on gardening with children. Enjoy, and get some good ideas.

Click here to go to the Wildlife Watch site.

I liked this, from a "Green Parenting" article by fellow NYC public school parent Melanie Hoopes in our PTA newsletter.

"Leave No Child Inside

"Get out! Get out! Pick activities on the weekends that get the whole family outside. There are hundreds of destinations accessible by the MTA that will put you and your children in touch with nature.
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