Kidoinfo Giveaway: Win 4 tickets for your family to attend Audubon’s Raptor Weekend event on September 11th or 12th, 2010. Tell us your favorite raptor in the comments below. One answer will be selected at random. Deadline to enter is Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at Midnight EST.
From Glocester to Block Island, raptors can be spotted soaring across our state. These amazing birds eat meat and use their feet, instead of their beak, to capture prey. In fact, the word “raptor” comes from Latin meaning to “seize and carry away”. Hawks, falcons, eagles, and owls are all examples of raptors. Also called “birds of prey,” raptors have exceptionally good vision, a sharp hooked beak, and powerful feet with curved, sharp talons.
Raptors share common traits with all birds, such as feathers, wings, laying eggs, and being warm-blooded. But it is their special adaptations that make them so amazing. Let’s take a closer look….
Sharp Talons
The raptor’s sharp talons truly set them apart from all other birds – they are perfectly designed to catch, hold, and carry prey. Most have three toes pointing forward and one pointing backward. These toes have an extremely powerful grip. Osprey and owls have one hinged toe that can be held in a forward or backward position. Many owls even have feathers on their legs and feet while other raptors do not. It is thought that these feathers help to keep them warm when they hunt on cold nights in the forest.
When I was a child there was a food that would send me into tears if it was scattered into our dinner casserole, and that was onion. The slimy texture or worse, the crunch of an onion and the spicy taste made them one food that I would dread. My mother started making casseroles with one half onion, one half without, but sometimes would forget which half, or sometimes one or two little pieces would cross over to the wrong side. That was stressful eating for me.
Fast forward to my own cooking days and I enjoy onions, but not if they have a crunch to them, my mouth is making a face just thinking of it. I love to slowly sauté an onion and bring out it’s sweetness and tenderness. The smell of onion and garlic sautéing is magic, especially to my husband as he enters the front door after a long day. I used to start every recipe with onion and garlic, these days I find I am moving away from that traditional beginning. I have found that with every vegetable, rotating, eating them seasonally and enjoying a few simple flavors together is preferable. Other vegetables smell delicious so we haven’t lost that part of it!
My kids prefer not to know about the onions they are eating. If they can see them, they pick them out and since I remember that feeling, I try to either cook them down or use large slices which can be removed before serving. My favorite onion is a red onion. I love its sweetness and how it melts into your food. A friend of mine taught me a great use of red onion. Place a slice of bread topped with tomato, a slice or two of red onion, a drizzle of olive oil and some salt and pepper into the oven and let it slowly heat up and become sweet. She would serve it on the side of scrambled eggs and talk about joyful eating! I still can feel her friendship whenever I slice into a red onion. (more…)
A child’s lunch box is a tiny, portable piece of home. Like a happy home, it is best kept clean and comfortable and filled with good things to eat. Finding the right format for your child’s lunch need not be tricky, and waxed paper and a bag might be all anyone actually needs. However, lunch box goods get cleverer and more beautiful each year, so they are fun to choose and can quash the new-school jitters.
The cost of outfitting a lunch box shouldn’t exceed the cumulative cost of the food that will go in it. But like boots, cabinetry, and masking tape, it’s worthwhile to consider higher-cost options. Metal containers are pricier than their plastic counterparts, but are very durable and can be safely washed/crammed into dishwasher by clumsy/careless people in your household. Among other lunchtime items, Eco Lunch Boxes offers a lidded, sandwich-sized container of stainless steel, accompanied by a small leak-proof dish that fits inside and reliably contains liquid components ($22 for the set). Lunchbots is dedicated completely to stainless steel lunch containers and offers a basic rounded rectangle for $13. (Spotted locally in Wakefield at the Alternative Food Coop.) An eight-ounce cylinder from Kids Konserve ($18.50 for a set of two) will last to accompany your child to college, but let us bar our minds any images of what might be stored in it then. (more…)
For all of us, no matter what kind of school our kids go to, or what sort of summer routine (or lack thereof) we’ve had, the event of heading back to school is a powerful universal, something that nearly all families experience collectively.
I opted to check in with a teacher to get the professional perspective on ways to get kids to make the seasonal shift successfully. Currently teaching fifth grade at The Learning Community, a charter school in Central Falls, Maureen Nosal has been in the classroom for 16 years. As she gets ready to welcome students into her classroom, she offers some thoughts on what families can do to help create the best summer-to-school transition.
Hit the Sack
Nosal believes that lack of sleep poses one of the greatest challenges to students as they return to school. “Kids and parents are busy, with busy lives.,” says Nosal. “What we see in the classroom is a lot of yawning. During those first few weeks back, kids don’t have enough stamina or resilience. Some of them get frustrated easily and they can’t make it through the day intact.” The solution, of course, is to go to bed early enough, winding down screen time and other excitement early enough so that kids are used to getting to bed at a suitable hour, and focusing on maintaining a consistent routine during the first few weeks of school until it becomes a habit. (Author’s note: on Tuesday nights for as long as its season lasts, Wipeout will be the biggest challenge to bedtime in our house. It has been a summer delight, but unsurprisingly, with three young boys, it is not particularly soothing or soporific.)
Every week on GoLocalProv I share tips on how families can make the most of their weekend — including helpful hints that make parenting easier and connecting you to great local happenings.
Time to choose the best out of the zillions of pictures you took this summer and print it on archival photo paper. Help your kids make a frame out of shells or rocks collected from the beach. Attach shells to an old picture frame using a glue gun or Aileen’s tacky glue, let dry and insert photo. Perfect way to preserve summer fun!
Kido Tip 2. Celebrate DIY fun followed by WaterFire.
Maker Faire features hands-on making, building & hacking, culinary crafting, garage technology, arts and creativity for sale culminating with a WaterFire in the Creative Capital! You and your kids will dig seeing how people make their own things (robots, musical instruments, air conditioners, etc.) and a have chance to tinker yourselves. Maker Faire is an all ages, free event from 3-11pm on Saturday, Aug 28th at Bank of America Skating Center.
Here is my 2010 list of fun ways my family is celebrating the last care-free days of summer vacation—before school starts and the days get shorter and the nights get colder. Some were on last years’ list, but some traditions are worth repeating.
1. Head to the beach for boogie boarding, castle building and wave splashing. Our favorites are Second Beach in Newport, RI, Narragansett Town Beach, RI and South Beach in Chatham, MA.
2. Have a potluck picnic with friends at a park, a beach or backyard.
3. Visit Waterfire in downtown Providence, lighting occurs just after sunset.
4. Take a hike and collect natural materials. Build a fairy house in the woods.
7. Have a leisurely bagel breakfast with the family on our porch.
8. Visit Acme Video and choose a great summer film like Finding Nemo, Nim’s Island, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Surf’s Up or Treasure Island to watch for family movie night.
9. Have friends over—after the kids are in bed—and sip summer cocktails on the porch.
New York City’s interactive, educational music experience for parents and children debuts in Providence this fall!
Rock-a-Baby, founded by Pawtucket native Marc Trachtenberg in 2007 at the JCC on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, is an interactive, educational music experience for infants and toddlers ages 4 months to 4 years. Marc recently relocated back to the Providence area, bringing Rock-a-Baby along with him. He and two other energetic musicians/teachers will lead infants and toddlers in an exploration of rock, pop, blues, traditional, and classical music genres by singing songs, playing games and instruments, and dancing. Each week a different theme will be explored with the help of whimsical puppets—Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony.
The Jewish Community Center of Rhode Island (JCCRI) announced that it will be offering the Rock-a-Baby infant and toddler music program as part of its fall 2010 programming. JCCRI, located on Providence’s East Side, is a diverse neighborhood center offering fitness, childcare, classes and enrichment opportunities, rooted in a deep sense of community. While some programs offer insight into Jewish tradition and heritage, the center is not exclusive to the Jewish community and prides itself onhaving “community” as its middle name.
“We are so proud to offer the first Rock-a-Baby music classes in Rhode Island,” stated Nicole Katzman, director of PJ Library & Shalom Baby of the JCCRI. “We believe the Providence community will embrace the wide variety of music and appreciate the welcoming atmosphere and playful energy. Not only will the children be educated and entertained, but the adults will be too!”
Founder Marc Trachtenberg earned his BS in music education from New York University and has over 15 years’ experience as a professional songwriter, entertainer, and educator. Marc’s Rock-a-Baby takes your average Mommy and Me music class to a whole new level. “After years of teaching by day and gigging by night,” he says, “I saw an opportunity to blend my musical background into something inspiring for young audiences, and their grown-ups too.” Marc’s diverse and extensive experience culminates with Rock-a-Baby.
“We are excited to be able to partner with JCCRI to bring Rock-a-Baby to the Providence community,” says Marc. “We want to foster a love of music at an early age. Through the repetition of rhythm and improvisation, using musical instruments made for children, melodic recognition, and hand and body movement and more, we help to stimulate infants’ and toddlers’ development.” As the Rock-a-Baby theme song claims, “With songs from Bach to hip-hop, we’ll put on a show, we’re not gonna stop!”
Visit the Rock-a-Baby website for more information. To register for classes, contact Stephanie Trachtenberg at Stephanie@rock-a-baby.net or 401.524.5120. Tell her you heard about it on Kidoinfo!
When my boys were younger and having a birthday party, my husband and I added “no gifts necessary” to the invitations.
Toys and gifts seemed to come into our house all year long from loving relatives, so when it came time for my sons’ birthday, we asked their friends to just come and play at their party. This worked well in terms of avoiding an influx of unnecessary toys and extra expense for the guests at the party. That is, until my boys were about five years old and started noticing that friends were receiving presents at their parties.
I usually do not cave to whatever my kids want, but at the the same time I could not come up with a good enough reason why friends could not bring gifts other than “because I said so” or “because I think it is a good idea”—especially when there is so much fun surrounding the idea of gift-giving—so we dropped the no-gift rule.
Gifts started multiplying in our home again, and at the same time my boys started developing very specific tastes of what they liked and did not like. This left many unused and unplayed-with toys to deal with.
I decided for their seventh birthday to try something new: set up a gift registry at a store where guests could contribute to a joint gift certificate for the boys. Since the boys LOVED books and had become voracious readers, I picked our favorite independent bookstore, Books on the Square.
The folks at Books on the Square, who had never done anything like this before, were very receptive to the idea and set up a sheet to track the contributions. On the birthday invite I mentioned that the boys loved books and wanted to support their local bookshop. I included the phone number and the store’s website, suggesting in lieu of buying a gift, friends and family could make a “small contribution” to a gift certificate for the boys.
The gift registry was a huge success! The boys’ friends’ parents loved the ease of shopping and supporting a local business. Even out-of-town family called in with their credit card numbers and added to the gift certificate. The gift certificate was split in half and each boy received their own copy with the names of everyone who had contributed.
This gift turned out to be a teaching tool for the boys in ways I never expected in terms of planning, negotiating, prioritizing, independence and understanding money. They treated their “money” as something valuable that ought not to be spent all at once. They decided they wanted the “money” to last until their next birthday, so they rarely bought something impulsively. Sometimes after seeing a desired book, the boys waited days or weeks before they went back to buy it or negotiated with each other to split the cost of the book. Now with just over two months until their next birthday, they each have over $50 left to spend and are the proud owners of several small paperbacks and big beefy hardcover books. I asked the boys if they regretted any of their purchases and they both said no.
I think setting up a birthday gift registry could work at any store(s) your kids like. Guests could even be asked to contribute to a class, a special event or a membership to The Zoo or Children’s Museum.
Share your gift ideas and tips in the comments below.
Every week on GoLocalProv I share tips on how families can make the most of their weekend — including helpful hints that make parenting easier and connecting you to great local happenings.
This week’s list:
Kido Tip 1. Record summer memories by journaling.
Encourage kids to write in a journal a few minutes at the beginning or end of very day about their favorite part of the day or a funny/happy/sad situation. If kids are reluctant to write or are new to journaling; have them draw a picture, paste a photo or list one thing they liked about their day. Follow up by asking them questions about the picture or the event, they may have more to share!
Kido Tip 2. Free School Supplies for Rhode Island Kids
The Providence School Department, Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island, Sodexho School Services and over 30 community partners will sponsor this year’s Back to School Celebration. Kick off the new school year with celebrations this Saturday, August 21 from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. at 11 community sites. Over 12,000 kids will receive free backpacks filled with school supplies. Music, raffles and food also will be provided at each location.
Kido Tip 3. Explore Rhode Island’s Bike Paths using the Rhody Bike Path Passport!
“The ocean is a big place, and I am just a little boat,” begins Thomas Docherty’s tale of a tiny boat making its way through a vast ocean.
From the start, it’s clear that the little tugboat’s journey is meant to parallel a young child’s experiences in the big wide world, but Docherty makes the connections in such a sweet and subtle way, children will find themselves simply enjoying the ride while subconsciously relating to the story’s overarching metaphor.
The text is rhythmic, yet spare, with short descriptive phrases. “The sea is always changing, and full of dangers, but I sail on,” says the little boat while skirting the edges of an ominous whirlpool.
Despite “terrible storms, rolling waves, and treacherous rocks,” the tiny boat seems to truly enjoy the adventure, and before long, befriends a whale, octopus, dolphins, and a pair of seagulls.
Docherty cleverly plays with scale—making the tiny tugboat appear miniscule in a sea of blue during the scary parts—and larger when the little boat is traversing a changing seascape accompanied by its ocean pals.
In the end, the boat has traveled quite a long way, past penguins on floating icebergs, and still—in a spirit similar to “The Little Engine That Could,” or “Tuggy the Tugboat”—our hero presses on.
What sets this story apart, however, is that its protagonist, the little boat, seems to have a healthy does of confidence from the get-go. There’s no “I think I can,” in this tugboat’s universe. On the contrary, the little boat declares: “Full Steam ahead, to the edge of the world… because no ocean is too big for a little boat like me.”
Way to go, little boat. Rock on.
Anika Denise is the author of “Pigs Love Potatoes” and the forthcoming “Bella And Stella Come Home.” She lives in Barrington, RI with her husband, Christopher – a children’s book illustrator – and their two daughters, ages 8 and 5. Anika is also the host of Thursday morning story hours at Barrington Books. You can read more of her children’s book reviews and story hour suggestions at www.bookmarks-ri.blogspot.com and at www.anikadenise.blogspot.com. For information on her books, visit www.anikadenise.com.
From Glocester to Block Island, raptors can be spotted soaring across our state. These amazing birds eat meat and use their feet, instead of their beak, to capture prey. In fact, the word “raptor” comes from Latin meaning to “seize and carry away”. Hawks, falcons, eagles, and owls are all examples of raptors. Also called “birds of prey,” raptors have exceptionally good vision, a sharp hooked beak, and powerful feet with curved, sharp talons.
posted by Anisa | category: 
My mother started making casseroles with one half onion, one half without, but sometimes would forget which half, or sometimes one or two little pieces would cross over to the wrong side. That was stressful eating for me.
However, lunch box goods get cleverer and more beautiful each year, so they are fun to choose and can quash the new-school jitters.
I opted to check in with a teacher to get the professional perspective on ways to get kids to make the seasonal shift successfully. Currently teaching fifth grade at 
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