By Jill Davidson

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.)

Pack the Pack
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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.

5. Make an accordion book about what we did this summer. Have kids draw pictures, add photos, collage, tell stories or make lists of what they did or where they went.

6. Plan a meal around what’s growing in our community garden.

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.

10. Go for a bike ride and then visit our favorite ice cream place, Three Sisters in Providence. Like soft serve ice cream? Check Katy’s list of local places that serve it up. Click here to find Rhode Island bike maps.

How are you celebrating your last days of summer?

The Parks & Recreation Department Fun Bus filled with kites, board games, hula hoops and more is visiting Providence’s neighborhood parks this summer!

From Providence City News:

If you see a large, colorful bus painted with images of children rumbling through your neighborhood, it’s probably the Providence Parks and Recreation Department Fun Bus.  Mayor David N. Cicilline announced that the Fun Bus has begun visiting the city’s neighborhood parks loaded with lots of activities for children like board games, a 35-foot inflatable obstacle course and hula hoops.
The Fun Bus visits a different neighborhood park every day throughout the summer from 12pm until 4pm.  In addition to board games and hula-hoops, the bus also has kites, jump ropes, tug-of-war equipment, footballs, basketballs, face painting and jewelry-making material and everything you need to compete in a potato sack race.  The bus is staffed with seven Parks and Recreation Department employees ready to engage children in fun activities.

“Whether it’s sailing on Narragansett Bay, playing golf, splashing at a water park or competing in a fierce tug-of-war, we’re working hard to come up with fun, affordable ways to keep children engaged in high-quality, safe activities this summer,” said Mayor Cicilline.

The Department of Parks and Recreation is also partnering with the YMCA of Greater Providence to bring the Y on the Move to the city’s parks.  Y on the Move engages children and families in health and wellness through interactive games, inflatable slide, bungee pull, sports wall and much more.

The Fun Bus schedule for the rest of the summer is as follows:

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It’s summer time and many of us will be spending time at the beach or a pool to beat the heat. Here is a reminder of how we all can stay this summer with a list of tips from the Red Cross.

Make Water Safety Your Priority

• Swim in designated areas supervised by lifeguards.
• Always swim with a buddy; do not allow anyone to swim alone. Even at a public pool or a lifeguarded beach, use the buddy system!
• Ensure that everyone in the family learns to swim well. Enroll in age-appropriate Red Cross water orientation and Learn-to-Swim courses.
• Never leave a young child unattended near water and do not trust a child’s life to another child; teach children to always ask permission to go near water.
• Have young children or inexperienced swimmers wear U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jackets around water, but do not rely on life jackets alone.
• Establish rules for your family and enforce them without fail. For example, set limits based on each person’s ability, do not let anyone play around drains and suction fittings, and do not allow swimmers to hyperventilate before swimming under water or have breath-holding contests.
• Even if you do not plan on swimming, be cautious around natural bodies of water including ocean shoreline, rivers and lakes. Cold temperatures, currents and underwater hazards can make a fall into these bodies of water dangerous.
• If you go boating, wear a life jacket! Most boating fatalities occur from drowning.
• Avoid alcohol use. Alcohol impairs judgment, balance and coordination; affects swimming and diving skills; and reduces the body’s ability to stay warm.

Prevent Unsupervised Access to the Water

• Install and use barriers around your home pool or hot tub. Safety covers and pool alarms should be added as additional layers of protection.
• Ensure that pool barriers enclose the entire pool area, are at least 4-feet high with gates that are self-closing, self-latching and open outward, and away from the pool. The latch should be high enough to be out of a small child’s reach.
• If you have an above-ground or inflatable pool, remove access ladders and secure the safety cover whenever the pool is not in use.
• Remove any structures that provide access to the pool, such as outdoor furniture, climbable trees, decorative walls and playground equipment.
• Keep toys that are not in use away from the pool and out of sight. Toys can attract young children to the pool.

Maintain Constant Supervision

• Actively supervise children whenever around the water—even if lifeguards are present. Do not just drop your kids off at the public pool or leave them at the beach—designate a responsible adult to supervise.
• Always stay within arm’s reach of young children and avoid distractions when supervising children around water.

Know What to Do in an Emergency

• If a child is missing, check the water first. Seconds count in preventing death or disability.
• Know how and when to call 9-1-1 or the local emergency number.
• If you own a home pool or hot tub, have appropriate equipment, such as reaching or throwing equipment, a cell phone, life jackets and a first aid kit.
• Enroll in Red Cross home pool safety, water safety, first aid and CPR/AED courses to learn how to prevent and respond to emergencies.

Contact your local Red Cross chapter to find out which aquatic facilities in your area offer Red Cross courses. To find your local chapter, enter your zip code in the far right column of this page.

Summer Reading Double-Dog Dare is Borders’ bookstore way of encouraging reading this summer. If students read 10 books, they’ll get a book for free.

Jeff Kinney author of the popular book series, Diary of a Wimpy kids shares his favorite reads as a child along with a list of a wonderful new authors to follow.

A quick rundown of the details:

• Read any 10 books you’d like
• List them on the Official 2010 Reading form
• Bring in the form and use the coupon portion for your free book (choose from a selection of titles)

This year the Movies on the Block schedule unfortunately has few films appropriate for children. My boys LOVED seeing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Star Wars on the big screen outside. Movies on the Block does make for a great affordable date night out. Free movies shown outside (in the empty lot across from Tazza) in downtown Providence every Thursday, June through September. Bring your own blanket or chairs. Pack a picnic supper or buy food from Tazza or other downtown eatery.

By Jeanine Silversmith

For the second year in a row, I’ve registered my family to participate in the Rhode Island Great Outdoors Pursuit, a wonderful program designed to help families enjoy the ocean state’s recreational parks. Throughout the summer, there are 10 “pursuits” (events) involving fun outdoor activities and challenges such as hiking, fishing, kayaking, rock climbing and children’s games, as well as music, food, informational exhibits, raffles, and more.

The community-minded, nature-loving mom in me is so excited that this will help my family spend time outside this summer while meeting others. But believe it or not, the super-competitive, type-A personality I try so hard (and many times unsuccessfully) to keep hidden is also stoked. You see, the more pursuits we attend, the more points we earn. And the more points we earn, the better are our chances to win prizes.

With families as large and as close as mine and my hubby’s, summer weekends tend to get filled up pretty quickly, so I’ve already marked each of the pursuits on my calendar and I’m ready!

To play, all you need is a minimum two-member team with at least one adult and one child, and the desire to have a great time, all while discovering the beauty and activities in Rhode Island’s state parks and natural areas.

Don’t miss the fun! The game begins on Sunday, May 23, 2010 at Lincoln Woods State Park. To learn more, visit the website.

Jeanine Silversmith is a self-described tree hugging, science and math geek whose love of nature, coupled with her absolute certainty that people, especially children, are happier, healthier, and wiser when they regularly spend time in nature, led her to establish Rhode Island Families in Nature. She loves to run, garden, bake, hike, and go camping, especially when accompanied by her husband, Ian, her four-year-old daughter, Sierra, and her two-year-old son, Devin. They live in Wakefield.

Are you thinking about camp, a planned vacation, long lazy days at the beach, day-trips or are you not even thinking of summer yet? To get you in the mood here are some helpful links from Kidoinfo:

• Summer camp and childcare

• Camp Guide

• You Really Can Do-it-Yourself: Forming Camps and Clubs

• Helping Kids Help Others

• 100 things to do with your kids in Rhode Island

From the Audubon Society of Rhode Island

Did you know your maple syrup comes from a tree?  To be specific, it comes from a Sugar Maple tree.  Now is the time of year to check out how the sap from a tree is transformed into that sweet syrup you put on your pancakes.

When the nights are below freezing and the days are mild, usually by late February or early March, the sap begins to flow through the trees and it’s time to “sugar.”

The process involves “tapping” a tree, or drilling a small hole into the tree. If sugaring is being done the old-fashioned way with buckets, a metal spile is then tapped into the hole and the buckets are hung from it. The more modern method connects tubing to plastic spouts, which carries sap to a single, larger storage tank. If done correctly, tapping will not damage a healthy tree, which can provide up to ten gallons of sap per tap hole, every season, for over a century.

It takes about ten gallons of sap to produce one quart of maple syrup, but this is a fraction of a tree’s sap production. Maple syrup and maple sugar are made by concentrating (boiling down) the sweet sap – which has a natural sugar content.

It may surprise you to learn that maple sugaring was originally a Native American custom, later adopted by the colonists. How the Native Americans discovered maple sugar is not exactly known, but an Iroquois legend has it that someone tasted an icicle hanging from a broken maple branch, and the rest is history, as they say.

For the Native Americans that did sugaring, it was a festive event. As soon as the sap began to flow, families would gather at a “sugar bush,” or maple grove. A diagonal slash would be cut in the bark of the lower part of a tree trunk. A tube, usually a hollowed-out sumac stem, was inserted in the lower end of the cut. Sap flowing from the tree was collected in small wooden containers. The sap was then transferred into a much larger wooden or bark container, and white-hot rocks heated in an open fire were dropped in to boil off the water. The process was repeated, eventually producing a granulated sugar. Besides sugar maples, the native peoples sometimes tapped red maples, black or yellow birches, silver maples, wild cherries, or even box elders. Modern sugarhouses may also tap into other species such a Norway and red maples, each with their own distinct flavor.

Experience this sweet tradition for yourself…

On March 13, 2010, step back in time at the Audubon Parker Woodland Wildlife Refuge and experience the tradition of maple sugaring. Learn more about the history of this sweet syrup and how to sugar in your own backyard. Participants taste first hand this delectable treat as they sample pancakes, muffins and doughnuts – all with fresh maple syrup. Register early, as space is limited.  For more information and to register, call (401) 949-5454 x0.  This program is appropriate for children ages 6 and up.

Situated on a 28-acre wildlife refuge in Bristol, Rhode Island, Audubon’s Environmental Education Center is open year-round and provides walking trails, nature programs, and exhibits for the whole family to discover.  For more information and a complete calendar of events, visit www.asri.org or call (401) 245-7500.

Photo provided by Audubon’s Environmental Education Center

By Kristen Swanberg, Senior Director of Conservation, Audubon Society of Rhode Island

Did you know that some animals live out the winter beneath the snow?  Scientists use the word subnivean to describe the world under the snow cover.  Snow acts as a thermal blanket, protecting animals like mice, voles, and shrews from the winter cold.  These animals build elaborate tunnels and nets under the snow.  The tunnels are like little roadways that they travel through protecting them from predators.  However, this frosty covering does not always hide them completely.  Owls, foxes, and coyotes can hear mice moving through the tunnels from above and often pounce through the snow catching an unsuspecting mouse.

Snow is very important to the survival of these small mammals.  This winter when there is a nice layer of snow on the ground, think about who may be living under it.  And in the spring as the snow starts to melt you many find many of these tunnels scattered through out a forest, field or even your own backyard.

Resources for more information:

Under the Snow by Melissa Stewart
Discover Nature in Winter by Elizabeth P. Lawlor

Situated on a 28-acre wildlife refuge in Bristol, Rhode Island, Audubon’s Environmental Education Center is open year-round and provides walking trails, nature programs, and exhibits for the whole family to discover.  For more information and a complete calendar of events, visit www.asri.org or call (401) 245-7500.

Artwork by Mary Lamb Greene. Provided by Audubon’s Environmental Education Center