Audiobooks – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Audiobooks – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

We've been listening to audiobooks with our kids since the oldest was a toddler. Then we listened to things like "The Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum and "Catwings" by Ursula K. LeGuin. We spend more time driving around in the car than I care to think about, and listening to audiobooks makes all that time feel somewhat more productive.

Not every audiobook we've tried has been a winner. Sometimes the stories just don't capture the kids, sometimes the narrator is difficult to understand, or the kids just have other things on their minds and are daydreaming out the window instead of listening. That's why we now take breaks between books, and don't listen every single time we get in the car. Sometimes we need music, or just some quiet time for our own thoughts, but before long, we are all ready again for a new story.

Since we are all at the same place in the story, it is easy for us to talk about it together too.

Long road trips can be a great time to try out a family audiobook. Because they can be pricey, we usually borrow cds from the library. 

Stay Cool Indoors with Building Blocks – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Stay Cool Indoors with Building Blocks – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

I was going to write another post today about building with Legos with your kids. We are big fans of Legos in our house. Yet as I thought about what I wanted to write, I realized that any sort of building block would work.

When the heat is keeping you stuck playing indoors, building blocks can be a ton of fun. Especially if the whole family gets into it together. Especially if you aim for a creation on as grand a scale as your building materials allow.

My girls once used every type of building block they had, along with most of their little plastic animal toys, to build a zoo that took up their whole room. I think the Ikea wooden train even got involved (mimicking the train ride at the Oakland Zoo, I’m sure.) On another occasion, they recreated Ponyville from their beloved TV show and Comic series ‘My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic’.

What your family chooses to create is entirely up to you and the things you love, but make it big! If the kids (and the parents) aren’t ready to let it go when it is time for clean up, try taking a few snapshots of it to remember it. Or, if you can still make it to the beds and the bathroom, consider leaving it up another day. It’s something your family created all together – just be proud of it and have fun!

Fireworks Displays Around the Bay Area 2013

Fireworks Displays Around the Bay Area 2013

So many communities have discontinued their fireworks displays over the past several years, it can be hard to know where to go anymore to see a nice July 4^th display. Below are the best links I could find that list various 4^th of July events, including fireworks displays. The list also include carnivals, parades, and other events, so make sure, if you are just looking for a place to watch fireworks, that the location you pick actually includes a fireworks display as well on their list of activities.

In Alameda County:

http://www.americantowns.com/ca/alameda/4th-of-july-2013-fireworks-parades

In Contra Costa County:

http://eastbay.connectaround.com/looking-for-local-fourth-of-july-fireworks-shows/

Marin County:

http://www.marinmommies.com/marin-4th-july-parades-fireworks-and-more

San Francisco County:

http://sf.funcheap.com/san-francisco-4th-july-fireworks-show/

Solano County:

http://dixon.patch.com/groups/volunteering/p/where-to-go-to-enjoy-fourth-of-july-fireworks

Make a Scale Model Solar System - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Make a Scale Model Solar System - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Back when my oldest wanted to learn about the solar system for the first time, I obviously thought we should make a little model. Once I actually got a closer look at all those kits they sell in craft stores and elsewhere, I was disappointed. There was never any sort of consistent scale. For example, in most kits Jupiter is bigger than Earth, but sometimes, not by much. In some kits the sun was even smaller than Jupiter.

Now, I know making a scale model solar system is hard, but I felt so many of these kits would be misleading to young kids who don't realize how different these packaged solar system kits are from reality. They just don't do justice to the vastness and the amazing sizes they way they should. They certainly don't do much to inspire awe and wonder of the natural universe.

Thanks to Google, I was able to find this wonderful website for making your own scale model solar system:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/

You can plug in a size (the diameter) for the Sun you want to make, then it will tell you what the diameter each of the planets should be, and their orbital distance from the Sun. Your sun will need to be big if you don't want tiny dots for planets. We were going to use a hula hoop, but ended up just making a big circle with a piece of cord so we could have bigger planets. That way, our Jupiter came out to be about the size of a Frisbee, and we then measured and cut the other planets out of paper. Then we taped the planets to sticks so they would stick up out of the ground as we placed them in their orbits.

This is one caveat of the scale model solar system - Keeping the size of the planets in scale isn't too hard, nor is keeping the orbital distance, but doing both at the same time can be very tough. For example - in our model where the Sun had a diameter of 46 inches, and our Earth's diameter came out just under a half inch, if we kept the orbital distances consistent with that scale, Pluto would have to be over 16,000 feet away from our Sun. So we ended up with two scales, one for planet size, and another for orbits. The kids looked at the numbers with me, so they sort of knew that we were changing things from what they really should be.

Still, we found the biggest park we could, and laid out our circle for the Sun, then measured off the distances to stick our planets in the right places. Even though we had to plug in different numbers until we had Pluto no more than 50 or so feet away, the final model was very impressive, and illustrated much better the amount of 'space' in the Solar System.

It was a very fun and educational afternoon for us all. I am actually looking forward to doing it all over again in a year or so for the younger kiddo. She helped the first time, but she was so little, I don't think she could appreciate it yet. It really isn't as much work as it sounds like, with the help of the calculator at the Exploratorium website linked above. It is a very worthwhile activity.

Geocaching Part 2 – What to Take With You

Geocaching Part 2 – What to Take With You

For beginning geocaching with kids, you really don't need to bring much. The most important items are:

a GPS device of some sort

a pen or pencil

'swag' or small items for trade

That is really all you need for basic geocaching with kids. We use a low end basic dedicated GPS device when we are heading out on a hike, and we use a geocaching ap on my smart phone for urban, or city geocaching. I'm not really qualified to review or recommend GPS devices, so I won't do that here. I'll just say that my kids don't have trouble using my little Garmin etrek 10. There are many other choices, some with much fancier features, like color maps and all kinds of cool things. However, price goes up quickly with the features, so you probably want to make sure you really love geocaching before you invest in a pricey GPS just for that purpose.

When we use my smart phone, we use a free ap called c:geo. Geocaching.com has it's own ap that is supposed to be very good, but I have not tried it. I just tried out c:geo because it was free, and it usually works well for me. When it doesn't it is usually because we are out of phone reception range – that's why we generally use the phone only for city stuff.

I have read that the geocaching experts say that a GPS designed for car navigation usually do not work well for geocaching. I think they are good at getting you to a general address, but for geocaching you need to get to within at least a few feet of the hide for the best chance of finding it.

Regardless of what type of GPS you use, you should sign up for a geocaching.com account. Most aps will need to sync with your geocaching.com account to work and if you're using a dedicated GPS device, you'll need to account to download the cache data into your device. There is a free option, as well as a paid option that includes a few perks. The free account is plenty to get you started geocaching.

It's good to bring a pencil or pen with you in case the cache you find doesn't have one, or the one in it is bad. There will be a log in each geocache for you to sign in order to get credit for making the find.

'Swag' is the term used for the tradable stuff inside many geocaches. It's usually small, and cheap stuff. My husband calls it junk, but the kids love looking through it and picking out something to trade. The geocaching community policy is that you should trade 'even or up' when trading swag. This is to prevent the quality of the swag declining even further. So for example, it would be considered very bad geocaching etiquette to take a mini maglite and leave a nickel. As an example of the sorts of things we often find, and leave: stickers, buttons, plastic craft jewels, small toys (happy meal type stuff), coins, rubber bouncy balls, etc. You should never leave candy or food because that will only attract animals and bugs.

Next time: Part 3 - The search!

Geocaching Part 1 - Planning

Geocaching Part 1 - Planning

I promised awhile back to write a more extensive post about geocaching with kids. However, I don’t want to overwhelm with a super long post, so I will be dividing the process up. So here is part 1: planning your geocaching outing. Spring and Summer can be a great time to try out geocaching if you’ve never tried it before. We went out today and found three caches. I’m going to give an account of what we did as an example of how geocaching works. I’m going to do my best to avoid including any details that might provide hints about the location of the caches we found so I don’t accidently share any caching spoilers.

First, I visited http://geocaching.com and pulled up the map of the Regional Park we planned to visit, to see what sorts of geocaches were there. What I consider when planning a geocaching outing with my kids:

-          The difficulty rating for the cache. While 3 and 4 star difficulty caches are very rewarding for me to find, my kids usually lose interest in searching well before I do. I stick to 1 and 2 star, maybe 2 ½ when they are caching with me to keep it fun.

-          The terrain rating. For this I stick to a 3 ½ star rating or under, even on my own because I’m not all that fit. I don’t want to have to do any climbing or other difficult maneuvers to reach a cache. There may be a 3 or a 3 ½ I won’t be able to get to, but so far those have been obtainable for us even if slightly tiring if they are up a steep hill or something similar.

-          The size of the cache. The kids love the cheep silly ‘swag’, or treasures that are available for trade inside some geocaches. Micro caches are often to small to hold any swag. I try to make sure most of the caches we will be searching for on an outing are ‘small’ or larger. Sometimes a hide is so clever and fun on its own they enjoy finding it just for the sake of finding it (as I do) but usually, they want the swag.

-          The hike involved. We are tackling longer hikes as time goes along and they grow, but I still have to consider a hike length that will keep things fun for them. Sometimes we will skip the hike all together and focus on finding ‘urban’ caches. These are ones that are hidden in parking lots, or neighborhood playgrounds, or sometimes inside local businesses. We found one on the bookshelf at our library! The downside to urban caches is that they tend to be small because it is harder to hide a geocache in a busy area. It can also be harder to search in a high traffic shopping center, for example, without strangers wondering what you’re up to.      

           

For your first geocaching outing consider looking for a ‘beginner’ cache. When you visit http://geocaching.com and  under the “Play” tab pick “Hide or Seek a cache” then enter the area you want to look in, you will be shown a list of caches in that area. Caches that the hider thinks would be good for a beginner will be highlighted in green.

Next time I’ll go over what to take with you on your geocaching outing.

Family Dinner Together and Game Night - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Family Dinner Together and Game Night

Despite all we hear about how great it is to eat dinner together at the table as a family, we don't usually eat together. We've fallen into bad habits of all going our own ways, to our own screens at dinner time. By the end of the day, we are often so tired that preparing a meal is almost more than we can handle, let alone trying to get the table cleared, set, etc. I'm sure many of you understand.

However, I really want to at least try to have family dinners, but the kids love their dinner TV time, and I admit I like my quiet dinner blog reading. So to make the transition more fun, we are adding game night into the mix. While we are all at the able having dinner, we play a game together.

We started with Minotarus by Lego, and had so much fun, I don't think the kids noticed that they didn't watch any TV. In fact, they were up early today playing it again. We picked it up at a garage sale, and I recommend garage sales a great way to build your game collection.

If you have any fun family dinner traditions, I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

Free Comic Book Day - May 4th 2013

We attended Free Comic Book Day last year and the kids loved it, so we will probably try to go again this year. Last year, we chose to wait to go until later in the afternoon, after the huge name comic book celebrity signings were done (there were still other signings later in the day), and we still had probably a half hour or longer wait to get in. The line moved steady though, and there were quite a few costumed comics characters outside that the kids liked seeing. Plus, the shop we went to brought some comics out to the folks in line, so that gave us something to look at to pass the time too.

Free Comic Book Day is exactly what it sounds like. You show up, stand in line, and get free comic books. I'm sure each shop has their own systems in place, and their own rules for how it all works for them, but our local shop let us pick out - if my memory can be trusted - three comic books each. More than I had expected. They had lots of kid titles too.

We also made a purchase, because - we all want to support our great local comic books shops, right?

While you are there, check out any other upcoming events that your shop has posted. For example, we just learned that the artist who draws the My Little Pony comic books will be signing near us shortly after Free Comic Book Day, and our girls are super excited to go back again and meet her.

If you visit the Free Comic Book Day Website there is a spot to put in your zip code to find participating shops near you. I plugged in a few and found these shops on the list:

Flying Color Comics in Concord
Dark Carnival and The Escapist Comic Bookstore in Berkeley
Comic Ink in Dublin
Dr. Comics & Mr. Games in Oakland
Comic Cards, Etc. in Pinole
Collector's Haven in Oakland
Alameda Sportscards and Comics in Alameda
Stand up Comics in El Cerrito
Hijinx Comics and SpaceCat in San Jose
Heroes in Campbell
Illusive Comics and Games in Santa Clara

I am sure there are may more around the Bay Area that I'm missing - so visit the link above and put in your zip code.

Free Summer Bowling for Kids

Free Summer Bowling for Kids

Many bowling alleys around the Bay Area offer free bowling for kids over the summer. To find out if there is a bowling alley near you, visit https://www.kidsbowlfree.com/all_centers.php .

We have personally not tried this program yet, but our closest bowling alley starts their free summer games for kids in May, so we will be signing up and trying it out. I’ll report how it goes for us.

In the past, we tried signing our kids up for a local bowling alley’s discounted summer kids program, but found it wasn’t a good fit for our kids. They had advertised bowling instruction would be included, but that wasn’t really the case. Most of the other kids there really knew their stuff, and our kids felt overwhelmed and confused.

However, I was in a summer bowling league as child in my pre-teen years and it was a lot of fun for me and I learned a bunch. So every alley and every program is going to be slightly different. If there are no free summer games offered for kids at a bowling alley near you, check with your local place and see what other summer or discounted programs they may offer. Most will have something going on for kids over the summer.

Write a Story Together - Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

Write a Story Together - Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

Now, I'm not talking about a serious literary attempt here. This is about writing a silly, possibly completely non-nonsensical story. You can do it with just you and your child, or a while group. It can be great for a long car trip. Still, it can be fun if one participant is willing to write the story down as it is created, so it can be enjoyed in it's goofy completeness later on.

Someone begins the story, but only says the first line. Another person makes up the next line - and so on. There should be no discussion ahead of time about plot or what sort of story you think you're going to tell. The first person will have one idea of what the story is that they are telling, but the others will have different ideas, and take the story in different fun and nutty directions. Every takes several turns until the group as a whole agrees the story is done. Usually someone will have to make an effort to bring it to a close.

To go just one more silly step further, limit each person to three words each.

We have also done a group story where each person wrote out their contribution, and we didn't limit the space they had, but everyone only got one turn. It didn't go as off course and silly as keeping each turn shorter, but it was still very fun, and we had a neat souvenir of our family get together at the end.

Try Out a New Playground – Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

Try Out a New Playground – Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

With the weather turning toward a very beautiful springtime, we have been spending more and more time outdoors. While we have our favorite parks and playgrounds we visit over and over again, we have also enjoyed finding new ones where we were out running errands, and maybe a little further from home. It is always fun.

Try pulling up Google maps, or whatever mapping program you like and checking out some other parks nearby that you've never been to. Or better yet, if you need to be out for another reason, look up a park near where you're headed to include some playtime in your busy errand running day.

Some parks and playgrounds I've written about here on the blog:

Antioch City Park

http://cabayareakids.blogspot.com/2012/10/city-park-in-antioch.html

Matteo's Dream in Concord

http://cabayareakids.blogspot.com/2012/07/matteos-dream-playground-in-concord.html

Hap McGee in Danville

http://cabayareakids.blogspot.com/2012/09/hap-mcgee-park-in-danville.html

Children's Wonderland in Vallejo

http://cabayareakids.blogspot.com/2008/06/childrens-wonderland-park-in-vallejo.html

Start a Garden – Fun Stuff to do Anywhere

Start a Garden – Fun Stuff to do Anywhere

If you started some seeds indoor earlier in the year, they are probably ready to move outside either into the ground, or into larger pots.

We have never lived in a house with a yard big enough for a garden in the ground. So I have become a good container gardener over the years. So if all you have is a small apartment patio or balcony, you can still create a little garden to grow stuff with your kids.

We have grown tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers, broccoli, peas, herbs, flowers, zucchini, cantaloupe, strawberries, and blueberries in pots over the years. The bigger plants may need pretty large containers to grow well in, but it can be done. Pick a few of your favorite fruits or veggies, and start growing! For tomatoes, or vine-y or sprawling plants like cantaloupe or zucchini, I find that cages help the plant to grow without sprawling out of the pot and breaking the stems.

It isn't too late in the year if you want to start from seed. You can start indoors, or right outside if you want. If you'd rather get more of a running start at your garden, lots of plant centers have good sales this time of year on seedlings.

Each plant will have it's own slightly different requirements about how much sun and water and spacing they like, so just follow the instructions that come with your plant or seed packet, and watch your garden grow.

Geocaching – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Geocaching – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

I've wanted to write a post about geocaching for a while now, but couldn't decide where to put it. I can certainly be done almost anywhere in the Bay Area, but I think it could deserve it's own full review like the Thursday activities get. So, I decided to do both.

This week will be just a quick introduction to geocaching, and in a future week, I'll write a more expansive post with ideas to take you deeper into the hobby of geocaching.

Basically, geocacaching is a treasure hunting game played with a GPs device, and the website geocaching.com. There are other websites as well, but this is the main, and most popular one as far as I know. The website offers a few different ways to search for nearby caches. You can enter an address and get a list of geocaches close by. I personally like the 'search on the map' function. It gives me better information about where a cache is than just how many miles from the entered address.

Not all geocaches are kid or family appropriate. There are a number of different attributes that can be added to each cache listing to describe it. For your few outings, you may want to look for caches that are labeled as "kid friendly" or listed as "beginner" caches. I've hunted for caches along busy roads and other places I wouldn't have wanted to take my children. That's another reason to check out the map on geocaching.com before heading out to your hunt – make sure it is an area you'll all feel safe.

Luckily, most are very family friendly. If you have a popular walking trail near you home, or park, or regional open space, there are great odds there will be several geocaches there for you to find.

What my kids like best, is the swag. If you are looking for a cache labeled 'small' or larger, then there may be small toys, coins or other little items inside. If you bring small items to trade, you can put in your item, and take some other trinket out of the cache. My kids have traded for things like beads, rubber bouncy balls or matchbox cars. Try to keep the trades fair, so the next kids to come along have something fun to pick out too.

We have a hand held geocaching GPS, but you can geocache with just a smartphone ap if you don't have a GPS. (Car GPS devises don't work well for geocaching). Geocaching.com has their own ap that costs $10, but I have used and like c:geo, and it is free. You do need to go to geocaching.com and sign up there for an account first to use c:geo and some of the other free geocaching aps out there.

If you're ready to get started, the geocaching.com website can walk you through finding your first cache. Otherwise, I'll be back with even more geocaching fun for you and your family another week.

Stomp Rockets - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Stomp Rockets - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Since we have had such beautiful weather lately, it's been nice to get outside. Stop Rockets are a great outdoor, park going activity.

Stomp rockets work by forcing air up a tube into the hollow inside of the rocket and launching it into the air when the end of the tube is 'stomped' on. There are a lot of different brands that can be found at hobby shops or toy stores.

Kids love rockets, at least, every kid I've ever met. I'm sure there are some out there somewhere that don't. It takes them a long time to get tired of stomping. Then there's all that running after the fallen rockets to retrieve them, which is great exercise.

There is even a little bit of science and experimentation involved as they try stomping harder of softer and adjust the angle to see what will happen.

We have the rockets pictured below. I like them because they don't go too high, and are safe to use in our local park. I also found a book about how to make your own. That sound like a lot of fun too!

Attend an Event at your Local Library - Fun Stuff to do Anywhere

Attend an Event at your Local Library

Nowadays, every library system has a website including a calendar of events. I’ve found these calendars sometimes cumbersome to use however, and some events I know are happening, I have been unable to find on the calendar. So while the website for your local library is a good starting place to look for these fun sorts of events, a visit to the actual library branch you like to go to is even better. Most will have fliers listing all their upcoming events for the next month or even next several months. While you’re there, you can also then sign up for any event that requires registration to attend. 

There is a whole lot more to do at your local library than just check out books or attend a storytime. At the various placed we’ve lived around the Bay Area, we have attended all sorts of wonderful events at different libraries: movies, holiday parties, or holiday themed crafting events, special performances from magicians, comedians, or actors, author and illustrator talks, wild animal shows, and police dog demonstrations.

Nowadays, every library system has a website including a calendar of events. I’ve found these calendars sometimes cumbersome to use however, and some events I know are happening, I have been unable to find on the calendar. So while the website for your local library is a good starting place to look for these fun sorts of events, a visit to the actual library branch you like to go to is even better. Most will have fliers listing all their upcoming events for the next month or even next several months. While you’re there, you can also then sign up for any event that requires registration to attend. 

Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in San Francisco

Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in San Francisco

The Visitor Center for the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary is located in Crissy Field in San Francisco. It isn’t a large marine museum, but there are still some very neat things to see. The Farallones Sanctuary visitor center is open Wednesdays thru Sundays from 10 to 4, and is free of charge to visit.

The Marine Sanctuary also offers several public and school programs. Although we have never attended a program our homeschool program offered an in school program a couple of years ago that we really enjoyed. It appears that the main Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary website, linked above, is not up to date for their current program offerings. However there is another website, for the Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association that is where you would find the best information about their programs and how to schedule your own or attend one they are putting on.

Our visits to the center took us less than an hour, but since it is located in Crissy Field in the Presidio, and right on the beach, our family had even more fun walking along the waves and watching the beach wildlife. 

Introduce Your Kids to Your Favorite Childhood Show – Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

Introduce Your Kids to Your Favorite Childhood Show – Fun Stuff To Do Anywhere

TV watching is never my first choice for spending quality time with my kids, but with icky weather outside, or when we were recently stuck at home with the flu together, sometimes TV can be great. 

With the help of youtube, Netflix, or your local library, it can be surprisingly easy to get your hands on a video or DVD of your favorite childhood shows.

It can be a strange experience though. Some of my very favorites did not translate from my childhood self to my adult self very well, leaving me wondering what I’d liked about them in the first place. Also, it can be a little hit and miss with what will translate to today’s child audiences. I successfully turned my girls into little Thundercats fans, and they adored E.T. almost as much as I did at their age, but the Robin Williams movie version of Popeye bored them so much they wandered away after the first 30 min. They seem interested in Star Trek and Doctor Who, and willing to stick with it, but I sometimes end up spending more time answering questions than watching.

Some of the disconnect is age since I know I was more into my early teens when I became a Trekie and Whovian. These aren’t shows I intentionally set out to show them, but that they have joined me as I was watching for my own pleasure. So try to think about what you loved when you were the same age as your child is now. Then the next time you need some snuggle time on the couch due to illness or some other factors, pull it out to share.

The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose

The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose

We visited the Tech Museum in San Jose in early January when most schools were still on winter break, yet not all were. So there were still some school groups there during our visit.

I have very mixed feelings about the Tech. We primarily went to see the special Myth Busters exhibit before it ended. I don’t want to go into a review of that too much since it is now ended (but it was wonderful!) but the Tech does offer other special exhibits for limited amounts of time. It’s worth it to check out their website to see what special shows they have going, and what others might be coming up so that you can plan your trip for something that would be of the most interest to your family. The downside is that the special exhibits have an additional charge above the general admissions cost. We were lucky enough to go as part of a group, which offered us a wonderfully discounted rate for both the special exhibit and the rest of the museum.  If you think you can get a group together, it would be a significant savings to everyone.

Also, for homeschoolers, or other groups, the Tech offers many workshops and classes at good rates, and I believe these also include admission to the museum as well. I have not attended such a class, but I have heard from friends that the ones they attended were fun and successful.

Aside from the Myth Busters exhibit, I found myself a little disappointed in the rest of the museum. There were certainly lots of interesting and hands on things to see and do, but I often felt like there was little to no explanation of the science involved. Those exhibits that did have useful signs explaining the science were not explanations that were accessible to children.

However, the very few exhibits that had a docent or museum volunteer stationed with it were wonderful. They were very accessible. They wouldn’t wait only for questions, but would jump in to demonstrate or ask questions to the children to encourage them to try different things. Those exhibits are the only ones that I felt my kids walked away from having learned something, instead of just playing with pretty lights that they didn’t understand.

One interesting feature that I don’t think we used to its best benefit is a ticket tracking program. Each entry ticket has a bar code that can be scanned at numerous (almost all) exhibits throughout the museum. Some just take a photo of you at the exhibit. Not a great photo, sort of a security camera grainy photo, but still neat. Some record your activity for that project. Then you can use the number on your ticket to access online all the things you recorded during your visit. Pretty darn cool.

A personal pet peeve of mine was partly to blame with my lack of enjoyment, and that’s poorly supervised school groups. There were enough of these kids all over the place to really make it difficult to enjoy each exhibit. It was not unusual for my youngest to be pushed (or edged) off a station she was working at, or for kids to shove ahead of us as we waited for a turn at something. Enough that I had to scold other’s children more than once as they were rude of mean to my small child as their chaperone stood on watching.  A friend told me that they have enjoyed the museum more when they go in the later afternoon instead of right at opening, because the school groups are starting to leave by that time of day. I think if we ever return, we will go on a weekend or in the afternoon as well.

If you plan to be at the museum at lunch time, I strongly recommend bringing a packed lunch, or preparing to leave to eat at on outside restaurant. The in house restaurant was packed with long lines and no seating at lunch time so that we ended up leaving all together when we were too hungry to keep exploring. The website says they don’t allow food in the exhibits, but I believe as long as you keep your food packed away, and only eat in the eating area (or outside if you can’t find a spot to sit) all should be fine.

Despite all the little annoyances that pushed my personal buttons, my kids had a fabulous time at The Tech, and have asked many times since to go back. I am certainly happy we went, and loved the Myth Buster exhibit, but I know when we make another trip down to San Jose, there are some things I’ll do differently.

Let Your Kids Teach You Something - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Let Your Kids Teach You Something - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Your kids know stuff that you don't. Let them teach you something. Let them explain the difference between a ground type pokemon and a grass type. Let them teach you how to play their favorite video game, or listen to a song by their favorite band. Getting to know your child's interests  also lets you know more about your child. And while you may not always share the same taste as your children, you do want to let them know that you find them interesting.

Make a Graham Cracker Gingerbread House - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Make a Graham Cracker Gingerbread House - Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

After one of my Halloween posts, I promised to share something fun you could do with the Halloween leftover candy that nobody likes. Here it is: use it to decorate a mini graham cracker gingerbread house.

These graham cracker gingerbread houses are cute, and fun to make. And since they are small, they aren't too complicated. The key to a nice graham cracker house is good frosting. A frosting that is too soft will make the house wobbly, and easy to fall apart as you add other decorations. However, a frosting that is really nice and stiff, and will dry like stone will also be pretty uneatable, so you might want to decide ahead of time if you want to eat them when they are done. I suppose you could also use glue instead of frosting if you don't want to eat them, but most white glues will dry clear, and I think they white joints look nice.

I find that the canned frosting is generally too soft. I like the prepackaged tubes of frosting because they are fairly stiff, and much easier to handle and work with with little mess. If you want to make your own, I found a  recipe for stiff royal frosting here.

For the graham cracker parts of the house, we used two squares (1/2 of a whole big graham cracker) for the roof, and 4 squares for the sides of the house. I have also seen ones made with 2 small rectangles of graham cracker (or 1/2 of a square) for the sides of the house, and the front and back made by cutting a square of graham cracker into a house shape by cutting the corners off one of the smaller rectangles. When I've tried to make those cuts, it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I broke a lot crackers, and became frustrated. They do turn out a little cuter that way though.

Use your frosting to stick all the sides and the roof together and then let it sit and dry a little while. When it is dry and fairly stable, you can use more frosting to stick candies on the house for decorations.

TA-DA! Little Graham Cracker Gingerbread Houses.