5 Things to do in New York City with Kids

I know we usually cover San Francisco, but I'm taking you on a diversion today. Going to New York City with kids is a huge - and fun - adventure. When friends ask me where to take their kids, I tailor my recommendations to their interests and personalities. Do they like art? History? Culture? Food? Here are five things to do with the kids in New York City.

1.  Museums. You have tons of options. If you like art and archeology, check out the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Have the kids read From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler first. The American Museum of Natural History is also huge, and child-friendly. The Museum of Modern Art has great family programming. For something quirkier, visit the New York Transit Museum, with history on the subway in New York City. It's fun!

2. See the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Plan a whole day for this. You'll be waiting in lines for ferries and for access to the pedestal, if you can get tickets. You don't want to feel rushed. Purchase your tickets in advanced for timed slots, to guarantee getting in and seeing the most that you can.

3. A day in Times Square. It's crowded, but there's a lot to do in the Times Square area. See a show. Get your picture with the Naked Cowboy (or avoid him if your kids are really young). Pose with a character (you'll have to pony up some money). Shop. Visit Toys R Us and ride the Ferris Wheel.

4. See a Broadway show. There are usually a handful of family-friendly Broadway shows, like Mamma Mia (review here), Newsies (review here), Spiderman the Musical (review here), Matilda the Musical (review here), Billy Elliot (not currently showing, but review here),  the Lion King and others. Don’t forget about off-Broadway shows, which also have some family value.

Learn more about Broadway for Kids here. Get the TKTS appnofollow for free here – it tells you what’s on sale at the booth without you having to go there

5. Walk around. Cross the Brooklyn Bridge on foot. Meander through neighborhoods like SOHO, the High Line, Central Park and 5th Avenue. It gives you a great way to the city and discover new things.

You'll need a place to stay. Find a New York City hotel here.

Looking for reading material to prepare you for the trip? Find some great books for the family and the kids about New York City on JerseyKids.net - left sidebar.

This post is sponsored by ThinkHotels. All opinions and information are mine.

Target Data Breach - How to Get Free Credit Monitoring

If you shopped at Target during the data breach (and I'm pretty sure that is all of you), here's the link to get one year of free credit monitoring from Experian.

In case you don't normally do so, you can get a free credit report annually from the three credit agencies (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) even if you aren't getting the free credit monitoring service. Make sure you go to the right site, because some look official, but then ask for your credit card and charge you. You will not need to enter your credit card information on this site, annualcreditreport.com.

If you are organized, you can schedule these out to get one report every four months - from a different company. That way you are monitoring your credit all year long. But if you're lazy like me, you'll get all three reports at the same time, because you know you're not that organized! Lucky me, I got my reports about a week before the data breach, so I used up all mine for the year (but I'll be signing up for the free year of credit monitoring).

To learn more about how to protect yourself during a data breach, check these links:
Data breach? Now what - from bankrate.com
Target's response with Q andA
Data breach protection: 10 tips - from creditcards.com

Coming Up: Restaurant Week in San Francisco

Looking for an excuse to eat out in San Francisco? It's time for “Dine About Town” – San Francisco’s Restaurant Week. It's January 15-31, 2014 (with another round on June 1-15).

More than 100 of San Francisco’s restaurants are participating, with two or three-course lunch menus for $18.95 and/or three-course dinner menus for $36.95. Prices are up to 25 percent off  regularly priced a la carte items. 

For foodies, there are two restaurants participating who earned Michelin stars (Luce and Spruce), and twelve that are Michelin rated (Absinthe, Café de la Presse, Chapeau!, Chaya Brasserie, Dosa on Fillmore, Fringale, Georges, Marlowe, One Market, Skool, Sociale and Waterbar).

See the complete Dine about Town San Francisco restaurant list here. You can make reservations there as well, in cooperation with Open Table. 

Help Sponsor a Birthday Party for a Homeless Child

I know that planning a kids' birthday party can be expensive. So imagine planning one for your child if you're homeless, and want your child to feel special. Two Habitot board members launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for local homeless children to have special birthday parties at Habitot in 2014.

They're trying to raise $7,500 and are more than $3,600 there as of this writing. The party would include cake, gifts and party favors for the child and friends. Habitot already helps homeless families, and have been doing outreach and sponsoring family visits here for five years. I just contributed myself.

I've been seeing families on my various email groups and Facebook groups asking how their kids could volunteer and make a difference. This is one way. How great would it be for a child to participate in helping a less fortunate child have a great birthday party when they may not get to celebrate otherwise.

Tucson Wildlife Center - Tour with Kids Review

When we were in Tucson recently we visited the Tucson Wildlife Center, which is the only large animal rescue center in the area (there are others that take smaller animals). We had a great tour, that the kids enjoyed too. This place takes javalinas, birds, racoons, bobcats, Cooper Hawk, Harris hawks, bunny, Great Horn owls, barn owls, coatis, ringtails, skunk, chickens and coyotes. They treated 982 animals in 2013, and had 50 on site when we were there.

Our first stop was the animal surgery room, where we saw an x-ray of a recently treated bat. Yes, that's a bat x-ray! Below you can see the operating table. The bat was found in a Gatorade bottle with a tortilla (and another dead bat). Not sure how they got in there, but you can guess that there was a human involved.

5 Kid-Friendly Things to do in Phoenix

If you're been reading Frisco Kids for awhile, you'll see that we have a fair number of posts about Arizona, which we visit frequently because we have family there.

This post is about five things to do with kids in Phoenix. My friends who go there usually hang out at the resort pools with their kids, maybe do a hike or two. But there are a lot of fun family things if you want to venture out.

Hall of Flame
This firefighter museum is interesting even if you're not interested in the field of firefighting. With more than 90 fully restored pieces of firefighting apparatus to see, you'll find vehicles, hoses, ladders, uniforms, 400 international helmets, tons of patches from various fire stations, movies, and some hands-on exhibits for the kids to play with/on.

Cooking Activity: Chocolate-Covered Crackers with Candy

Sorry for the lapse in activity recently. Had a busy holiday break and a lot of other work to do. Over the break we had some fun with chocolate. Thought I'd share! My mother found this recipe I think in O, the Oprah Magazine, and it was a huge hit with the kids. It's for chocolate-covered crackers which you decorate with whatever treats you want.

Step one: choose your chocolate. We had a mixture of white, bittersweet and milk chocolate. The kids wanted to marble it, but we stuck with one flavor per cracker, since they'd be covering the chocolate with other things and they'd never actually see the marbeling. Here's a hint: melt each type in a different bowl. At the end, you can still marble them by dipping the spatula into one and then the other type of chocolate and smearing them on a pretty way.

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