Your kids won’t have a second to be bored this summer with Kidsguide’s long list of summer camps. Whether you’re a parent looking for safe-and-affordable daytime care, or a kid ready to find new friends, new hobbies and new skills, we have the perfect program for you.
With a bucket of popcorn, Junior Mints and sodas all around, an afternoon at the movies can take a big bite out of your budget. Keep some coins in your wallet with these family-friendly options. The following theaters offer new-to-you feature films at bargain-basement prices.
See just how easy it is for you and your kids to bike around town during the 2012 BikeFest Tour of Long Beach this Saturday, May 5, a day full of festivities aimed at showcasing Long Beach as “the most bicycle friendly city in the U.S.” Strap on your helmets and join the free [...]
Twinkle, twinkle, little star – grab the kids and load the car! For a free and fascinating family night under the moon, head to one of the popular public star parties at L.A.’s historic Griffith Observatory.
The Earth Day Network estimates that a billion people around the globe will mark Earth Day on April 22, and you can be one of them! Whether you’re up for a family hike, a beach clean-up or a full-on festival, you’ll find the full list of our favorite events here…
Sneak in some math practice without your kids even knowing it with these fun books and games. Whether your kids are 5 or 15, we’ve got you covered with math activities that will have them defeating vampires, measuring M&Ms and figuring out their horoscope––all while improving their skills.
You’ll have egg on your face if you try to pass off the same old Easter recipes this year. Add some egg-citement with these kid-friendly concoctions. Egg pops, deviled-egg chicks, Easter basket cupcakes – get cracking!
Fooled your kids with the perfect prank? Post your idea on Kidsguide’s Facebook page this week and you could win four free tickets to Pretend City! Looking for something new? See what we suggest.
Brew up some fun this spring by hosting a proper English tea party at home, with finger sandwiches, scones, spring hats, the works! Or outsource to the experts, who will come to your house with a tea party in a box.
Leprechauns will be out in force this week, gearing up for their St. Patrick’s Day celebrations on Saturday. (Hey, everyone needs time off from making shoes, right?) Legend has it that if you manage to catch one he’ll lead you to his pot of gold (and the Leprechaun Code of Conduct bars him from [...]
From Oxnard to the Mexican border, strawberries are nearing their peak this month in sunny Southern California. Grab a basket and pick your own at a local farm, with these berry-picking tips from the pros. Then cook up a kid-friendly refrigerator jam.
Here’s a secret that 115,000 local art lovers already know: kids 17 and under can get in to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for free with a NexGen membership. Even better, moms and dads get in free, too!
Walk with us! It’s as simple as that. Team Kidsguide will be front and center at the April 1 Walk for Kids benefiting Ronald McDonald House Charities of Southern California, and we’d love to meet you there! It’s easy, it’s free and it’s good. Just show up for the party on the path, or help us raise funds for this very worthy cause. Here’s how…
The groundhog predicted six more weeks of winter, but in sunny Southern California that snow might not last. Slip in a trip while you still can! Read on for the latest snow conditions at our local tubing parks, plus tips for a super-fast ride.
Most kids have managed to collect a Barnes & Noble’s worth of books. They’re busting out of the bookshelf, tucked into drawers, bent open on nightstands and stacked in all four corners. When enough is enough, read our fun ideas for stashing ‘em, swapping ‘em or donating ‘em.
Studies show that most tweens are now packing their own personal keypad, and your kid’s begging to be one of them. Is your kid old enough for a cell phone? Here’s what you should consider before making the big decision.
Forget your 6th-grade field trip, with those stern curators and dusty artifacts. We have a whole list of local museums that are a total blast for kids! With smiling docents, kid-friendly activities, treasure hunts and messy art classes, your kid will be anything but bored. Read our tips for making the most of your visit.
This just in! IKEA Costa Mesa offers free kids’ birthday parties from 4-6 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month, complete with entertainment, soda, cake and a gift! Tapped out of party ideas (and cash)? This might be just the thing! Get the details here.
Snag amusement park passes for your family this month and you can write “fun” on the calendar for the rest of 2012! Now’s the time to buy: many attractions are offering special deals exclusively for locals. Just show proof of Southern California residency and you’re in!
There are places where kids eat free almost every day of the week. Seriously! Even more than one choice of restaurants. It’s like happy-hours for kids! From Mexican food and hotdogs to BBQ and healthy salads, we’ve got you covered in the Kidsguide Kids Eat Free Page. Woohoo!
Don’t let stormy weather dampen your spirits. Button up your raincoat, slide on some galoshes and head outside with your kids for these rainy day rendezvous. Count worms, float a boat, challenge your kids to Soggy Soccer or…
Who needs a champagne toast at midnight? Ring in 2012 family style with a long list of kid-friendly New Year’s Eve celebrations, with everything from ginger-ale toasts to noontime ball drops. You’ll have your happy sleepy-heads in bed by 9 p.m. Celebrations are everywhere, including downtown Fullerton, the Great Park in Irvine, the Children’s Museum at La Habra and more!
With a few simple supplies and a little creativity, your kids can create one-of-a-kind holiday gifts for coffee lovers, bookworms, desk jockeys, sweet tooths and other family and friends. With easy instructions, get them all wrapped up in an afternoon.
Take a break from holiday shopping and start a sweet-and-sticky tradition this week by building a gingerbread house with your kids. Whether you have 20 minutes or all day to play, you’ll frost your way to some finger-licking fun with our kid-friendly tips, tricks, recipes and decorating ideas. Keep reading to start your creation.
The turkey leftovers are gone and your to-do list is already needling you to get a Christmas tree. Make this year’s tree hunt an event to remember by chopping down your own at cut-your-own tree farms! We found them locally, in the countryside with a wide range of trees –– even on a farm accessible only by the Christmas Tree Train.
Conquering the crowds to scout out Black Friday deals may be your idea of fun, but it probably isn’t your kid’s. Treat your offspring to some day-after-Thanksgiving revelry while you shop, with these local offerings that include a Shop and Drop Day Camp, hourly drop-off childcare and lots more.
With all the shopping and cooking, it’s no wonder kids can get lost in the turkey trot we call Thanksgiving. But with a little planning this week, you can make sure your little ones have just as much fun as you do on the biggest family holiday of them all.
Veterans Day is much more than just a day off from school. It’s a great opportunity to teach your kids how to show respect, support and kindness to the men and women who have served – or are still serving – our country. Read on for some great ideas from volunteering at a local hospital to foster military pets.
Many local museums offer free admission days at least once a month. So no matter what your schedule or budget is like, you can plan your calendar around fun, educational activities for you and your family without breaking the bank. With 15 museums to choose from, you’ll find hands-on museum fun ranging from art to science!
It’s days before Halloween and you’re staring at a big fat pumpkin and one excited little kid. Here’s how to choose, design, prep, carve and preserve a one-of-a-kind jack o’ lantern that will wow your brood and impress the neighbors for days.
Make your perfect-pumpkin hunt an event to remember with a jaunt to one of these pumped-up pumpkin patches. Your kids will go out of their gourds with games, rides, ponies, petting zoos, bounce houses, face painting and much more!
Have you “boo-ed” yet? It’s a great way to get the family into the Halloween spirit. Boo neighbors and friends. It’s easy and we’ve got step-by-step instructions, from poems and signs to boo baskets and goodies.
We love stuff. It’s what we look for every day at Kidsguide –– fun stuff, educational stuff –– stuff that enriches the lives of kids and families. So image our delight when we found Bart King, the “king” of stuff and author of 11 books. Read on as he shares his faves, from dork albums and underwear tricks to how to win at arm wrestling.
We’re so excited to share all the great “stuff” in the newest issue of Kidsguide! We’ve got fun stuff, educational stuff, resourceful stuff––all the stuff to make parenting and family life easier and a lot more exciting. (Excitement includes amazing underwear and arm wrestling tricks and an awesome contest.)
With school in full swing, getting kids out the door can be a free for all. Time to calm the morning madness and Kidsguide is here to help. We’ve got tips and suggestions for making your mornings more zen-like than a class full of yogis, including a printable morning checklist.
Now that the school year is back in full swing, that means homework assignments are here too, and all the headaches that often go with them. If you have a child that struggles to get their homework done, or even get their homework started, Team Kidsguide can help. We’ve got some tips and resources you will want to know about!
It’s that lunch-making time of year––kids are back at school and it’s up to you to make sure they’re getting the proper nutrients. While making a lunch every day has a tendency to become monotonous, we found five awesome ideas that will turn packing a lunch into a fun activity that you and your kids can do together.
Now that the school year is beginning, and your family is getting back into a routine, it would be nice to surprise your kids with something unexpected. Team Kidsguide has some easy (and budget-friendly) ways you can give your kids a little break from their new schedules and have some fun.
Celebrate the last few weeks of summer with these easy-to-make, inventive Popsicle recipes! We found some really cool ideas from Malted Milk Ball Pops to these Orange-Banana Smoothie Pops. And better yet, we found some great ways to freeze ‘em without using an extra fancy Popsicle mold!
This week the counselors at Camp Kidsguide thought campers should not only experience “Campy” performances, but take in the sights and sounds of a professional show as well. We know while this sounds great to campers, it can make parents cringe at the thought of pricey theater tickets. Lucky for them, Team Kidsguide has done their research and found some great ways to afford a professional show.
This week campers, get ready to get wet! We’ll be playing water games –– and these aren’t the games your parents played. We have new ones that are fun and easy to learn: Splash Volleyball, Freezing-Water Tag, Beach Towel Balloon Toss and a Water Balloon Back-to-Back Dash. Game on!
It’s field trip week here at Camp Kidsguide! This week we’re taking a cool ride to cool off to see cool Arctic Foxes! We’re taking the Aqualink water taxi to the Aquarium of the Pacific. Come and join us! We’ve even got coupons for the taxi and a free child’s admission to the Aquarium.
Welcome to Camp Kidsguide! For the next four weeks you, and your friends can follow Team Kidsguide on our Facebook Page and participate in our virtual camp. Each week there will be a new theme with fun activities posted daily – crafts, games, field trips, even a final performance week!
On hot summer days a splash in the water always seems to cure the “it’s-hot-and-there’s-nothing-to-do” blues. We know it’s not always convenient, or affordable, to take the kids to a big water park. Fortunately, many local parks now offer some very “cool” water features for families to enjoy.
The OC Fair officially opens on Friday, July 15th and you know your kids will be asking to go during it’s month-long stay. And, we know you would love some tips on making it a “Fair-ly” cheap experience. Marla Jo Fisher, a staff writer for the Orange County Register, has compiled an awesome list on how to do this.
When the weather gets hot, what could be better than a game of bowling in an air-conditioned facility? A free game of bowling! Select bowling centers around the country are participating in the Kids Bowl Free program. The program is designed by bowling centers to give back to the community and provide a safe, secure, and fun way for kids to spend time this summer.
Nothing marks the beginning of summer quite like a Fourth of July celebration. This week Kidsguide will help you find the best places to honor our country’s independence. Team Kidsguide has put together an easy-to-use Fireworks Guide for 2011; giving you a list of Fourth of July festivals and fireworks shows that are sure to make your celebration complete.
Over here at Kidsguide, we like change. And, as you can see we’ve totally embraced it with our new site. We invite you to poke around and explore the new features: The Blog, where we introduce cool things weekly; The Calendar, an easy-to-use format that lets you find events by date; and The Directory, the ultimate A to Z guide for family resources.
Summer is here and you know what that means…ninety days of figuring out what to do with the kids. Luckily, Kidsguide Summer Calendar has arrived. It’s bursting with over 620 fun events. Free concerts? Got ‘em. Over 100 outdoor movies? Check. Fourth of July ideas (including picnics, parades, carnivals and fireworks), oh yeah. We’ve got it all!
Family movies for only a buck! Kids are entertained, moms/dads save money while being comfortably cooled in the air-conditioned theater. Hey, that’s the often-discussed and seldom-realized win, win! There’s even lots of theaters – Regal and Krikornian – and movie titles to choose from too! Yay!
Insider tips: Get there early! Also visit theater websites and join their clubs. Membership is free and they offer free and discounted goodies!
Hot summer days equal cool summer drinks. Two-time national barista champ, Heather Perry, has teamed up with GOT MILK to create creative, calcium-rich recipes to make with your kids! We’re talking pure deliciousness: Red Velvet Frappes, Tiramisu Shakes and Honey Bee Lattes! Get your free recipe booklet. Enjoy!
Kidsguide gets small! The theme for fall/winter was “Big Things in a New Small Issue,” and that is just what we did. The book was trimmed down to an 8 x 11 size––making it more convenient to put in your purse or glove box. Fall/winter’s cover was done by Lee White, illustrator for books such [...]
This two issue set was illustrated by Brian Biggs, an incredibly talented illustrator, writer and accordion player living in Philadelphia. His work was featured on MoMA’s (New York’s Museum of Modern Art) website as an interactive museum tour for kids––that’s what initially caught our eye. The theme of spring/summer was a story editorial (our only), [...]
These illustrations were done by Kidsguide’s first international artist, Shane McGowen. Shane lives in Australia, but his artwork has been seen in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times, plus lots of children’s books. Fall/winter was devoted to healthy living with editorial written by Sé Reed; the tips throughout the issue featured [...]
This set was illustrated by Ken Bowser, whose words and pictures have appeared in thousands of books, newspapers and periodicals. He also created the illustrations for our sister publication, Petsguide, and his daughter, an art student at the Ringling School of Art and Design, illustrated the cover of the 2009 Summer Calendar. Fall/winter’s theme was [...]
This two issue set was done by Jason Abbot, illustrator for several children’s books that included The Ravioli Kid: An Original Spaghetti Western and Rainy Day Music. Fall/winter was devoted to establishing family traditions; spring/summer was a celebration of our first 20 years with favorites and reader tips. This issue also marked over 1 million [...]
This two issue set was done by Jack E. Davis, known for a long list of children’s books he masterfully illustrated, including Bed Head, Marsupial Sue, The Zack Files and Bunion Burt. The spring/summer issue was devoted to 21 things every kid should do in the summer; fall winter focused on school lunches. The tips [...]
This set was illustrated Lee Calderon, who at the time was our first local artist since 1994. The spring/summer issue devoted to freebies was the first to announce our website; fall/winter was devoted to making homework easier. The later was (much to my chagrin) had a misspelled word on the cover. Can you find it? [...]
The cover art was produced by Tim Raglan, from Independence, Kansas. He illustrated a number of children’s books at that time that included “Go Track a Yak” and “The Wolf Who Cried Boy.” The summer issue was devoted to summer learning and dedicated to my daughter Lauren, who at Kidsguide’s first issue was in kindergarten [...]
During the production of the spring/summer issue my son was hospitalized in Berkeley for three weeks, the information editor delivered her baby a month early (thanks to Jason Kosareff for pitching in otherwise that issue would never have come out!) and our dear dog, the head of security, Dixie, died at age 15. Despite the [...]
Kidsguide’s illustration crowning glory, two covers by Mort Drucker, of Mad Magazine fame. On a whim, I contacted his agent and was thrilled, surprised and deeply honored that he agreed to create two covers (and was one of the nicest men I have ever had the pleasure of working with). Known for his satires of [...]
This was the first and only appearance of Captain Kidsguide. A superhero created by Miracle Studios, a comics illustration studio. The spring/summer issue, “Captain Kidsguide Saves the Summer,” with its illustration combined with the editorial written from our superhero’s perspective, truly exemplified what Kidsguide was all about. These issues also featured “Factoids,” an interactive game [...]
The artwork for this two-issue set was done by Steve Skelton from Boulder Colorado. His work is probably familiar to you as he worked for years producing cards for Hallmark. His clients at the time included Mattel, McDonalds, Fisher-Price and many others. His illustrations were so action-packed that we made a game out of them, [...]
The spring/summer issue celebrated Kidsguide’s 10th anniversary. The theme was “Kidsguide to the Free World,” listing local activities and services that were free. The fall/winter issue, “Kidsguide to School Success,”‘ focused on at-home strategies to help your children succeed in school. The artwork was done by Wayne Vincent , who at the time had done [...]
Kidsguide expanded its distribution to include north Orange County. New chapters were added: Parties, Cooking and Transportation (there used to be businesses devoted to carting your kids around!). Eddie Young, the illustrator, from the previous year, created the covers for this two set. He was the only illustrator to create four covers. Factoid: The cover [...]
This was the year of change: Kidsguide became a tabloid; changed its paper to newsprint; changed its distribution to free-stacked at parent-frequented destinations; and changed its frequency to twice a year with spring/summer and fall/winter editions. Artwork for this two-issue set was done by Long Beach resident, Eddie Young. Eddie did work for the likes [...]
This issue was also a perfect-bound magazine, 84 pages, and was distributed to all families with children attending Long Beach and Los Alamitos district elementary and middle schools. It was the second book to include sections translated into Spanish and Cambodian. The artwork was done by Gregory McMicken, a local artist known for his imaginative [...]
This issue changed from a book format to a perfect-bound magazine. Instead of printing 10,000, we printed 60,000; one copy was given to every family with children attending elementary and middle school. It was the first issue to feature sections translated in Spanish and Cambodian. It was the first issue to have a commissioned illustration [...]
Again, Kidsguide was a soft-bound book, 208 pages; sold for $3 through PTAs with all proceeds benefiting student assistance. Like the first book, it served six cities in the greater Long Beach area: Long Beach, Lakewood, Los Alamitos, Rossmoor, Seal Beach and Signal Hill. Kidsguide was published every two years. Truth be told: it was [...]
Kidsguide was started on August 19, 1986. Below is the cover of the first issue that came out in January of 1987. The cover was simply the logo, which was the hand print of my daughter Lauren, 7 years old at the time. The frame around the hand was set up to look like the [...]
Learn, munch and come home with a wealth of delicious ideas from the 5th Annual Kids in the Kitchen Healthy Eating & Exercise Fair. This free Long Beach public event engages families and children in fitness challenges, hands-on cooking stations, Veggie Bowling and more.
Whether you’ve refined your family traditions or are in search of new ones, Kidsguide shares some of its staff’s favorite things.
Not only are winter camps lifesavers for the busy parent, they are also a productive way for kids to spend their two-week school vacation. Most camps often fashion their activities – sometimes even menus! – around fun themes to maximize the experience for participants.
Christmas is coming, and it’s time to get “crafty” when it comes to finding low-cost ways of getting your kids into the holiday spirit. Read on to learn about easy do-it-yourself projects, from making your own tree ornaments and dreidel cards to setting a colorful Kwanzaa table.
We’ll help you find your inner Santa – jolly, efficient and prepared to tackle the nice and naughty things about the holiday season. First on our list: time. Where do the hours go?
…to Discovery Science Center’s “The Science of Gingerbread” exhibit and its annual Gingerbread Competition! Learn delicious tidbits about ginger and gingerbread, and the roles they have played through the ages as medicinal remedy and coveted spice, and as tokens of royal favor.
What do you call a nameless dog that would cross 70 miles of desert war zone in the thick of bitter winter to be with the human who showed him kindness? Marine Corps Major Brian Dennis christened the wild dog “Nubs,” after the little stubs of what used to be ears before someone had cut them off to make the animal “a dog of war.”
For a snack that’s been around for thousands of years, popcorn never really got old – we munch on it at the movies, string fluffy kernels together to to decorate our Christmas trees, and continue to invent recipes to satisfy our cravings for something familiar yet new. Celebrate the granddaddy of snacks and the ghoulish season with this poppin’ recipe.
