Into the Arts Focus on Montessori
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May 2010 QUEENS FREE Familywww.webfamilyny.com Leap into the arts Our annual guide to programs Happy campers! Preventing homesickness Focus on Montessori WHERE TO GO IN MAY? Check out our Going Places Days Filled with FUN, FUN, FUN! Arts andCrafts, Games, ForBoys, Girls 5-14 Karate, TalentShows... 2-8WeekPrograms Available Sports With Instruction: Operated by Licensed Swimming, Soccer, Teachers &Administrators Basketball, Softball... We Accept 1199 & Field Trips: Amusement TWU Members Call NowFor Pre-Season Discount! Parks, Baseball Games, ConvenientlyLocated OPEN HOUSE Museums... Camp in Queens SATURDAY,MAY 8th and And More!!! SATURDAY,MAY 22nd, 2010 •1pm -3pm JIB LANES 67-19ParsonsBlvd.•Flushing, NY 11365 CALL 1-800-856-1043 or 1-800-DAYCAMP www.queenscamp.com•www.ypdc.com QUEENS Family May 2010 Letter from the publisher ay is a fantas- tic month to be M a kid! They can really play outside now and so many of the teams and leagues are in swing. Tennis is kicking off and swimming is more avail- able and the kids can exit FEATURES COLUMNS with damp hair and not worry about catching a chill. 6 Stop brain drain! 2 Newbie Dad Hopefully your kids are involved in activi- Two math books help prevent summer learning loss BY BRIAN KANTZ BY RACHEL CONN ties involving movement. With childhood obe- 4 Twice the Advice sity continually on the rise, it’s more important 8 So what’s in a number? BY JACQUELINE AND KErrY DONELLI than ever to be a kid who is active, burning Part 3 of a weight-loss series calories and keeping the metabolism pumping. BY KATHY SENA 12 Growing Up Online Bike riding, skating, boarding, running, jump- BY CAROLYN JAbs ing, shooting hoops and getting balls over nets 14 Nourish your music lover are only some of the ways kids stay fit and Scales, chords and melodies feed developing minds 16 Family Health involved. Make sure your children are doing BY ELEANOR BINDMAN BY IVAN HAND, MD, FAAP physical activities that will keep them alert and vital and that will keep their inner machin- 18 Maria Montessori led the way 20 Cinematters ery operating at the highest level. Her pioneering work on early childhood education BY LAURA GrAY Spring is here and aren’t we glad! Spring BY MARY CArrOLL WININGER means different fruits and vegetables that are 22 Lions and Tigers and Teens in season and local, which is the best way for 26 Happy & gay in Jackson Heights MYRNA BETH HAskELL all of us to eat. Spring is a wonderful time to Neighborhood is attracting gay and lesbian families 24 Good Sense Eating find the Greenmarket in your area that offers BY MARY CArrOLL WININGER BY CHRISTINE M. PALUMBO, RD the early veggies like asparagus, and the array of berries that are soon to be luscious and ripe. 28 Excited about camp? Four ways to ensure the perfect camp experience 48 New & Noteworthy Feeding our kids with thought in mind fresh The hottest new products local foods as much as possible that are not pre-packaged or pre-mixed, is us returning to 30 Healing homesickness How to deal when kids get sad at camp the way things used to be when almost every- CALENDAR OF EVENTS one young was slim and fit. You’ve got to set up new patterns of eating! SPECIAL SECTION 37 Going Places Ralph Nader said “We have to teach our chil- Take the family out and find out what’s dren that nutritious is delicious” and I concur. 16 Arts Programs Directory going on in your town A ripe spring New York State apple should be more enticing than a packaged sweet. It’s time to return to real food and food preparation and STAff CONTACT INFORMATION I urge you to stay out of the center aisles of the PUBLISHer: Clifford Luster ADVERTISING SALES Address supermarket where all the processed foods 718 260-2587 Family Publications New York/CNG make their home, Look at ingredients and puBLISHer/MANAGIng edITOR: [email protected] or 1 MetroTech Center North know that what you eat is real “healthcare.” If Susan Weiss [email protected] 10th Floor QUEENS, NY 11201 you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. EDITOR: Vince DiMiceli CIrcuLATION Happy Spring! 718 260-8336 www.webfamilyny.com CreATIve DIrectOR: Leah Mitch [email protected] Art DIrectOR: On Man Tse EDITORIAL 718 260-4551 AdvertISIng SALes: [email protected] Sharon Noble, Brooklyn Family, Queens Family, Bronx Family and Long Island Family are SPECIAL ASSISTANT: published monthly. Copyright©2010. No part of our contents may be Susan Weiss-Voskidis, Publisher Tina Felicetti reproduced without permission from the publisher. May 2010 • QUEENS FAMILY 1 PARENTING Boys will be boys Got sons? Expect a little more chaos oys will be boys. Don’t each other. Most little girls through rows you just hate that don’t break all of their toys of clothes B phrase? Ugh. It by putting them through and down gives me the heebie- physical endurance test- aisles of NEWBIE DAD jeebies. It sounds ing. Little boys do all home décor, I stopped BRIAN KANTZ so… so… unrepen- of this. to see a father and his two tant. So smug and ir- I have seen how young daughters — get this — sniff- responsible. Typically, you little girls play. I’ve ing candles. “Mmm, that smells like hear it coming out of a parent’s watched nieces and flowers,” one of the tranquil little mouth when they’re defending their friends spend girls said to her dad. I felt like point- their son who just wounded the time together at ing to my kids, then pointing to neighbor’s dog with a slingshot. family parties. his kids and yelling out, “Not fair, Or worse, it’s the lame defense While my boys pal! Not fair!” I didn’t have time offered by the attorney for a are bludgeoning to, though. My boys were already 50-year-old father who started a an innocent throw grabbing crystal picture frames off brawl at a youth football game. pillow with a foam baseball bat, a shelf. Still, I must admit, there is just the little girls are quietly playing a Apparently, lit- something about boys. board game. They’re sitting down, tle boys come As you stand there in the mater- thumbing through books. They’re equipped with a nity ward, anxiously waiting to see dressing up, hosting tea parties and different type of if you are the proud parent of a son conversing with each other using ac- engine. An engine or a daughter, you should know that tual words, not grunts — and nearly nature is definitely handing you a always playing something that re- stacked deck either way. If you hap- volves around Disney princesses. pen to get a card that reads “Boy” — Meanwhile, as the fathers of little my wife and I have two sons — then boys wince at the sound of each be prepared! CRASH, BOOM, BANG emanating Turns out that boys, espe- from the family room, the fathers cially when paired up, go from of little girls calmly munch on chips cute little babies lying in a crib and watch the football game, know- that never stops, an to mischievous, unstoppable lit- ing their little princess isn’t tempt- engine that always revs. And, tle dudes in the blink of an eye. ing fate and a trip to the emergency really, I do count my blessings that Take our boys, for example. room by sledding down the stairs I have two energetic kids. The good One is five years old, the other inside a pillowcase. news, for me, though, is that things three. Here’s basically what they’d I have also seen how little girls act do change. Little boys and girls even- like to do on any given day this when asked to accompany their par- tually become teenage boys and month: jump in the mud, dig up bugs ents on a simple shopping excursion. girls. Ha, ha, ha. Then, that guy in in the mud, throw mud on each other, Girls act much differently than boys the department store will pay! throw bugs on each other, and spray in that arena. Recently, my wife and For now, I’ll just have to appreci- each other with the garden hose. All I had our two boys out ate that boys will be boys. I also while laughing hysterically. Do little for a quick trip to a think I should pick up the phone girls do stuff like that? I’ve asked the department store. and apologize to my mother. You parents of girls and the answer is My wife, who was see, I’m one of four boys myself pretty much, “Not really.” trying on a few — no sisters — and I’ve just No, most little girls don’t sword things, put me in recalled a few things from my fight like pirates, jumping pre- charge of our sons. own childhood while writing this cariously from couch to couch to Letting boys loose column. avoid the crocodiles swimming in in a department store Brian Kantz does realize that the sea of carpet below. is like letting a couple fathers who have to dress up Most little girls don’t of Labrador retrievers and attend princess tea parties give each other buck- loose in a department everyday may have something ing bronco rides that store. Both follow their to say about this column. end with the rider being natural instinct to run Visit Brian online at www. tossed off into a table leg.