Kids Eye View: What are those railroad spikes doing in our city streets?
Submitted by Anna Fader on
As a grown up I don't pay nearly as much attention to the asphalt as I used to when I was a kid. As a kid growing up in Manhattan, the asphalt was like an entire eco-system, full of magical discoveries waiting to be made and questions to be solved. Like seeing a dime completely embedded into the street, oil slicks from leaking cars that created beautiful rainbows or, when it would rain, gutter streams that we would sail trash down (ah, the bucolic 70s in NYC).
One thing that always fascinated me was when you would happen upon a railroad spike sticking out of the street. My mother explained to me about how they were from old trolley lines that had been paved over and then the movement of the earth forces them back up through the pavement. Really? This whole idea rocked my world because obviously the pavement is the ground and solid and there can't be anything under there, especially not stuff that can move and come up through the solid ground. If history can just push itself back up into the present, what else is under there waiting to turn up?
Have you always wanted to learn to knit or imagined yourself being crafty and knitting for, or with, your little ones? Local yarn shops around the city often offer knitting classes for people of all ages. Usually kids can start to learn to knit or crochet as young as 5 years old, depending on the child.
Choosing a summer camp is always a complicated algorithm of deciding between myriad choices: day or sleep away camps, staying in the city or sending the kids to the country, all-around or specialized sports, arts or science camps...but this year there is another factor that is weighing heavily into family summer planning and that is finances.
Raise your hand if you learned to read from The Electric Company...So many of us did. Now Sesame Workshop is bringing The Electric Company back with a whole new updated and revamped show complete with some of our favorite bits, like phonetic silhouettes and celebrity guest stars. I have to confess that I watched the preview segments myself and thought ,well, let's say that they didn't live up to my youtube enhanced memories of the classic Electric Company. But what do I know? I'm old. So I didn't dismiss it without letting my kids weighing in...
