What to do in San Francisco?

I tend to send out long emails filled with links and kid-friendly events to my parent friends. I have even created a "Mommy Friends" group in my Gmail "Contacts" tab so as to easly email all of my suggestions to our closest mommy (and daddy) friends. After my last lengthy email, a friend suggested I start posting all this information on a blog, perhaps so that others too, can enjoy my family event scavenger hunt finds. Great idea!

1. This week I was reading Parents Magazine and came across a great activity that teaches your little one about the world and has the added bonus of allowing them to receive something in their mailbox (I know I always wish I got something besides bills and junk mail in the mail)! So I visited Little Passports and ordered the monthly subscription for my boy (who is 3, by the way). They have various types of subscriptions to choose from, but I personally decided that paying month to month would work best for me, just the program didn't turn out to be everything we hoped and dreamed of! :) It's $12 a month (about $13 for the first month because of the shipping cost and the starter goodies you receive) and then you get a little suitcase (for play), a passport, world map, etc. Then, every month after that you receive a package form 1 of 12 different countries for your child to learn about and feel like they visited! For those of you on a budget, such as myself, this is a great way to teach your child about the world, even if you can't afford to visit 12 countries in 1 year! I'll let you know how this actually works out for us when we receive it...



2. Last Saturday (May 1, 2010) my dad kindly bought us tickets to go see Peter Pan the Show at a 360 theather. It was amazing, although there are a few scary parts. Zak sat through the whole thing in awe, with his mouth open. It was really cute. I highly recommend it for 3+ unless your child gets scared easily. Then I would wait.
   


3. Now, if you can't afford to dish out $30/person/session on a parenting class with the fabulous, but slightly pricey Parents Place, they offer free sessions Parenting Workshops at the San Mateo County Libraries. Some of future sessions we plan to attend include: Ready, Set, Go: Preparing for Kindergarden at the San Carlos library on May 12, 2010 at 7PM and at the Millbrae library on May 26, 2010 at 7PM.
   
   
   
   
4. We just signed our little one up for soccer classes at Soccer Kids in the bayarea (they have 3 locations, I believe). The summer session starts in June and classes are already filling up so I highly recommend that you take a look now. This is a great way for you kid to get out doors and do some physical activity with other kids his or her age. They offer after school and weekend classes as well, which is a bonus for us because I work FULL-TIME.



5. During the week we like to make frequent trips to the library, but unfortunately, the City of San Francisco, where we live, does not offer many after-work family programs. So, with a little investigating, I discovered that the Daly City Public Libraries all offer evening storytimes and even some in Spanish! We are now regulars on Tuesdays and Thursday nights and love the sing-alongs, stories and crafts we get to do with Zak. It's also nice because we are able to rent movies about animals for Zak to watch instead of the same old Disney Cartoons or PBS shows over and over again. On a side note, the San Mateo County Libraries also offer prequent evening story times, but they are a little bit of a drive for us and we only make the trip if they are having a special program such as Daffy Dave this past Tuesday at the Millbrae library (Zak couldn't stop cracking up!!!)



6. Our favorite Friday evening activity has become SWIMMING. We are now regulars at the Sava Pool in San Francisco. They have a recreational swim from 6:30 - 8:00 PM on Fridays and its really nice for us to get out with the little one to do some swimming... he loves it. It's pretty cheap too: $5/adult and $1/child.
   

Alright, that's all my poor fingers are able to type, but I will keep everyone posted on any other events we hear about and/or attend!