MyTime Calendars

If you’re like many of us looking for fun things to do with our kids this summer that don’t break the bank, Chuck E. Cheese has come up with some fun rewards charts that when completed, can be brought to a Chuck E. Cheese location for free game tokens! Some of the charts include the following:

• Sports Awards
• Tooth Fairy Award
• Getting Dressed
• Reading Rewards
• Active Kid
• Homework Helper
• Potty Training
• Sleep All Night
• Magical Manners
• Doctor/Dentist Good
• Stop Thumb Sucking
• Clean Your Room
• Teeth Brushing

Each completed rewards poster will earn your child 10 free tokens as a reward! What a fun way to encourage good habits in your children.

Tags: Add new tag, entertainment, Family and Home, free stuff, fun
Posted in Calendaring Tips, Family and Home, Parenting Tips, free stuff | No Comments »

From 8:00am to 8:00pm today, we’re celebrating our first week live on the web by awarding some very special activity books courtesy of GrokQuest throughout the day! Be one of our first 3 subscribers of the day and you will receive several of these great activity books for your kids! Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to collect some of these great book titles today only!

Tags: education, entertainment, Family and Home, free stuff, fun, toddlers
Posted in free stuff | No Comments »

Do you know where your kids are? Do you know who they’re with? Do you know what they’re doing? These questions were hard enough to answer 10 years ago but now with the age of technology thrust upon us, they are harder than ever to answer and even more complicated to ask. In this age of facebook, twitter, sexting, blogging, and online gaming, our generation of supposedly tech savy individuals is quickly becoming clueless in the wave of new technology.

There are many sites out there to help families deal with this onslaught of technology but there is one I would like to bring to your attention today. It is called www.getgamesmart.com and it will surely be a very frequently visited site by many a clueless parent. You might think from it’s title that it is just another gaming site. But this site is so much more.

It offers tools for parents to talk to their kids about these difficult issues revolving around online experiences. It offers suggestions for opening up a dialog with your kids about these difficult issues. There is even a section for kids to help give them and their families ways to talk about being kids in a digital world. Topics such as online bullying, sexting, guides to safely game online and understanding what you can do as a parent to help keep your child safely navigating online. There are even guidelines to parental control options to customize your families entertainment experience.

For more info: Phoenix Family & Parenting Examiner

Tags: education, entertainment, Family and Home
Posted in Family and Home, Parenting Tips, Safety/Health Awareness | No Comments »

To those few lucky individuals who are still living the extravagant life of decadence and self-indulgence in today’s economy, we salute you and hope to join you soon! With the new ‘cultural pass’ available at our local libraries, that day may be coming sooner than we anticipated. If you are struggling for entertainment options that fit the trimmed budget of today’s family, this is an amazing opportunity…and all you need is a library card!

Thanks to sponsors like Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, Macy’s, Arizona Republic, Clear Channel Radio, CBS Outdoor, and Macy’s, we have been gifted with a unique opportunity to bring affordable culture to our families.

What is “the pass”;? Library card holders can check out their “cultural pass”; and be able to gain free admission for up to 4 people at participating organizations. Yes, I did say FREE!…no strings attached. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end…the pass is only good for up to 7 days and each library cardholder can only check out one pass at a time twice a month. The venue will collect your pass when you use it so it can only be used once during the 7 day period.
The library imposes these restrictions in what may I perceive as an attempt at encouraging us as a community to share. I say “attempt”; because they will simultaneously reward us for our competitiveness since passes are only available on a first-come first-served basis and cannot be reserved. Mark your calendars: the pass becomes available on April 1, 2009 and the program will only run through March 31, 2010. Each library location will have five passes from each participating institution so competition will be tough.

If you want to learn more about the Culture Pass, click here.
Here is a list of participating cultural centers:
Arizona Museum for Youth
Arizona Museum of Natural Histor
Arizona Science Center
The Bead Museum
Cave Creek Museum
Children’s Museum of Phoenix
Desert Botanical Garden (won’t participate until June)
Heard Museum
Mesa Contemporary Arts
Phoenix Art Museum
Phoenix Zoo
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Taliesin West

And if you need some help with participating libraries, here’s a list of those as well:
City of Chandler
City of Glendale
City of Mesa
City of Phoenix
City of Scottsdale
City of Tempe

So on your marks, get set, go! May the fastest and most diligent library card holder win! Join the ranks of the self-indulgent as we try to leave our economic woes behind us for an afternoon of decadent, guilt-free cultural family entertainment!

Tags: culture, entertainment, Family and Home, fun
Posted in Family and Home, Parenting Tips | 1 Comment »