A Single Shard + Korean Brush Painting at LACMA = Kids Off The Couch

Pottery and Perspective
Driving around Los Angeles can be like taking a trip around the world, with signs in different languages, and even different alphabets. We love traveling around the world -- and back in time as well -- by reading books set in different cultures and time periods. Linda Sue Park's "A Single Shard" is a NewberyMedal-winning novel that transports us almost a thousand years back to old Korea, where we meet an orphan boy Tree Ear whose admiration for a master craftsman's celadon pottery takes him to the throne room of the Emperor himself. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has a pavilion dedicated to Korean artwork and we dropped by the adjoining Boone Children's Gallery to learn how to do Korean brush painting. The Boone Children's Gallery is a spot where kids can always try their hand at an art project and occupy themselves with the excellent supplies provided. We could easily make a day of visiting LACMA, of course, and encourage families to add a few extras onto a Boone Gallery art excursion, such as dropping in on the brand new exhibit about India's fabled city of Lucknow, or checking out the cool fashion exhibit at the new Resnick Pavilion. Its really fun to cap off your adventure with lunch in nearby Koreatown. No airfare required! (Click here for discussion points for the novel, as well as details about visiting LACMA and where to get a delicious, authentic Korean meal nearby.)

The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler + Art in Your City = Kids Off The Couch

Summer is an exciting time for new art, and museums all around the country are welcoming its citizens to punctuate their sun bathing and water-sports regimen with some high culture. Yet, bringing kids to see art can sometimes feel like a chore. A few years ago, we read one of our childhood favorites to the kids, inspiring our best trip to a museum, ever! The book is "From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler," and tells the story of two kids who run away from home and wind up hiding out in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The deliciously taboo notion that kids could stowaway in a museum (without their parents) thrilled our children as much as it thrilled us a generation ago. We were inspired to plan our own stowaway adventure at a local Art Museum. The kids found a bed they could sleep in, a place to stow their overnight bags, and a fountain in which to bathe. We hope that you will follow our lead and start your summer with an off-beat, kid-friendly art adventure -- by pretending to mimic the story's clever premise, we are pretty sure that your kids will discover that a museum is much more fun than they'd thought. Oh -- and, they might fall in love with a piece of art along the way.

Click here for more information about The Hideaways, a television movie starring Isabella Rossellini, based on the beloved E. L. Koenigsberg book.

Dinosaurs Before Dark + Natural Museum of History = Kids Off The Couch

Spinning through the air in a tree house, soaring on the back of a fuzzy Pteranodon, running from a trumpeting T-Rex, what better way to entice first time readers? Reading is an adventure for both boys and girls when Mary Pope Osborne takes children on a journey through time and space in the Magic Tree House series. Our kids loved Jack and Annie, two curious kids who discover a tree house that whirls them on one historical escapade after another. We celebrated our kids' new ability to read chapter books by planning an excursion that matched the theme of the book.

In the first book, Dinosaurs Before Dark, Jack and Annie swirl to the Cretaceous period and encounter four types of dinosaurs. We took a more earthly mode of transportation to our local Natural History Museum for our own hands-on dinosaur experience with fossilized eggs, bones and giggle-inducing poop. We were lucky enough to watch as paleontologists cleaned and assembled Thomas the T-Rex, a 14 year old dinosaur that glitters!

Click here to learn how you can roam with the dinosaurs in your city and how to use this series of books to launch other adventures