"Annie" + Talking About Money = Kids Off The Couch

The Sun Will Come Out, Tomorrow... Won't It?

Over Thanksgiving break families will have plenty of time together, and inevitably adult conversation will focus on the economy. We think it's a perfect time to sit down with your kids to calm whatever anxiety has been passed along (unwittingly) to them, and to set a solid path for the future. This week, we turn to KOTC Financial Guru Nathan Dungan, a national expert on helping parents teach their kids healthy financial habits. Dungan has created a series of questions for Kids Off The Couch subscribers to get the conversation started, like asking Great Grandma about her most treasured possession or about how values have shifted in a generation. With these memories being shared, why not create a new Thanksgiving tradition and record these conversations? (This Friday is National Day of Listening, and we provide a link to their site to show families how to record these stories for posterity). If all this talk is sounding bleak, fear not -- we kick off this earnest topic with a screening of Annie, the sunniest movie we can think of, to remind us that money isn't the key to happiness.

Click here for Dungan's conversation starters as well as a link to his recent Chicago Tribune article on how to talk to kids about job loss. And for Parents - we highly recommend Slumdog Millionaire, a wonderful treatise on money, values and love (rated R, in theaters now) to inspire you to tackle this tough topic.

All Bugged Out; Rent "A Bug's Life" + Visit an Insect Zoo = Kids Off The Couch

Our families truly enjoyed watching "A Bug's Life" and then off we ventured to the Insect Zoo at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. And don't forget to visit the Kids Off the Couch Website for the full adventure with even more tips and an article about our personal adventure.

Film Title: A Bug's Life

Directed By: John Lasseter
1998, Rated G, 96 mins.

Our Buttery Bits of Wisdom about this Film:

• Why This Film Is Worth It: Our kids love this movie about a misfit ant that rallies the colony to overcome adversity. Pixar's message bears repeating -- being a misfit or little doesn't mean you can't do incredible things.
  
• Red Flags: Few, but younger kids may be unsettled by the grasshoppers' mean treatment of the ants and a bird chase. Best for pre-school aged kids and up, though some of the jokes are really aimed at adults.
• Who's Talking?: Listen for a star-studded cast voicing the Queen (Phyllis Diller), Hopper (Kevin Spacy) and Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).
• On The Outs: Stick around for the credits -- our kids loved the hilarious outtakes.
  

Our Tips for Talking to Your Kids about this Film:

• Science Savvy: Outside your home, or in a park, it's easy to locate an ant colony as they march back and forth from their nest. To reenact the scene from the movie where a leaf falls into the ants' carefully ordered path and causes havoc, we had our kids carefully drop a leaf in the path of the ants and observe the ants behavior as they circumvented the leaf. Ask your kids, if they were an ant, how would they get around the obstacle.
• Cinema Savvy: A Bug's Life pays homage to the great Kurosawa film Seven Samurai, a classic tale of a warrior who hires outside warriors to protect his village.
  
• Industrial Revolution Savvy: Tools make our lives more efficient -- dishwashers, cars, and portable DVD players. Ask your children to think about what tool they would make if they were an ant in a colony.

Talking to Kids About Their Dreams

Life Lessons: How to become Captain Kirk or Play for the NFL

Every now and then, something stops us in our everyday tracks and makes us think about how we live our lives. We have been following the story of Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor who delivered what is called a "last lecture," a tradition in which professors share their life wisdom. Only in this case, what is usually a theoretical talk, turned out to be real as Pausch was told he had just months to live after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Professor Pausch prepared his lecture as a living will for his kids -- a guide for how to live life -- in a speech that has now inspired people all over the world.

For those of you who have not yet watched Professor Pausch's lecture, called "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," we urge you to set aside an hour Click here for a You Tube link. Click here to purchase Pausch's bestselling book, based on his lecture. Pausch touches on his boyhood desire to become Captain Kirk, to play for the NFL, fly at zero gravity and be a Disney imagineer. Pausch, in fact, came close to achieving most of his dreams.

Randy Pausch passed away this weekend, and we thought about how his words inspired us, as parents, to talk to our kids about their dreams, and share our thoughts as to how they might go about making them real. In some ways, these thoughts are our legacy to our children, our own unique view of the world about how to live a life so that, in Pausch's words, "dreams come to you."

Whether your child wants to be a fireman, ballerina or a robotics engineer, talking about their dreams is the first step in giving them wings to fly!

Diane and Sarah
Co-founders, KidsOffTheCouch.com

Talking to the Animals: Babe + Animal Acres in Acton

From the first days of parenthood, the barnyard looms large. We sang "Old MacDonald", and read a gaggle of baby books, all of which featured characters that go quack and moo. Animal characters faded into the background as our kids grew older, but there's no age limit to learning how it feels when a pig wiggles its snout on your leg. We spent a wonderful day at Animal Acres, a farm sanctuary in Acton, California, where its founder rescues and cares for animals that are usually raised as food. Visitors are encouraged to cuddle up to many of the animals; our kids got to know a Brahma Bull, laughed at water fowl fighting over their food, and got cozy snuggling lambs on their laps. After making friends with barnyard denizens, we went home and screened Babe, a farmyard fairy tale about a pig with hidden talents. We highly recommend this clever, Oscar winning film for everyone in your family -- after enjoying the clever dialogue and wry humor, bacon will never look the same. Click here to learn more about the amazing woman who runs this unique animal sanctuary. Your local County Fair is also a great way to see farm animals up close and personal. The Orange County Fair is open until August 3rd.

Visit the Kids Off The Couch Website for more great ideas on food literature, "before you go tips", discussion starters, movie red flags and much more. Sign Up today to have a kid-friendly adventure delivered to your inbox every week. We'd also love to hear back from you about your adventure!

Rent National Treasure + Go On A Scavenger Hunt = Kids Off The Couch

Treasure The Good Times

If you were too busy grilling hot dogs to talk with your family about why we celebrate the Fourth of July, why not let Nicholas Cage do the explaining? Our kids adore National Treasure, and we were happy to discover that the film offers a pop-culture tour of the icons of our nation's birth -- from the Liberty Bell to Independence Hall. Cage, whose name is Benjamin Franklin Gates in the film, plays a descendant of Freemasons who hid a fabled treasure in America during this country's formation; in order to find it, Gates must unravel clues about early American history, including a key map to the treasure trove which is located on the Declaration of Independence itself. We'd tell you whether or not he decodes that well-guarded map and finds the treasure, but that information is classified! Our kids are always ready for riddles, and love going on a Scavenger Hunt. When they were little we did simple hunts, and increased the games' complexity as they grew older: Treasure Hunts around the neighborhood when they were in Elementary School, and Amazing Race competitions in malls and parks for pre-teens and teens. If you can master the creative planning, you'll never again be puzzled about a birthday party or day of downtime!

Click here to visit the Kids Off The Couch Website for more on visiting a full sized replica of Independence Hall at Knott's Berry Farm, for a professional scavenger hunt outfit which is fun for adults and to learn more about the sequel, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which is just out on DVD

Stories from the Sea: The Secret of Roan Inish + Mami Wata at the Fowler Museum

Want to make a splash with your kids? The Fowler Museum at UCLA is creating a special day for Kids Off The Couch families on Wednesday July 16th : a film screening and private tour of a their current mermaid exhibition. Join us at 12 pm to screen one of our favorite family movies -- The Secret of Roan Inish -- an exquisite film that gives life to the Irish legend that seals can shed their skins and become human. Then, at 1:45, just after the film, The Fowler has invited us for lemonade and cookies in the courtyard, followed by privately guided tour of Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas, a multi-media exhibit showcasing an ancient deity who appears as a mermaid and snake charmer. From the opening super-sized video projection of the ocean (which our kids used as a backdrop to mime their surf moves), to incredible headdresses (that wowed even our most dedicated sparkle wearers), Mami Wata charmed a new generation. Visit the Kids Off The Couch Website here for the full adventure, conversations starters, tips for going as a group and advice on how to extend the adventure like a visit to the Marine Mammal Care Center

To RSVP for the Kids Off The Couch screening and tour, click here. If you can't make the screening, you can still join us for the exhibition tour!

Fantasia & Fantasia 2000 + Levitt Pavilion MacArthur Park - Target Children's Night

How do you solve the problem of antsy kids in a heat wave? The coolest thing we can think of is to spend an evening under the stars, listening to live music with your family. Kids Off the Couch is proud to be the media sponsor of Levitt Pavilion MacArthur Park - Target Children's Night, a free series of outdoor concerts running from Sunday, July 7 to Sunday, September 7 at MacArthur Park.

With programming that is as culturally diverse as our city, these concerts will open your family's ears to musical traditions from around the globe -- come see how One Night in Africa turns the pavilion into an African village, enjoy mimes and tumblers from the Beijing Opera, experience a dinosaur puppet show, attend a Youth Talent night and hear music folk tales from Latin America. Significant sponsors are supporting the second year of this exciting series at MacArthur Park, including Target, Sony Pictures and Bank of America. To get your kids ready for an evening under the stars, screen Fantasia or Fantasia 2000 and you'll be amazed at how naturally they respond to Walt Disney's inspired blending of animation and classical music.

Click here to go to our website to read the full adventure, pick up some tips on "why it's worth it", music from fantasia, parking, and more. Also, please visit the Blog afterwards and share some buttery kernels of wisdom that you may have discovered.

Moms Help Families Stay Connected with "Kids Off The Couch"

Staying connected to today's busy kids who are balancing school, sports and social schedules is a challenge most parents face. Two moms, Sarah Bowman and Diane Shakin, have launched a new website called Kids Off The Couch http://www.kidsoffthecouch.com that gives parents great ideas for creating family time beyond soccer games and birthday parties. These two moms have spent years exploring kid-culture with their kids, from chocolate tasting and gallery visits to butterfly pavilions and voting booths, figuring out what's cool for kids. What makes their ideas unique is that each of their adventures is inspired by a fantastic film, book, or media. After screening A Secret Garden, they explored their city's celebrated gardens. After watching All The President's Men with their sixth graders, they toured their local newspaper's printing and editorial offices. After reading this year's Caldecott Award winner The Invention of Hugo Cabret, they pulled up You Tube links of silent film clips that inspired that book's illustrator.

Every week, Kids Off The Couch offers families a new adventure idea and provides plenty of details for parents to go beyond the basics. For example, the moms suggest conversation starters about each film: Freaky Friday turns out to be a perfect conduit for discussing body image with pre-teen girls and Ratatouille serves up a fun way to talk about career dreams, as well as cooking.

In addition, each week subscribers will find book lists that relate to each film. If the adventure involves watching E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and visiting a planetarium, parents will find hand-picked books on outer space appropriate for kids in pre-school, elementary school and middle schoolers. Books can help inspire adventures for younger kids, or siblings, too young to watch a feature film.

While it may sound unusual to advocate getting on the couch to get kids to unplug, Bowman and Shakin insist that great media opens the door to culture and family discussions. After a long week, it's cozy to flop on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and watch a film that makes everyone happy. From husbands to grandparents, family film night has become a cherished part of these moms' family life. As the two moms are fond of saying, "sometimes you've got to get on the couch to get off the couch!"

Since launching the site, Diane and Sarah have written over 100 film and adventure pairings they've road-tested with their families. Past adventures are listed in the Archives section of the site, and if parents sign-up, they'll receive a free, e-mail every week with a fresh idea to get kids off the couch and into their world.