Bringing History To Life: Movies That Teach + Family Movie Night

With kids back in school, it is often hard to carve out family time. Since there's nothing as cozy after a long week of classes as a Family Movie Night, we have created a list of great films that will complement your kids' history courses. Take a moment to choose movies that help kids connect to their school curriculum. With these kid-tested and approved films, there's no need to tell your children that these movies are educational. We promise -- once you pop in Kit Kittridge: An American Girl or Seabiscuit when your child is studying Depression-era America, meaty conversations will ensue and your kids will naturally connect to what they have learned at school. (Click here to get started on your own cache of films for fall and to tell us about movies you have used to connect your kids to their school subjects.)

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Top Ten Things To Do With Your Kids Before Summer Ends

Endless Summer; Beaches, Books and Bicycles

When people ask "How was your summer" we want to holler that "It ain't over yet!" Now is the time to play cards, make lemonade, ride bikes and stay up late playing mini golf. Here our are Top Ten pix for making the most out of those last summer days.

1. We All Scream for Ice Cream: Our inside scoop for staying cool on hot summer days? We think Milk (Beverly Boulevard at Poinsettia 323-939-6455) serves up the best ice cream in LA -- it's great to pick up and take as a hostess gift, too!(You beg to differ? Please click here to tell us your favorite ice cream shoppe). Our kids are big fans of the Manhattan Beach Creamery. Since those spots are hard to dash out to, we've been making our own ice-cream -- raspberry chocolate chip, anyone? Click here for our favorite Food Network's recipes.

2. From Bugs to Bernini: This summer, the 'staycation' was all the rage, so why not take one more vacation -- in town -- by taking the tram to The Getty Center. Let the kids explore the gardens, and then pop into the Merian show (here's what we said about it in June) and drop in on the new Bernini show, as well. (Our Parents Off the Couch tip is to take a group of adults to see the fabulous August Sander show -- which closes mid-September -- and stay for dinner on the hill.)

3. Walking With Dinosaurs - The Live Experience: Surprise your kids with tickets for this extravagant stage show that comes to Staples Center on September 25 for seven shows. (It starts tomorrow at Anaheim's Honda Center for ten shows, also.) Click here for a KOTC discount on tickets. The Los Angeles Times warns that the show can be frightening for little T-Rex fans, but book now for older kids -- the show has been a sell out!

4. Culture for the Upcoming Year: Now is a good time to purchase tickets for the upcoming year -- save time by scheduling family time in advance and save money by buying a series of dances or concerts. Click here for the schedules for UCLA Live, the LA Philharmonic, the Center for the Arts at Pepperdine, Dance at the Music Center, and the Orange County Performing Arts Center

5. Make 'Em Listen: Reading Shakespeare is something your kids will do in Middle School, but hearing it out loud makes it fun and memorable. A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It and Macbeth are playing at our favorite spot, the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum.

6. Playing Old School: We got into puzzles this summer and spent whole evenings as a family searching for the right piece of the whole. A group of mixed age kids need at least 500 pieces to keep them busy for a few days, and 1000 pieces for a week -- but our favorite puzzles are wooden jigsaws whose pieces are individually cut into special shapes. Check out Elms Puzzles, in Maine from whom we rent puzzles (they provide the return postage).

7. Malibu Bound: We still have to pinch ourselves when we realize what a paradise there is to be found at Zuma Beach. It's a very clean beach, price-friendly ($7 to park all day), great for picnics and safe boogie boarding. Better yet, wait a few weeks until the tourists go home and claim the sand as your own.

8. Mad Libs: Celebrate this classic game's 50th birthday this month and get everyone laughing. We think it's a sneaky way to get your kids vocabulary tuned up for school. Pick up a few booklets in the toy store, or have kids invent their own MadLibs.

9. Delicious Reads: It's hard for us to say goodbye to those lazy summer days without telling you about our favorite summer reads. Our older boys loved The Mysterious Benedict Society books, and our younger boys and girls loved the Ga'hoole series. Our teenage daughters were inseparable from the Twilight series books. We could not put down Jhumpa Lahiri's The Unaccustomed Earth or The Shadow Catcher. Yummy.

10. Share KOTC: If you love what we do, please tell a friend (or two) to sign up for our newsletter. Remember, there are over 100 adventures in our Archives!

Enjoy!
Diane and Sarah

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.

Get Some Sand Between Your Toes

Beach Volleyball at the Beijing Olympics + Visiting Manhattan Beach

Michael Phelps and the Opening Ceremony may be dominating the Olympic news this week, but the hottest ticket in Beijing is for Beach Volleyball. The two top ranked women’s teams in the world are from the US, and superstars Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh hail from Southern California. We set our TIVOs to record the US women's competitions, and pulled up the excellent NBC Olympics website to give our kids a sense of the prominence of our local sport. They were hooked -- and after a few near misses from bumping and digging around the living room, we took our kids to Manhattan Beach, a town famous for its beach volleyball. We spent a few blissful hours playing in the surf and sand, checked out the perfect pint-sized Roundhouse Aquarium, took a leisurely bike ride along the beach, and ended a perfect summer day the old fashioned way, with some yummy locally-made ice cream.

Most beach players start playing indoor volleyball, which is a highly popular sport for girls, in particular, in Southern California. These top athletes are great role-models for all kids, and watching them compete is exciting for the whole family.
Click here for the scoop on where to rent bikes, shop, and eat in Manhattan Beach,

Dance the Night Away Under the Summer Sky: Levitt Pavilion at MacArthur Park + Donna Summer at the Hollywood Bowl = Kids Off The Couch

MacArthur Park has had a storied history in Los Angeles, and continues to rank as one of our city's landmarks. The Park, first built in the 1880s and named for General Douglas MacArthur, received worldwide fame when Donna Summer, in her 1978 hit, bemoaned in an ode to love that "someone left the cake out in the rain." For "bad girls" from the disco generation, Donna is making a two-night appearance at the Hollywood Bowl on August 22 and 23 Click here for a link to purchase tickets.

MacArthur Park, however, is not just the stuff of music legend. It is clean, green and ready for prime time with its amazing FREE Levitt Pavilion's Target Children's Music Nights, every Sunday evening at 6:30 pm. When we took in a concert, parking was a breeze and the setting was intimate enough for everyone to spread their picnic blankets with a full view of the stage. The rest of the summer boasts a cool variety of global music -- from Chinese acrobats to kick off Olympic weekend (8/10), to rap, reggae and calypso version of Father Goose (8/17), there's plenty to keep the kids tapping their toes through September. Click here for the August and September schedule.

Whether your beat is more "Bad Girls" or "Father Goose," dance the night away with outdoor music before the summer is over. And cover that cake, just in case of rain!

Countdown to Beijing Olympics (Part 2); Mulan + Terra Cotta Warriors at the Bowers Museum = Kids Off The Couch

Olympic fever has struck our families and we are counting down the days (and studying our Tivo settings!) until the opening ceremonies this Friday 8/08/08.

The Games are always captivating -- the athletes inspire us, the settings intrigue us. Wanting to enrich our kids' concept of China during this Olympic summer, we headed back to that nation's Imperial era by screening Disney classic Mulan, a beloved folk tale about a heroic girl warrior. From there, it was an easy transition to the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at Santa Ana's Bowers Museum, a spectacular collection of the famed artifacts from over two thousand years ago. The Warriors, constructed to protect the underground tomb of China's first emperor, ignited our kids' imagination so that we talked about the show for days after -- clearly a feat worthy of Olympic Gold!

Click here for tips on tuning in for the Olympics, a link to the NBC schedule, and to learn about a History Channel documentary about the Warriors, airing this week

Click here for Part I in Kids Off The Couch's Olympic Countdown: Kung Fu Panda and the Flowing Fragrance Gardens at the Huntington Gardens.

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