Rent Parent Trap + A Family Camping Trip = Kids Off The Couch

Camping trips don't get much better than in Parent Trap, where twin girls play naughty pranks in the great outdoors, hoping to convince their dad's fiancee to flee so he will re-unite with their mother. Both the original film (starring Haley Mills) and its 1998 remake (Lindsay Lohan's debut) win gold merit badges for physical comedy and tug scampishly at the heartstrings. Inspired by Haley Mills' al fresco antics in the original Parent Trap, we decided to spend a few nights under the stars! We spent a fun-filled weekend at a nearby campground, exploring, relaxing and restoring our over-scheduled family's natural harmony for a few idyllic days.

Click here to find out more about family camping as well as great family campgrounds near your city.

Hotel For Dogs + Your First Puppy = Kids Off The Couch

First Puppy Bo Obama is cute, cuddly and... no doubt the cause of many a parent-child tussle around the country. The first couple did it right by promising the pup as a reward for surviving the campaign, and that extended longing does make the early days of puppy parenting all the more rewarding! After years of listening to her kids agitate, our good friend decided the time was right to adopt an abandoned pup, and made a 4-year-old Maltese part of her family. As devoted dog owners, we know that even though the price of that doggie in the window may be minimal, there are lots of hidden costs to bringing a new dog home -- a small price to pay for the love a dog bestows upon his human friends, but a price nonetheless. We compiled our inside tips on all things puppy for you to bone up on before you head to a shelter. Not knowing how much work goes into raising a dog is exactly why animal shelters are full of abandoned pets, as our kids learned by watching Hotel For Dogs (just out on DVD) a story of two orphaned siblings who turn an abandoned Manhattan hotel into a 5-Star retreat for strays. Our kids were mesmerized by all the tekkie contraptions the hotel boasted, like bone-throwing and feeding machines, and fell in love with the canine cast. Ahhh, puppy love! Click here for more about how to adopt a pet in your city and for a chance to win a copy of the movie.

Duma + Wildlife Rescue Station = Kids Off The Couch

As moms who grew up watching "Born Free", weeping into wads of tissue paper, we love being able to introduce our children to an equally bittersweet tale about wildness that can't be tamed. Directed by the legendary director Carroll Ballard, Duma tells the story of a boy who raises a cheetah cub and then, after his father's death, crosses the Kalahari Desert to release the adult cat into the wild. Ballard, who also directed Black Stallion, Never Cry Wolf and Fly Away Home, is masterful at using the camera to explore the relationship between children and animals. We found ourselves clutching tissues again, this time holding them to our childrens' noses. The boy and cheetah made such excellent travel companions that we spent an afternoon touring a Wildlife Rescue Station near our home. Watching bobcats and snakes being rehabilitated made us happy to only have a dog and a fish tank to worry about!

Click here for more on Ballard, a few red flags about this film, and a link to an animal rescue station near you.

Hot Ideas for a Cool Planet: Wall-E + Green Ideas from Cool Globes = Kids Off The Couch

Happy Birthday, Mother Earth! We like to think of Earth Day as an annual check-up, taking stock of our family's habits and discovering new ways to be green. A fascinating public art project is visiting Los Angeles, where we live, and we're so impressed with its message that we wanted to share it with you. The 60 larger-than-life Cool Globes are created by artists and offer a colorful message about how citizens can change the world. Started by a mother who wanted to spread the message about global warming, the Cool Globes project outlines ideas from riding bikes to recycling to using sustainable building products, to reinvigorate our green agenda. Your family can go online to see each beautiful globe and read up on the conservation concepts behind each piece of art. To think about Earth's future, we cued up this year's Oscar-winner for Best Animated Feature; Pixar's Wall-E tells the story of a dilapidated trash-compacting robot left behind on Earth after humans were forced to escape into space from a planet destroyed by pollution and garbage. Inspired by Wall-E's heroic journey to save Earth, our kids are visiting the Cool Globes website for new ideas on how they can help reverse global warming. Click here for KOTC's ideas for getting greener, and to visit the Cool Globes website

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

Paper Clips + Jewish Memorial = Kids Off The Couch...who will never forget

With Passover starting tonight, and the ongoing crisis in Darfur entering its seventh year, the timing feels right to speak with our kids about the tragedy of intolerance.

The politics of genocide are not kid-friendly. But our children had an easier time comprehending the sheer numbers involved in the Holocaust after we showed them Paper Clips, a powerful documentary about students in rural Tennessee who tried to collect six million paper clips and, in the process, collected a whole lot more: the story behind each paper clip. Collecting six million items helped them envision the victims as real people -- mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. To bolster the lessons our kids are also learning in their middle-school history classes, we visited a Jewish Museum's Holocaust exhibit, and were lucky enough to meet a Holocaust survivor who shared her history with us. Great stories like The Diary of Anne Frank and Hotel Rwanda humanize unspeakable portions of human history and it is by retelling these stories we work to prevent them from happening again.

Click here for a list of Jewish Museums around the country, and to learn more about the crisis in Darfur.

Angels in the Outfield + Baseball and Foster Youth = Kids Off The Couch

Angels in the Outfield is not your typical baseball movie; though it delivers on great sports scenes, it hits the ball out of the park with a socially conscious message about kids who wind up in the foster care system. When a young boy's father abandons him, he tells his son that the chances of his return are "about as good as the Angels winning the pennant." The boy takes his deadbeat Dad's message literally and prays for the team to win, always optimistic that "it could happen."

Before heading out for a day at a ballgame, we contacted a local organization dedicated to caring for foster youth. We got our kids to pitch in a few dollars from their allowances -- and matched their funds -- so that foster kids can root alongside us this season at a major league game. Click here to learn more about a foster care organization near you.