Tending food gardens can be a fun and educational way to teach kids life lessons about planning ahead, something that can be difficult for kids (and even adults). Food gardens teach kids to think about whether the temperature will go up or down, pests that come with different temperatures, differences in rainfall over the seasons, pruning just the right amount, crop rotation, and enough thinking ahead to fill volumes of gardening books. Preparing a garden for changes of the

This year, City Kids is participating in a year-long program about taxonomy with Friends of the National Zoo. They just finished up a six week session on the taxonomy of birds; our kids had a fantastic time learning how to classify birds, and they loved being able to go into the exhibits to observe the different kind of birds they were learning about. Over the course of their session, the kids worked on individual research projects that culminated in presentations about a b

Every week in City Kids, our kids do Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art form that incorporates self defense, dance, acrobatics, music, instruments, song, and Portuguese. Those who are accomplished capoeiristas, elegantly fly through the air, seeming to defy physics, keeping to the beat of the music the whole time. Our kids have only been doing Capoeira for a little over a year, but they love it! They are always practicing their moves, and several parents have reported

At the beginning of every school year, I find myself grateful that our kids get to be outside for their lessons and activities. Fall is a beautiful time of year, and just when the weather is cooling off and offering a reprieve from the hot and humid D.C. weather, most kids have to go back to school. At City Kids, we have a fantastic inside space available to us, and having an inside space is definitely useful for certain projects. But when we can be outside, we take our ma