Being Savvy: Your guide to activities and fun things to do with your preschoolers and kids in Pasadena, CA

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Winter

Fun Things to Count in Our Town

by Cynthia

February 03, 2009

South Pasadena is known for its charm--a small town feel with beautifully kept, cozy Craftsman houses, and tree-lined streets. Some streets are lined with palms, others, with oaks, maples, and palms. Now if you have a particularly sharp-eyed, observant child, they may have noticed little metal tags embedded in the bark of some of the oak trees. As you walk along the residential sidewalks, you  Read more...

Fun Things to Do Around Pasadena: The Dervaes Urban Homestead

by Cynthia

February 02, 2009

Some of us may dream of going "off grid"--completely independent of the utility company as a power source--so it's inspiring to meet people who actually have. The fact that the Dervaes family lives one block north of the 210 freeway, a scant miles from downtown Los Angeles in the city of Pasadena, and produce almost 6,000 lbs of fruits and vegetables on 1/10th of an acre --it's nothing short of  Read more...

Best Spots for Indoor Midwinter Play

by Cynthia

January 20, 2009

January in Southern California, and it could be 80 degrees and sunny, as it was earlier in the month, or it could be raining. Either way, too much sun on delicate baby skin or an otherwise dreary rainy day for a toddler requires an escape hatch. I've already sung the praises of Kidspace , a Pasadena indoor/outdoor museum where kids can climb, touch, run, and splash with abandon. The indoor  Read more...

...ideas for a new year's bash with kids

by Cynthia

December 29, 2008

When your kids are tiny, a new year's celebration seems to be one of very few ways to go: it's a night like any other: dinner, bath, bed; or dinner, bath, bed and get a sitter. Get dressed up, take a taxi to a nearby swanky hotel (they almost always host a celebration of some kind for stray revelers), have a few grownup beverages with friends, toast the new year, and taxi home; or variation on  Read more...

...best decorated neighborhoods

by Cynthia

December 23, 2008

If you're not up for the grueling wait for your car to roll slowly through the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Festival of the Lights in Griffith Park, you can cruise through the following Pasadena neighborhoods and admire the whizbang lights, moving reindeer, snowmen, Santa on the rooftop, and all the rest. It's cool that someone else does it--can you imagine the electricity bill?  Read more...

...happy hanukkah

by Cynthia

December 22, 2008

I shouldn't have been surprised, but as I looked for stories of how Hanukkah came to be celebrated, I found so many conflicting versions, I was starting to get confused. In looking for some rabbinical words of wisdom about the meaning of Hanukkah, I came across Rabbi Jill Jacobs' words in "The Ghosts of Hanukkah's Future," Tikkun , the magazine of progressive Jewish thought: It has sometimes  Read more...

...holiday performances we love

by Cynthia

December 18, 2008

Oh, the magic of a Christmas tree that grows, a nutcracker come to life, and all kinds of exotic and delightful dancing characters from around the world! Face it, even as a grownup, you too are still a tiny bit entranced by Clara's magical Christmas Eve and the strange rat king who must be defeated, and mysterious Uncle Drosselmeyer who begins the adventure. As a girl, our family marked the  Read more...

...teaching kids about charity and giving to others

by Cynthia

December 15, 2008

It occurs to me that in general, fall is a good time to take stock. For eons, it was harvest time and you had to know how much you had on hand so you could make it through the winter. So just as you're blessed with abundance (hopefully), you also prepare for scarcity; fall is when we hold those two contradictory notions in our minds at the same time. At our house, we don't wait for  Read more...

...favorite Christmas toys, books, and activities

by Cynthia

December 11, 2008

Christmas Books OK, *cannot* have Christmas in the air without a fun read-aloud of ' Twas the Night Before Christmas ! The classic book, by Clement C. Moore, is a rollicking rhyming read that has rightfully remained a classic of kid's holiday literature. This one has a fabric cover and a ribbon bookmark to match its old-fashioned Victorian-era illustrations and story. I also like Olivia Helps  Read more...

...best Hanukkah toys, books and activities

by Cynthia

December 08, 2008

I credit my kid's crunchy-hippie preschool with teaching him to belt out, "Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay/ Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, then dreidel I shall play." They're very non-denominational and all-inclusive, which is partly why I chose the school. So if a Chinese American kid can lustily sing a basic Hanukkah song adapted from a game involving an ancient gambling device, I  Read more...

...book picks for the holidays

by Cynthia

November 24, 2008

Here at Savvy Source, we'll be offering some picks for beloved and road-tested books and toys for the holidays. Watch for these throughout the month and into December. Some of my favorite books: Blueberries for Sal , by Robert McCloskey: A little girl on a berry-picking trip with her family has a gentle encounter with a mama bear and her cub, also foraging for berries. Delicious to read with  Read more...

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