Downtown Neighborhood Guide

While there's always a big push for summer reading, kids' math skills don't get much of a workout while school's on break. Come September, many students find they've forgotten a lot of what they had learned and start out the academic year behind.

In order to make sure your kids' math knowledge doesn't melt away in the summer sun, our education blogger, Blythe, has rounded up New York City camps and classes where students can put two and two together—and hopefully do a lot more complicated equations. Our picks include competitive math programs, individualized instruction and remedial classes.

Having emigrated to the United States from Russia in 1976 rather than 1916, the closest I got to the classic Lower East Side Jewish immigrant experience was reading Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family book series—first as a kid, then later to my own children. So my family and I were really excited to visit the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side so we could get a chance to see how immigrants lived a century ago.

This profile of the Tenement Museum is the second in a series of posts spotlighting kid-friendly NYC historic sites vying for Partners in Preservation grants. Read on to learn how you can take a trip back in time at the museum and support some of our city's most valuable cultural destinations with the click of your mouse.

Unfortunately, we received an email from the gallery stating that due to "issues of liability and respect for the pieces of art" children under 12 are no longer allowed to climb in Neto's structures. The pieces are still very cool to look at, but certainly exploring them was a big part of the fun.

Do you remember Ernesto Neto's anthropodino exhibit at the Park Avenue Armory as fondly as I do? Three years later my daughter still raves about that experience and how much fun she had running through the Brazilian artist's wild, otherworldly installations. That's why I was thrilled when I found out that the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea is showcasing two floors of Neto's interactive work through late May for FREE.

My six-year-old and I and some friends went to check it out and—if I hadn't physically carted my kid out of there—she'd still be running around Neto's colorful crocheted wonderland.