“Listen my children and you shall hear…” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

April is National Poetry Month, a celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets in 1996. Kids in the greater Boston area can celebrate with poetry contests, workshops, performances, a festival and an exploratory walk through the woods. Read on for a roundup of all things poetry.

April is National Poetry Month (bet you didn't know that). Even if the last time you picked up a collection of adult poems was Sylvia Plath in college, chances are you read your kids rhyming stanzas by the likes of Dr. Seuss, Margaret Wise Brown or Shel Silverstein on a more regular basis. Little ones really respond to poetry; the rhymes help them learn to read, and older kids get into rap and slam poetry.

There are lots of special kid-friendly events going on in honor of National Poetry Month, including free poetry writing workshops, poetry slams and the annual Poem in Your Pocket day. But we've also got ways your family can celebrate the art of poetry year-round in New York City.

As our kids are growing up and starting to develop their own interests, it has become increasingly difficult to find an activity our whole family will enjoy. Each person has their own idea of fun, which often doesn’t even register on the rest of the family’s fun-o-meter. Happily, we discovered that the Big Apple Circus is an exception. The whole family enjoyed two hours of pure entertainment – we laughed, we gasped, we sat wide-eyed and momentarily frozen in our seats, wondering if the performers were really going to be able to pull it off (they did, of course).

My now eight-year-old son had happy feet in utero, and happy (and apparently tasty) feet as a baby. As soon as he learned there was such a thing, he began asking for dance lessons. It seems he didn’t get the memo that, in America at least, dance is not considered a cool activity for boys. (Not that he would have cared—he’s very much a waltz to the beat of his own drummer kind of dude.)

In order to counter this attitude, lots of dance studios have launched special boy-centric or boys-only classes in the hope of appealing to all of the Billy Elliots out there. Bonus: Some of these programs are subsidized or even free!

This spring my daughters have requested that they be allowed to take up tennis, lacrosse, piano, hip hop, sculpting, drumming (heaven help me), acting, soccer, karate, hockey, photography, Italian, and guitar.  Hmmm...

While they would love for me to sign them each up for 85 after school activities per week, I’ve limited them each to two.  Partly for their well being, and well…largely for my own sanity.  I’m thinking, however, that summer camp might be the ticket in terms of letting them try some new fun activities without committing ourselves to a whole year of it. After all, who really knows how long an 8-year old’s passion for the tambourine will last?

I've long been a fan of Beam Summer Camp, a unique sleepaway camp where kids collaborate on different creative projects in building, science and art each session. So I was excited to hear that Beam is bringing its coolness to after-school workshops here in Brooklyn.

Now that we've introduced you to all the fun things for families in Oyster Bay, we figured it might be time to let the kids enjoy some art, dance, cooking, or fitness, while you enjoy some free time for shopping, dining, a little seaside R and R, or even enjoy a workout. At any of these featured sites, kids can drop in for a workshop without making a commitment, join a seasonal class, or host a birthday party. 

I think it's safe to assume that most of us have watched, and rewatched, a slew of princess movies, and read our share of treatises on the impact these movies have on our daughters' young minds. In a culture where rich and pretty is becoming the ultimate goal, I understand the concern. However, my children have seen them all, and so far remain fairly logical when it comes to their chances of a royal title any time soon. Mirror Mirror, a re-imagining of Snow White, tries, and is mostly successful, to give Snow some personality and a story that is as much about finding herself, as finding her Prince.