In Pennsylvania you can go to the Crayola Factory Tour and see how crayons are made, but in Brooklyn you can tour the UrbanGlass workshop and see how local artists create beautiful objects out of glass. UrbanGlass regularly holds free open house tours that show visitors the process of creating a handblown glass object. This weekend is a Sketch and Sculpt Open House where they will select a submitted drawing and bring that object to life (The date for submissions has passed, sorry).

You can also take glassblowing workshops and classes at UrbanGlass and even bring your own recycling to turn into something new. The great thing about a glassblowing class is you can create a paperweight or a cup to take home in just one workshop.

The temperature is heading south again this weekend so it might be a good idea to take advantage of the 2 for 1 entries at most NYC museums this weekend thanks to The New York Times Arts and Leisure Weekend. Read on for the best (mostly) free kid events for this weekend from the juvenile humor of the Striking Viking Story Pirates to the high brow classical Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert.

The South Street Seaport has been working hard at revitalizing itself. Earlier this Fall there was news of a new ice skating rink similar to the pop-up sink that appears at Bryant Park. The opening date was pushed from November to December, and now they are saying will open on Friday, January 10. We shall see.

Meanwhile, Seaport Revitalization Take Two is Seaport Semester, a diverse group of family friendly programs including classes, theater, workshops and a author reading series. If all goes well, this may lay the ground for a community center bringing much needed family programming over to the Seaport area.

The Seaport Semester programs kick off January 12, 2009 with a week of free trial classes. After the trial week, classes will continue for 6 months and cost $15-$20.

Some highlights include:

The DOE announced a totally new process for Kindergarten admissions for New York City Public schools for September 2009. I feel bad for this poor crop of parents who had to go through the comedy of errors that was the newly centralized Pre-K admissions system and now have to go through a completely different, but also new Kindergarten admissions system. Perhaps Joel Klein's arch nemesis has a child in the class of 2023.

Just when parents think they've figured out how to secure a decent public school education in this city, the industrial grade carpet has been pulled out from under them. The new kindergarten admissions policy will begin much earlier this year, on January 12th and also end much earlier, March 2.

In one major change, families that move into a zone after the deadline of March 2 will not get priority for their zoned school if there is a waitlist. So if you were planning on moving into a different zone before the Fall, congrats, you've got 6 weeks to find your dream home.

Some other significant details:

One of the things I love about New York Family Magazine is that they really do try to make a difference for parents. Maybe it's because it's written and edited by real New York parents, rather than interns and corporate flunkies, but I believe the people there really know what the deal is and do their best to make things easier for us.

New Year's resolutions are free, and with this year being on such thin ice economically, I decided I'd snap that bargain up and take 12. Yes, I've got 12 New Year's Resolutions this year, one for every month. I'm trying a new system to see if it will help my resolutions stick. I've picked 12 little habits in my life that I'd like to change and each month I'm going to focus on one, giving myself a whole month to replace it with a new and improved habit. For instance, in January I'm focusing on eating breakfast. I usually skip it and it's really bad for me. So for all of January I'm going to make sure to eat breakfast. I'm hoping by the end of the month that one will have stuck and then I'll move on to resolution number two.

The idea comes from the principal that you need to repeat a new habit many times to make it stick and also that it's more effective to focus on really specific little changes than something more general, like "eat better".

What are your New Year's Resolutions? Share them in the comments.

In our links for this week find out top resolutions for moms, a response from Crains explaining why NYC isn't heading back to the 70s and more.

This summer we wrote about some great day and weekend trips near New York City. From the farms of Westchester to the parks of Long Island and even places you can visit without a car. You can find more family friendly day and weekend trip ideas in our archives under the weekend trips category.

Here are our top 5 day and weekend trips posts from 2009:

In the South they visit friends and eat Hoppin' Johns on January 1st . In New York on New Year's Day we try to get out of the house with an activity that parents can enjoy as much as the kids. Lots of things are closed, but there's still lots of fun stuff to do. Here are some ideas of what to do with kids in New York on New Year's Day 2009.

What will be open on New Year's Day in NYC: