New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced the framework for getting the nation's largest school system back to school in September 2020. The key takeaway for city parents: Though students will be learning five days a week during the 2020-21 school year, it's unlikely they will attend in-person classes more than 2-3 days a week as the city adopts a "blended learning" plan for the upcoming school year.

"Students will return in September to either a blended model or a fully remote model if they so choose," de Blasio announced. "Blended learning means students will be taught on-site in school for part of the week and remotely for other portions of the week. Over the past several months, we've worked with many stakeholders, including our principals, to develop scheduling models that can accommodate limited in-person attendance."

New York City's public schools, which make up the largest school district in the nation, have been shuttered since March 16, and the city's 1.1 million students finished the school year remotely.

On the day when beaches reopened for swimming and splashing, New Yorkers got some more welcome news: 15 of the city's 53 pools will reopen by August 1, providing another place for city families to seek some relief from summer's heat.

Though many of the reopening pools aren't on our list of the most family-friendly swimming pools, the 15 pools selected are among the city's largest. Spread across all five boroughs, their locations are concentrated in the neighborhood's hardest hit by the pandemic and those furthest away from the newly reopened beaches. Four pools are located in Manhattan, there are three each in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn, and two in Staten Island. Three pools—Wagner in Manhattan, Mullaly in the Bronx, and Liberty Pool in Queens—have a reopening date of Friday, July 24; the rest are slated to open on Saturday, August 1. Pool season generally lasts through Labor Day, which falls on Monday, September 7, 2020. NYC's public pools are FREE.

Read on for more details on the 2020 pool season, which will have even more rules than usual, and be sure to see our roundup of the best spraygrounds in NYC to keep your kids cool until they can take a dip.

Zoom became popular during the pandemic, but the video chat platform—and others like FaceTime and Skype—is great for more than just quarantine times. For families like mine, with grandparents spread across the country, a Zoom date is an easy, satisfying way to foster face-to-face connections between generations. While a casual chat is fun in itself, sometimes we like to up the ante and incorporate some fun activities into the video session. Here are our 10 favorite activities and games that kids can do with grandparents over Zoom.

For more fun Zoom tips, be sure to read our roundups of ways to make virtual hangouts more awesome and the best games to play with friends virtually.