Who knew we could head to the city to experience a farm holiday? We’re slipping into our rubber boots and packing up the family for a little bit of country fun.

Tucked amidst the hustle and bustle of Vancouver is Southlands Heritage Farm, a family-owned working farm, that has grown from a backyard garden to a successful urban farm providing locals with fresh food. Starting again in June, visitors can stock up on fruits, veggies and baked goods at the Southland Market. We love the idea of our kids seeing where their food grows.

There is more to this place than food though. We’re grabbing a brochure and taking a self-guided tour. Visit with the goats, say hello to some pot-bellied pigs and hop on for a pony ride.  Throughout the year Southlands’ celebrates Family Farm Day. This fun event features milking demonstrations, visits with the honey bees, outdoor cooking demonstrations and more.

We’re excited to register our little land lovers for Young Farmers Camp (from $210 per week) where they’ll spend the summer immersed in farm-life. Campers will discover the wonders of living life on a farm. They will learn basic skills like caring for hens, goats, horses, honey bees, and ducks. They will also gets their hands dirty while germinating seeds and growing, harvesting and preparing seasonal foods (these new skills just might come in handy at home too.)

A big part of Southland’s Farm is the horses. Our riding rascals can take lessons at Pony Meadows located right on the Southlands’ property (from $35.) There’s even an opportunity for us parents to saddle up while the kiddies have their lesson.

With the discovery of this agricultural oasis, there really is no need to leave the city. Southlands Heritage Farm offers the best of both worlds.

Southlands Heritage Farm

The post A Farm Holiday in the City appeared first on The Scoop Cafe - The Kid Scoop: Canada's Kids Activities directory.

Science is a magical concept for kids. They could spend hours playing around making new discoveries and learning at the same time. We’re thrilled to be launching a new series courtesy of the Ontario Science Centre today called “Ever Wonder…” For the next few weeks we will be bringing you fun and engaging kids science activities to try out at home. Here is the first!

Balloon Fingerprint

Materials:
-          Round balloon
-          Ink pad

Procedure:
1)      Press your index finger on to an ink pad. (Be careful not to get your finger too wet as you only need a small amount of ink for it to work.)
2)     Press your inked finger on to your balloon while it is still not inflated.
3)     Blow up your balloon, tie it up and get a close-up view of your fingerprint!

What’s happening?
When you blew up your balloon, your fingerprint got stretched along with the balloon. Now you can see your fingerprint without a magnifying glass! There are three basic types of fingerprints. See if you can identify yours, using your balloon fingerprint.

Arch

Loop

Whirl

The post Kids Science: Ever wonder…what your finger print really looks like? appeared first on The Scoop Cafe - The Kid Scoop: Canada's Kids Activities directory.

Different types of children need different types of summer camps. While a multi-sport camp may be ideal for most kids, some prefer to spend their summers on the stage letting their creativity shine. So when our budding musicians told us that they wanted to attend rock camp, we knew we had to go to Neighbour Note.

With five unique camps on the summer itinerary, this local company has our musically inclined kids covered all summer long. The Glee Club and Musical Theatre Camp caters to kids between the ages of seven and 18 years old. With just the right amounts of acting, singing and dancing, campers will learn the fundamentals, build confidence and get creative with choreography for their final stage production.

The Little Rockers Band Camp is available for beginners, as well as intermediate rockers. Campers receive tutorials on guitar, bass, drums, keyboard and vocals, while also having the chance to delve into songwriting. The Rock Showcase performance ends the week with a professional photoshoot and concert video recording.

If we could sign ourselves up for camp, we’d definitely enroll in the Legends & Lore, Music & More summer camp. With just the right mix of arts & crafts, music, dance, drama and storytelling this camp focuses on famous legends, tales and fables. They’ll even have a change to design props for their final performance!

And for those John Mayer wannabees, the Guitar Bootcamp for Beginners camp will not only teach them the basics but provide the opportunity to do a little song writing as well. Acoustic and electric guitars are welcome!

Sounds like the perfect summer, doesn’t it? It only gets better with Neighbour Note’s professional staff. These highly educated instructors not only have the skills but the patience and compassion to teach our kids how to excel with their instruments. And with very reasonable prices ($275-$350/week), these camps won’t break the summer camp budget.

Music to our ears! And the melody can only get sweeter after our kids spend the summer perfecting their notes!

Neighbour Note

The post Sing the Summer Away with Rock Camp and Glee Camp! appeared first on The Scoop Cafe - The Kid Scoop: Canada's Kids Activities directory.

Activities abound in Montreal, there are plenty of events to get us outdoors while supporting a good cause. On May 26^th, the Canadian Liver Foundation is holding its second annual Stroll for Liver. While raising funds to find a cure for liver disease, this walk is unlike any other in that it is a truly family friendly affair.

The stroll takes to the streets, departing from the Parterre of the Quartier des Spectacles (Corner Saint-Urbain and de Maisonneuve) at 10am on this soon-to-arrive Sunday. The 5K walk is free for anyone to participate in but a minimum of $25 in sponsorship donations is encouraged to get a t-shirt. Teams are also encouraged with the added incentive of winning a three-day, two-night stay at the Cheshire Lodge, in the Laurentians, for the top fundraisers.

What makes the event so family friendly is that walkers are encouraged to bring their strollers along. In fact, the Pimp Your Stroller contest will have moms decorating their strollers in the most original way. The most creative stroller will win two prizes! A half day visit to SCC Spa Urbain for a few child-free hours of relaxation (a $250 value), plus a prize package (valued at $150) featuring great baby gear from yours truly at the Kid Scoop and Dogree Canada (maker’s of the famous sleep sheep!)

Crazy strollers aside, the walk is a great opportunity to get in some exercise while supporting a very worthy cause. People of all ages suffer from Liver disease, from newborns to teenagers and adults too.

Post-walk we can enjoy some snacks and live entertainment and if the kids can keep up we’ll stick around for the 2pm closing ceremonies.

All-in-all sounds like a great day of family fun, with the added lesson of teaching our kids that doing-good feels good too!

Stroll for Liver

The post Fighting Liver Disease one Step at a Time appeared first on The Scoop Cafe - The Kid Scoop: Canada's Kids Activities directory.

Our savvy friends over at Mabel’s Labels are giving us the scoop on gearing the kids up for summer camp. Co-founder Julie Cole shares her top tips for making sure kids are happy campers all summer long. Read on to discover her great tips for summer camp packing. 

With camp season quickly approaching, parents are gearing up! Big purchases will be made and backpacks will be jam-packed with all the clothing and supplies happy campers need.  Certainly there are plenty of camp lists that can advise us on how many pairs of underwear and socks to pack, but there are a few other items worth sending along that many parents might never think of.

Glow Bracelets. Have a camper who is afraid of the dark? Once it’s “lights out” and flashlights are tucked away, some kids may be left a bit fearful of what is lingering out there in the dark. I gave my little scaredy cat a pack of glow bracelets. Each is bright enough to give her comfort, without being so bright that it bothers bunk mates. The glow bracelet is her own version of ‘This Little Candle Light of Mine,’ minus the fire hazard of open flames.

A spare sleeping bag. Have a bed wetter? Camps can set up the perfect arrangement to ensure privacy and confidentiality around this issue. Quite simply, send your child up with two identical sleeping bags. The spare can be kept in the camp office. Each morning when campers go for their morning dip or head off for breakfast, a staff member can inspect the bed wetter’s sleeping bag. If there has been an accident, they can perform the sleeping bag switcheroo-replacing the wet bag with the clean one. This routine means the child is never required to report a bed wetting; it just gets magically taken care off. Simple and respectful.

A Headlamp. If you have a kid who likes to read in bed, a headlamp beats any old flashlight by providing hands-free light for your little page turner. It’s easier to focus on the words on the page if they’re not trying to hold a flashlight at the same time.

Odds and Sods. Veteran Camp Director Jocelyn Palm mentions all the bits and pieces that kids miss at camp: hair elastics, nail clippers, safety pins, sticky tape, craft supplies and a deck of cards. She notes that campers never regret bringing a costume or crazy hat along—finding ways to integrate those things into every campfire sketch!

Mabel’s Labels. We know campers need their gear labeled before heading off to camp, but throw a few labels in for them to use while at camp too. If your kid buys a new water bottle or camp sweatshirt at the tuck shop, it’s handy to have a few labels on hand.

No matter what you decide to pack, Camp Owner/Director Anne Morawetz of Camp Ponacka gives her number one packing tip—have your camper pack up his or her OWN trunk or backpack. That way the camper knows what he or she has and where it is. After all, mommy’s not going to be there to remind her that their toiletries are in the side pocket of the backpack.

Happy packing!

Julie Cole is the Co-founder of Mabel’s Labels Inc. and the proud mom of six.

Find her blog at Modernmom.com,www.mabelhood.com/JulieCole and www.thebabymachine.com.

Follow her on twitter @juliecole

Mabel’s Labels is the leading provider of personalized labels for kids and adults. Custom labels include sticky labels for clothing, personalized stickers for tweens, school labels, name labels, iron-on clothing labels/name tags, book plates, label stickers/adhesive labels for the home, and children’s labels for look-alike items sent to school, daycare or camp.

The post Packing for Summer Camp – Useful Items that are NOT on the Packing List appeared first on The Scoop Cafe - The Kid Scoop: Canada's Kids Activities directory.

We 100% admit to seeking out our neighbourhood’s local fairs and festivals solely for the purpose of having our kids bounce around on the inflatables. With no parents allowed inside, this must-have been-a-mom invention gives us some breathing space while giving them endless opportunities for physical fun.

So we thought…instead of bringing them to the party why not bring the inflatable party to us? That’s where Fiesta 4 Kids comes into play. Whether planning a neighbourhood street party, school carnival or the ultimate birthday party, this one-stop shop has everything we need to get our guests in celebration mode.

From bouncy castles to inflatable slides and obstacle courses, we can definitely find what we are looking for. Fiesta 4 Kids also rents carnival games and cotton candy machines. But the fun doesn’t stop there! This Toronto-based company can hook us up with some of the city’s best entertainers from clowns to jugglers to magicians to caricaturists and more.

While Fiesta 4 Kids can help us with the what-to-do party conundrum, they can also help us find the perfect party theme. One of their other specialties is balloons. From sculptures to columns to centre pieces, they can take any theme – from princess to pooh – and turn it into a balloon work of art.

If the thought of planning the perfect party is a bit daunting, we can always visit the Fiesta 4 Kids blog to get inspiration. They’ve covered the who, what, where, when and why of party themes ranging from water parties to school fairs. While reading through the posts, we feel as though we’ve got our own personal party planner to make sure we dot all of our I’s and cross our T’s.

And when the party day finally arrives, we know that with all of the bouncing around we can certainly jump for joy at having planned the ultimate inflatable celebration!

Fiesta 4 Kids

The post Birthday Inflatables Make Any Party Better! appeared first on The Scoop Cafe - The Kid Scoop: Canada's Kids Activities directory.

We have barely broken out our t-shirts and sandals, but as the weather gets warmer we can’t help but start thinking about the dreaded swimsuit season. Don’t get us wrong, the thought of lounging around a pool or sitting by the beach is more than appealing. It’s the exercise in finding the perfect swimsuit (due to our own lack of exercise) that makes this a trying time of year.

Body image issues aside, we just want to find a swimsuit that fits us right, and now we can thanks to Change Lingerie. While we’re looking for support in all of the right places, Change bathing suits and bikinis give our assets a boost with playful, yet sophisticated prints. Plus, with free professional fittings from the friendly Change staff we’re sure to find the perfect fit! We found a great selection of swimwear in the incredible size range (from A-J cup size) that Change Lingerie is famous for!

This season we are loving the Coco Beach bikini in midnight navy. Not only is the colour of this two-piece suit super sophisticated, but the styling brings us back to the Mad Men era. A full coverage bottom with boy shorts is playful while a halter top push-up is sexy. Depending on our body shape, we can mix and match items from this collection including a full cup bikini top and bikini brief.

The Miami Beach collection makes us want to jet set to the Delano in South Beach but sporting these suits of stripes and dots will make even the home pool feel like South Beach. Available in a one-piece polka dot and three different mix and match bikini tops and bottoms, there is certainly a style to fit every body, in Florida and beyond.

Another suit on our must-try list is the Retro swimsuit. This black one-piece slimming swimsuit is the ultimate in flattering swimwear. Showing just a little and covering a little bit more, not only does it hold us in in all the right places, it accentuates our curves and gives our self-confidence a boost at the beach. It’s the perfect bathing suit for every body!

With all of these swimsuit options we just may get our fair share of exercise in the fitting room, giving us double the reasons to suit up in style this summer!

Change Lingerie – It’s all about feeling beautiful.

Check out our Scoop Deal!

Purchase a $15 gift certificate and receive 50% off your ENTIRE in-store purchase on regular priced items.

The post Swimsuit Up for Summer at Change Lingerie appeared first on The Scoop Cafe - The Kid Scoop: Canada's Kids Activities directory.

Hisako, our Montreal-based Scoop Activity Ambassador, visited Toronto with her family. While there, she helped us answer the question of what to do in Toronto with kids. Below is her experience at Playdium.

I wasn’t raised on the gaming culture, so I was a bit apprehensive about walking into Playdium, where I would be surrounded by neon lights and computerized sound effects.  I was imagining being surrounded by a bunch of teenagers and being too embarrassed to try something new.  Instead, as we walked in there were a couple of ladies at the counter, both in their mid-30s.  “Let’s go shoot stuff!” exclaimed one to the other as they walked towards the game room entrance with purses in hand.  Suddenly, I could breathe and smile again.  ‘Alright, let’s do this…,’ I thought.

The staff was very kind and friendly, well versed in explaining to newbies like us, and we (I was there with hubby and kids) eventually decided to buy a couple of cards with 200 credits each.  As we entered the dimly lit games room, it reminded me of a casino with all the blinking lights and sounds.  We didn’t quite know where to start, so we just walked around the room to explore a bit first.  Surprisingly, I wasn’t the only one who found comfort in the familiar.  My kids immediately went to the air hockey table and couldn’t be drawn from it until they got a couple of rounds of it through their systems.  We then discovered that several of the games resulted in winning multiple tickets, and then our competitive streaks all came out!

From pinball to Pac-Man, basketball to virtual world games, we tried just about everything and had a blast!  We played The Price is Right and spun The Wheel of Fortune, hopped on a jungle safari, raced cars, and bowled. We literally tired ourselves out with all the action, but you know the kind of fatigue that results with an accomplished grin…

In the warm weather months, you can head outside for go-karting, and Water Wars.  And, for a bit of an extra fee, you can reserve time in a batting cage, or ride around in bumper cars.  So much more than video games, and this place really caters to all ages!

The kids loved feeding the ‘Ticket Eater’ machines and getting credit receipts in return. We had armfuls of tickets which could be exchanged for prizes at the Redemption Store.  My seven year old savvy shopper walked out with a bunch of stampers, slap bracelets, fans and other trinkets, while my happy-go-lucky five year old was thrilled with his junk food purchases. Mom and dad were impressed with how affordable the experience was, and are already considering their next visit…for the kids, or for us?  Decisions, decisions!

The post What to do in Toronto with Kids: Playdium! appeared first on The Scoop Cafe - The Kid Scoop: Canada's Kids Activities directory.

Hisako, our Montreal-based Scoop Activity Ambassador, visited Toronto with her family. While there, she checked out some of the city’s kid-friendliest venues. Below is her experience at Legoland.

Nestled in the Vaughan Mills Mall (a mere 30 minute drive from downtown Toronto) is the colourful Legoland Discovery Centre. One can only imagine how thrilled my five year old son was when he awoke from his nap in the car to find himself there!  When we entered the building, we were surrounded by decor and displays all featuring the bright and bold colours and theme of everything Lego.  Adults are not permitted to enter unless accompanied by a child!  Luckily my husband and I had two children in tow, both within the recommended age guideline of 10 and under.

My kids adored every part of their adventure and have already made us promise to include Legoland Discovery Centre in the itinerary for next year’s visit.  Here are some features to entice you to take your own family there:

• A display room with Toronto’s tourist destinations all created in painstaking detail, in Lego.  With movement and lights incorporated in this fantastic display, we were satisfied that even though we missed Casa Loma and the CN Tower visits during this trip, we got to see them “up close” right here in miniature scale!  This room also featured a bunch of interactive displays, where the kids got to hit a home run at Rogers Centre, and build with construction trucks.
• A ride-on adventure to save the princess by shooting at obstacles and enemies in Legoland!
• A room full of numerous bins of Lego of all sizes and varieties!  While my son built race-cars to test down the rubber ramps, my daughter got right into making Lego cupcakes to bake in the Lego kitchen.  Mom and dad got right into building too!
• We arrived in the cinema and discovered the seats were all a bit damp.  Let’s just say it’s a 4D show, and umbrellas are optional!  The kids loved the shows so much we had to stay for two screenings.
• An amusement park ride indoors was such a hoot that the kids requested that twice, too!
• The kids enjoyed running around in the play structure complete with tunnels, slides, and bouncy spaces.  Luckily, I had read about this in advance, so arrived prepared with socks for the kids.
• There is a café with reasonably priced fare, but you won’t have much time to sit – this is truly a place where you have to keep up with the kids!

After spending over two hours at Legoland Discovery Centre, we were dreading the finish line, which would take us to the Lego store.  But, we were actually really impressed!  The prices were up to 20% below retail (and believe me, this mommy is well informed on Lego prices in all of the major department stores!), and the selection was amazing!  You could even fill a custom bag of your chosen pieces by colour, shape and size, in bulk.

Thumbs way up to this clean, fun and colourful outing!

The post Legoland – An outing to (re-)discover the kid in us all! appeared first on The Scoop Cafe - The Kid Scoop: Canada's Kids Activities directory.

Our one day of the year to finally be treated like a queen is upon us. We know the usual suspects of flowers and chocolate are probably on their shopping list but this year, we’re hoping for gifts of a different nature to be served up along with our breakfast in bed.

Actually, if it were totally up to us, the only gift we’d really love to get is to spend Sunday May 12th by ourselves. Alone, solo, no kids. It would be a day when we choose exactly what we want to do, when we want to do it. We could go to the spa, out for a mojito on a sunny terrace, or just sit in a park and read a book. Or better yet, throw in a hundred dollar bill or two and let us go shopping…to a mall or boutique. Actually walk through a store, without a cart full of groceries while we throw in a t-shirt on top. A store where our purchases will be folded up in tissue paper and handed over in a beautiful paper bag.

Oh, that would be good. A mom can certainly dream…

Chances are it will only be a daydream so to be safe, we’ve put together a handy gift-list with some second runners-up that we would be more than happy to have!

Kiehls Creme de Corps Moisturizer ($12.50-$87)

Nespresso U machine, ($242.98)

Tiffany’s Gatsby-inspired Ziegfeld Collection Pearl Ring ($525)

Lululemon Rest Day Pulllover ($98)

Indigo Bangles ($12/each)

Michael Kors Jet Set Crossbody Bag ($128USD)

Other ideas:

A gift certificate to our favourite spa

Dinner at that new hot restaurant, with the babysitter pre-booked

Maid service, so someone else can do the tidying and scrubbing

Happy Mother’s Day. We have a job like no other that is truly 24/7. Enjoy your day cause chances are it won’t come around again until next year!

The post Mothers Day – Our Way appeared first on The Scoop Cafe - The Kid Scoop: Canada's Kids Activities directory.