KidsOutAndAbout Boston
December 18, 2025

Local in-person events this weekend

FREE events this weekend

Local in-person events next weekend

New Year's Eve

101 Ideas for Holiday Fun

Tree Farms

Holiday Break Camps

Big List of Private Schools

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Fri, Dec 19: Santa’s Brickmas Adventure at LEGO® Discovery Center Boston

Wed, Dec 24: Celebrate the Holidays at The EcoTarium
Mon, Dec 29: Movie: Smurfs (2025) - All Ages at Framingham Public Library - Main Branch
Mon, Dec 29: Winter Hibernation with Hands-on Nature - Ages 4-12 at the Central Library in Copely Square
Tue, Dec 30: Felted Pikachu Hoops with Pop-up Art School, Ages 8-12 - at the Central Library in Copely Square
Wed, Dec 31: New Year’s Eve Noon Celebration at Boston Public Library - Hyde Park Branch
Wed, Dec 31: Noon Years Eve Celebration at Framingham Public Library - Main Branch
Wed, Dec 31: Bessie’s Rockin’ Noon Year’s Eve at Discovery Museum
Wed, Dec 31: Noon Year’s Eve at EcoTarium
Wed, Dec 31: Frog Pond Skating Spectacular at First Night Boston ( 2 Shows)
Fri, Jan 2: Hike into the New Year at Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary
Fri, Jan 9: Homeschool - Skull Investigation (Ages 6-10) at Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary
Sat, Jan 10: Night in the Museum at Old Sturbridge Village
Thu, Jan 29: Noli Timere at Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre
Tue, Feb 17: February Vacation Adventure Days at Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary
Sat, Feb 21: Lunar New Year Concert with the Boston Pops
Sat, Feb 28: Maple Magic at Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary
Sat, Feb 28: Maple Sugaring at Boston Nature Center & Wildlife Sanctuary
Sat, Mar 14: Creatures of the Night at Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary

Dear KidsOutAndAbout readers:

This Sunday marks the Winter Solstice—Robert Frost’s “darkest evening of the year.” It’s when we in the Northern Hemisphere most appreciate human inventiveness: We flip a switch, and light floods the room. It feels like magic, but it’s not. It’s the result of generations of curious, determined humans trying to make life better, brighter, safer.

That’s why my family celebrates Lightbulb Day every December 21. It’s our homegrown holiday honoring the inventors and problem-solvers whose insights fuel our lives. We toast our favorite technologies, learn some history, imagine the future. Past years’ MVPs include contact lenses, antibiotics, the internet, veterinary science, and the Covid vaccine. This year’s front-runner: artificial intelligence.

Last weekend, I had breakfast with a friend and her 13-year-old daughter, Lily. Lily said she loves math and science but struggles with how her teachers approach the humanities, especially writing. When I showed her how AI can help her learn in the way she learns best, her face lit up. So I went home and wrote a how-to article for Lily, her mom, and any of you with kids in middle school or older: How Students Can Use AI to Learn to Write (Without Giving Away their Brains).

AI isn’t here to think for us. It’s here to help us think more effectively with our own minds. That’s a message worth repeating, especially to our kids. In this new AI age, the real danger isn’t the technology itself, it’s the temptation to hand our brains over to it and say, “Here, you do all the work.” 

So this Lightbulb Day, I’m raising an Erlenmeyer flask, not just to the great inventors of the past, but to Lily, and to every young person learning to think with tools rather than letting tools do the thinking. Because the real magic isn’t flipping the switch; it’s understanding where the current comes from, and imagining what we’ll power with it in the future.

—Debra Ross, publisher

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If you like my publisher's column, you can easily scroll through past columns in the "Notes from Deb" section of our site.