Long Island KidsOutAndAbout Newsletter
April 16, 2026

Local in-person events this weekend

FREE events this weekend

Local in-person events next weekend

2026 Summer Camps

Earth Day

Fun On the Farm

Local spring hikes

Family Photographs

Post your organization and events to our site (It's all FREE!)

Sat, Apr 25: Spring Festival - Cold Spring Harbor Fish Hatchery & Aquarium
Sat, Apr 25: Earth Day Beach Cleanup & Guided Nature Walk at Sands Point Preserve
Fri, May 1: Find the Mayflowers! 
Sun, May 3: Mother's Day Painting on Canvas
Sun, May 3: Stars on Ice at UBS Arena
Sat, May 9: Baby Animal Day at Suffolk County Farm & Education Center 
Sat, May 16: Cradle Con
Sat, May 30: Alice in Wonderland: A Whimsical Victorian Tea Party at Queens County Farm Museum 
Sun, Jun 7: Long Island Rough Riders Women's League Home Games

Dear KidsOutAndAbout readers:

When my kids were little, one of our favorite nature activities was also one of the simplest: We’d head out onto a trail, stop among the trees, and play the Listening Game. The rules were easy: Close your eyes. The first time you hear a sound, any sound at all, put up one finger. Then add another for each new sound you notice. After a minute or two, someone says, “Open your eyes,” and everyone compares fingers and talks about what they heard.

It’s a small exercise in attention, but it changes how kids experience the world. The invisible becomes visible... not to the eyes, exactly, but to the mind. Things that were just out of range suddenly move onto our radar. Nature is full of motion and music, and this game helps us tune ourselves to it.

The free Merlin Bird ID app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology takes that magic one step further: Tap Sound ID, and suddenly the songs around you appear on your screen as a voiceprint and a bird name and an image that shows you what to look for. And what a moment ago was only background atmosphere becomes a Carolina Wren, or an Eastern Whip-poor-will, or the Common Yellowthroat pictured above, singing his heart out for a girl with a camera.

That’s one of the great tasks of childhood, and of the adults who love children: to help hidden things come into view. Before we know something, it is almost as if it isn’t there. But once it is named, we have a new way to see. There are suddenly new dimensions to our universe, helping us transform even more mysteries into things that are ours. And we never really experience the woods—or the field, or the river, or the ocean, or the city, or our backyard—the same way again.
 

—Debra Ross, publisher of KidsOutAndAbout.com, co-author of The Eclipse Effect: How to Seize Extraordinary Moments to Build Strong Communities

KidsOutAndAbout.com: Discover more. Do more. Connect more.

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

• Free spring mini photo session with Shoott! - Long Island - Shoott, Broadway, New York, NY, USA, Friday, April 17, 2026 to Sunday, April 19, 2026, See link for times
• Earthfest American Museum of Natural History presents - American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West, New York, NY, USA, Friday, April 17, 2026, 11 am - 4 pm
• Earth Day Swap Party at Children's Museum of the East End - Children's Museum of the East End, 376 Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, Bridgehampton, NY 11932, Friday, April 17, 2026, 10:00 AM — 1:00 PM
• Block Party LEGO Store Grand Opening Celebration - Block Party, Wantagh Avenue, Levittown, NY, USA, Friday, April 17, 2026, 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm