Research Triangle 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

Fruit Picking

Local Spring Hikes

Baseball

Family Photographs

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

Sat, Apr 18: 2026 Children's Day Festival - Town of Cary
Sun, Apr 19: Carrboro Day 2026 at Carrboro Town Commons
Thu, Apr 23: Marbles Playdates
Sat, Apr 25: Let’s Craft! Felt Flower Bookmarks in Little Red Schoolhouse (Sensory Friendly) - High Point Museum
Fri, May 1: HerbFest 2026
Sat, May 2: Wildflower Walk at Annie Louise Wilkerson, MD Nature Preserve Park
Fri, May 8: 22nd Annual Spring Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival
Sat, May 9: Ma & Pa Festival
Fri, May 15: Elizabeth Cotten Freight Train Blues at Music Maker Foundation
Sun, May 24: 2026 Six Sundays in Spring - Town of Wake Forest

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! - Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area - Shoott, Broadway, New York, NY, USA, 04/18/2026 - 04/19/2026, See link for times
• Spring Festival - The Giving Tree Montessori School, 3701 Groometown Road, Greensboro, NC, USA, 04/18/2026, 11:00AM-2:00PM
• 2026 Children's Day Festival - Town of Cary NC - Town of Cary NC, Downtown Cary Park, South Academy Street, Cary, NC, USA, 04/18/2026, 1 pm - 7 pm
• Fest in the West - Town of Cary - Town of Cary, Mills Park Drive, Cary, NC, USA, 04/18/2026, 11 am - 4 pm
• Piedmont Earth Day Fair - Fairgrounds Boulevard, Winston-Salem, NC, USA, 04/18/2026, 10 am - 4 pm
• Sachets in the Historical Park - High Point Museum - High Point Museum, 1859 E Lexington Ave, High Point, NC 27262, United States, 04/18/2026, 10 am - 4:30 pm
• Spring Potluck at Piedmont Farm Animal Refuge - Piedmont Farm Animal Refuge, North Carolina 87, Pittsboro, NC, USA, 04/18/2026, 5:30 PM
• Little Love Yoga - Southeast Regional Library - Southeast Regional Library, 7th Avenue, Garner, NC, USA, 04/19/2026, 2 pm - 2:45 pm
• Carrboro Earth Day & Open Streets - Weaver Street, Carrboro, NC, USA, 04/19/2026, 12 pm - 4 pm
• 2026 Earth Day Festival at Durham Central Park - Durham Central Park, Foster Street, Durham, NC, USA, 04/19/2026, 12 pm - 5 pm
• Carrboro Day 2026 - Town of Carrboro, NC - Town of Carrboro, NC, 301 W Main St, Carrboro, NC, USA, 04/19/2026, 12 pm - 4 pm
• Hemparoo - The Plant, 220 Lorax Lane, Pittsboro, NC 27312, United States, 04/19/2026, 12:00 PM-6:00 PM