Kids in New Haven Blog

I guess by now I should be acclimated to everyone having a blog. Still, one wonders why this didn't turn up in all my Googling "Kids in New Haven":

New Haven Kids blog.

-Kate

Div Dictionary: Archie Moore’s

Archie Moore’s (n): The only bar I can walk to in my neighborhood. Also serves food.

Because of Archie Moore’s proximity to the Div School, and the necessity of beers after or during certain moments of theological ferment, you’ll end up at Archie Moore’s many times during your divinity career. Many, many times. You’ll go there for meetings, you’ll go there for lunch, you’ll go there for birthday party beers.

Sigh.

Let me be honest with you. I don’t really like Archie’s. This is probably yet another symptom of having moved here from Chicago: the phrases “only bar I can walk to in my neighborhood” and “Wow, three dollar beer, that's cheap!” make me weep into my Old Style. My drinking career started in a city once described on This American Life as (and I paraphrase) “a magical place with a bar on every corner, where the downtown smells like chocolate.” (This of course before the whole EPA thing.) I’m kind of still searching for my Jimmy’s East, and the fact that when I find it I’ll have to drive/bum a ride/take a cab there irks me.

Viewed through an objective lens, though, there’s a lot to love about Archie’s:

It’s really close to campus.

It serves beer.

It also serves food. Wings are a specialty, but Archie’s has a full menu that includes burgers, salads, and even desserts. It’s no $5.00 Reuben, but the Cajun fries are delish.

You can take your kids there. Yep, for serious. My friend Zach told me it’s one of the best East Rock restaurants to take his three-year-old daughter to. I totally made this face when he said it, but his reasoning is pretty good. Your kid can make any kind of mess they want at Archie’s while they nosh on chicken fingers and the like, while you enjoy adult food and beverage. The waitresses have seen much worse, and that mess was generated by a bunch of seminarians. I still recommend you evacuate the children before the Div School posse takes over the back room.

One of the sweeter things about Archie’s is how much they like Div School kids. Several friends of mine are on a first-name basis with some of the waitresses, and some of the staff made appearances at graduation-week barbecues so they could meet their favorite patrons’ families. Also, Sandra really likes Archie’s (now that she lives in a different neighborhood, the California grilled cheese is a treat for her). Even I can’t totally hate this place.

-Kate

Stephanie's Top Ten List for Kids

One of my all-time favorite Div School moms, Stephanie, took a little longer to write me back about what she likes to do with her two awesome kids in New Haven. You'll want to read this whole list; even though it contains some duplicates from what I've already posted, there's some great new information. Number ten is a real gem, too.

-Kate

1) The Peabody Museum. The MacDougall Center [the Yale grad student center] has free tickets for kids, and your Yale ID gets you in for free. Annual membership lets you have a sleepover in the dinosaur room- awesome.

2) The Eli Whitney Museum - great for rainy or snowy days. Drop by to do a woodworking project on any weekend day rather inexpensively. (Discount for projects if you become members)

3) Sign-up for MacDougall Center family list serve. Great events planned for families every month - young kids and parents play groups, apple picking, and holiday movies and craft parties.

4) Neighborhood Music School for all types of dance and instrumental lessons.

5) East Rock park playground and park off Cold Spring is great for picnics, soccer and kite flying. [You guys must be way sick of us talking about East Rock Park, but it’s pretty great. Did I mention there’s usually an ice cream truck at the summit?]

6) New Haven Youth Soccer is a well-run soccer program for children of all ages. One year fee covers both spring and fall season. The coaches are terrific and the program is lots of fun for the kids.

7) Yale Athletics has a Kids Bulldogs club (check our Yale athletics website) All children can join for free. They get a T-shirt and free admission to certain Yale sports events including soccer, football and basketball. Face painting, autographs by the athletes and pizza parties for Bulldog members. Really wonderful program

8) Yale Outdoor Education Center near East Lyme - $6 per day per person w/ Yale ID. Free canoeing and kayaking. Lovely lake, campsites and cabins for rent.

9) As for culture: the New Haven Symphony Orchestra has several family programs throughout the school year. Yale Art Gallery has once a month (on a Sunday afternoon) family art programs.

10) For the past two years, Div school families have informally gathered for dinner at the HGS Dining Hall* on Thursday nights. It's a great way to relax and catch-up with the other families. The HGS Manager has been offering some special family activities on Thursdays (e.g. make-your own sundaes) and the MacDougal Center has provided coloring books, crayons, plastic cups. Many parents (and children) really looked forward to the Thursday night family dinners so hopefully it will continue.

*My note: "HGS" is the Hall of Graduate Studies, a dorm/coffeeshop/cafeteria building, and where the MacDougal Center is housed. You can use your YDS meal plan at HGS!

Yale-Specific Stuff to do With Kids

So here’s how this blog works: I promise, and then I deliver. I think it’s a good way to build trust. I ask that, when I turn into a raving crazy person during BTFO, you remember me as I was, before someone messed up the catering order and my head exploded.

Being a Yale student in New Haven comes with a lot of baggage, as I’ve hinted at before, but it also comes with a lot of awesome. Much of this extends to your kids, no matter their age. Here are some great things to check out:

Please start by taking a look at the Yale Worklife Program. This paragraph is in bold because this is such a good site. Yes, it says its for faculty and staff, but I get their emails about workshops all the time. (Maybe part-time, casual, grad-student-y employees count as staff?) This site is a great way to find child-friendly stuff around campus – they even have a map showing how to get a stroller around campus. Yale will send you a “new parent packet” if you sign up with them. I suspect that this is targeted towards “new” parents as in “we just had this baby” parents rather than "we just got to Yale" parents -- but I also suspect that it might be worth it anyway.

The Yale Athletics Kids’ Club nurtures young Bulldog Fans in their obsession. From their website:

The Yale Athletics Kids' Club gives all kids 14 & under the opportunity to experience the fun and exciting world of Yale Athletics. The Kids' Club conducts many activities during the Yale Athletic year geared towards making college athletics fun and exciting for kids. Free Admission to most Yale Athletic events, birthday card from Handsome Dan, free Kids' Club T-shirt, Pizza Nights, Youth Days, and Sports Clinics are the fun and exciting benefits that Kids' Club members enjoy! The best part of the Kids' Club is that it's absolutely free thanks to the support of Yale Athletics' Corporate Partners. If you are interested in signing up or signing up a loved one, please go to the Kids' Club e-form. If you have any questions regarding the Yale Kids' Club or would like more information about our promotions please email us at sports.marketing@yale.edu.

(Please note: Handsome Dan is the name of our bulldog mascot, not some middle-aged Athletics Department employee.)

Yale-New Haven Hospital has some great resources for healthy living. Their Kids’ “Korner” website has recipes and other nutritious activities for kids, organized by age group. This site is exhaustive. They begin by showing you how to make a chef’s hat. Meet “Max”:

I may or may not be wearing one of these right now in my apartment.

If you’re importing yourself and your children from another country, we highly recommend that you spend some time on the Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS) website. Their family page features a run-down of the US school system, which is pretty basic but will get you started.

As for babysitting, you should never write off Dale Mail as a source, but also make sure to check out the Yale Babysitting Service. Yale students sign up with the website, which then creates a searchable directory for Yale parents.

Hope all of that helps. Though I can’t speak from personal experience, Yale certainly presents itself as being very interested in making sure that having children on campus goes well. Anecdotally, the Div School is also interested in making it easy for our moms and dads – children are welcome at a ton of CLC events, and most of BTFO (we’re still trying to secure childcare, but at the very least, children and partners are welcome at all meals).

-Kate

Kids in New Haven

So far, I’ve not done anything on child-friendly activities in New Haven -- of which there are a lot. I apologize for this oversight. Since I can barely be trusted to keep a plant alive, I emailed some of my favorite Div School parents and babysitters and asked for some ideas. This is the inaugural post in a series of things to do with kids in the area. Today: things to do in greater New Haven. (Later: things to do with kids in/around Yale.)

Someone tried to tell me on Friday that a good 20% or more of New Haven’s land area is parkland. I guess I believe this. Check out all the offerings at the Parks and Rec website. We’re closer to East Rock Park, but there’s a whole host of parks and playgrounds to be explored in New Haven.

If you’re willing to travel just a bit further, there are also lots of beaches around here. Hammonasset State Park is a perennial fave, despite being tough to spell.

Wilbur Cross high school, in East Rock, opens up its pool to the community for family swims during the summer. Wilbur Cross also has tennis and basketball courts and a track behind it.

The Peabody Museum has dinosaurs.*

For more athletics kiddlings, there’s the New Haven Youth Soccer League or Southern Connecticut's Pop Warner football league.

Finally, the great catch-all website KidsCT.com, with much, much more to do – from the New Haven Children’s Museum to ice skating in Milford (year-round!).

Again, I’ll update later with some Yale-specific stuff, once I wade through the 10 pages of stuff Sandra sent me.

-Kate

*Also a pretty good place to park one's parents for an afternoon, I've found.