How to Summer With Kids, AI-Assist for Students
Best attempt at getting an Abbey Road photo on this rainbow crosswalk painted in front of Stonewall Inn. This weekend is also the Pride Parade in NYC. Happy Pride!
What’s New This Week 🤸
Everyone loves summertime, and what’s not to love?! Long days, sunshine, and adventures. However, parents are often responsible for planning a lot of those adventures and it can feel like the ideas never quite match up to the amount of energy our kids have. MomBrains to the rescue, with a variety of activities to keep your family busy all summer.
Physical Activities for Kids - Beyond Team Sports: Summertime is often when sports kiddos are at their busiest, but if your little ones aren’t so much into the organized teams, we’ve compiled some ideas to keep them moving, in an enjoyable way!
Easy Toddler Activities to do at Home: It might feel like you need to do the most to keep your kids entertained while they’re at home, but here are some simple, Montessori inspired ideas to enhance skill building while keeping them engaged.
How to Plant a Native Pollinator Garden with Your Family: With experts recommending at least an hour of physical activity for children, gardening is a great way to keep kids moving during the nicer months of the year. We’re giving you some tried and true planting tips for a pollinator garden, from our resident writer and greenery enthusiast, Jordan!
And if you missed it… check out our recommendations on summer travel planning!
What We’re Reading This Week 📖
Outlive - The Science & Art of Longevity: Dr. Peter Attia writes about the science of longevity, the difference between health span and life span, and what to do today to prevent the “Four Horsemen” diseases in the future. A great health read, especially for parents who want to be around longer and better for their kids! (next on the list is Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity, Dr. Eric Topol’s similar yet unique take on longevity)
Tuition Increases and Layoffs Are Coming to a Many Universities: Schools, and not just the Ivies, are facing serious financial headwinds and uncertainty: federal cuts to funding, freezes on big research projects, rising inflation and rapidly escalating legal expenses to name a few. Cornell and Duke are among the colleges weighing layoffs. The University of Minnesota is cutting hundreds of jobs, even as undergraduate tuition soars as much as 7.5 percent.
How AI Can Help Students: Much has been written on how reliance on AI can harm critical thinking and learning, particularly for young users. But here are a few ways we can leverage AI to support our children:
Finding the right college: this AI platform helps students with college matching, essay support and a personalized admissions strategy — a supplement to the college counselors who are too spread thin to meet with ever student.
Khanmigo, Khan Academy’s AI tutor, personalizes education (TED Talk Video): some great (and fun) use cases on how parents and students can leverage AI to support 1:1 instruction. For example, quizzing students on topics or readings, fine tuning debate arguments, and “engaging with” fictional characters or authors by asking them questions about the story.
The Parnas Perspective: I’m kinda currently obsessed with Aaron Parnas. He’s all about fact-based news, and he’s changing the way news reporting is done — in a way that resonates with Gen Z. At the age of 26, he has a JD from GWU Law School, 4.1M followers on TikTok, and is now the #1 Substack in the News Category (check out his personal note). He’s genius at communications — in this video, he spells out why Democrats have failed against Republicans and how he would build a media company.
How We’re Feeling This Week: Seasonally Up 🆙
Better than last week! Recognizing that my end-of-the-world anxiety may be in-part fueled by dystopian books and shows, I got some recs on sci-fi books that are not apocalyptic. That last season of Handmaid’s Tale will just have to wait.
Also, we are officially in summer mode! Change like this feels good. Just when we start to feel restless or fatigued by the daily grind of school, work, and extracurriculars, we get a new season, new wardrobe, and new lineup of activities. This summer, though less programmed than the school year, will still be a mashup of several camps, a few trips and several family visitors.
Btw, this all took a LOT of planning. The amount of research I (moms) do for kids is NUTS — at least half the time I spend on my phone is for this purpose. Summer camps, summer camps in Asia using Google Translate, scheduling, coordinating, vacation ideas, things to do on selected vacations. And this was just for summer planning!
(Hopefully) I can coast for the next couple of months. I’m pretty sure that by the end of summer, I will be looking forward to the routine of school.
Signing off,
Your Team at MomBrains