Madison Beaches and Goodman Pool Open This Weekend

Grab your water wings and pail and shovel and don't forget the sunscreen because school's out and Madison's beaches are officially open. Goodman Pool and Cypress Spray Park are open starting Saturday too.

The Goodman Pool has 2 water slides, a big shallow area with easy entry for the little kids and spray areas for the to play in. The daily rate for residents is $4.25 for adults and $2.75 for kids 1-18. It's $4.75 for each non-resident adult and $3.00 for each non-resident child. You can get season passes as well. The beaches and Cypress Spray Park are free.

There is also a splash park at Lakeview Community Park in Middleton.

[via madison.com]

Madison, WI Beaches
http://www.cityofmadison.com/beaches/

Goodman Pool
325 Olin Ave.
Madison, WI 53713
(608)264-9292
http://www.cityofmadison.com/parks/pool/


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Cypress Spray Park
902 Magnolia Lane
Madison, WI
http://cityofmadison.com/parks/major/cypressspraypark.html


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Free Soccer Camp this Summer in Middleton, WI!

This is a cool way to introduce soccer to your kids: the Middleton Youth Soccer Club is offering free soccer camp sessions at July 27-30 for U4-U10 and U10-U18. Parents can register their kids at http://www.mysc.us/

[via madison.com]

The Middleton Youth Soccer Club
2711 Allen Blvd
Middleton, WI 53562
608-831-8694
http://www.mysc.us/

Free Comic Book Day is May 2nd, 2009!

Free Comic Book Day is next week Saturday on May 2nd! Comic book stores all over the country are giving away free comics to kids that come into the store. The number of free comics and selection varies by store.

There wasn't much for little kids or girls last year. We ended up with Gyro Gearloose for our free comic which was ok for a three year old, but not all that exciting for us to read over and over again. The 2008 Free Comic Book Day promotion did get us into the store where we found one of our families favorite books, Disney Comics' The Classics Collection to buy. We totally bought into the promo, but as a dad and a teenage comic book nerd in the 1980's it was fun to go back into a store and we did get to share the original stories like Peter Pan and Snow White with our daughters without the all the princess/fairy tie-ins.

We're even more excited this year because there are more titles that little kids including Disney/Pixar's Cars, Owly and Friends, DC Kids Mega Sampler inlcuding the Tiny Titans, and Star Wars - The Clone Wars.

You can find out which comic book stores in your area on the Free Comic Book Day web site.

Here are the Madison, WI locations that are participating:

Capital City Comics
1910 Monroe St.
Madison, WI
(608) 251-8445
http://capitalcitycomics.wordpress.com/


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Westfield Comics
7475 Mineral Point Rd.
Suite 22
Madison, WI
(608) 833-4444
http://www.westfieldcomicsetc.com/


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LEGO for Family Fun (and Possibly Fame)

We still use the big Duplo blocks because of our kids' ages, but one of my favorite blogs, GeekDad, has a family LEGO building contest underway. The rules are pretty simple: take a photo and upload it to the GeekDad Flickr pool with the tag buildersoftomorrow and a 50-100 word description of why building with LEGO with your kids is fun. The top prize is getting your picture on a LEGO set box in addition to four families winning three LEGO sets. The contest ends April 30th. The GeekDad blog has all the rules.

Kids Eat Free at Perkins

We took a road trip to northern Minnesota last weekend to see family. 350 miles provides lots of opportunities to get hungry. We discovered that just about every Perkins restaurant has at least one, if not two, days a week with times when kids eat free with an adult meal between Madison, WI and Duluth, MN. A google search for "Kids eat free at Perkins" shows that it's most Perkins across the country. The Perkins web site doesn't have the times for any of the franchises so you have to call or drive past your local Perkins, but some restaurants have "kids eat free" days during the weekend.

Kids eat free between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Tuesdays at the east side Madison, WI Perkins.

Perkins on the east side of Madison, WI:
Perkins Restaurant
4863 Hayes Rd.
Madison, WI 53704
608-241-9123
Open 24 hours
http://www.perkinsrestaurants.com/

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Say "Cheese Brick!"

The click of these particular LEGOS will be a camera click. Lego is planning on releasing digital and video cameras this summer for $19.99 to $59.99 according to KidsTechReview. The cameras won't actually be made of LEGOs, but hopefully they will be able to take being dropped, stepped on, and chewed by the family dog like the originals.

As cool as a LEGO camera will be, you could just buy a used digital camera for cheap on eBay, and for $20 get your child started with photography inexpensively. It may not last as long, but the kids will feel like a real photographer, with a real camera, just like Mom and Dad.

KidsTechReview via engadget

Thanks to Geriann for the ebay tip!

Ice Skating at Tenney Park in Madison, WI

The Tenney Park lagoon, on Madison's near east side, is great for ice skating. The warming house was packed, but the lagoon is so big that two hockey games could be played while the rest of us could skate, or fall down, without worrying about being run over. The ice was a little rough in a couple of spots, but nothing that needed to be avoided. You can rent skates, check out hockey sticks, and the ice skating trainers that look like walkers too.

The rental rates from the park's web site are:
Adults/1st hour $6.00
Additional Hours $2.00
Children 14 and under $3.00
Additional Hours $1.00

And the hours from the web site are:
Mon-Fri 2:00 p.m. - 9:30p.m.
Sat-Sun 11:00 a.m. - 9:30 p.m.

Elver and Vilas parks also have ice skating and rentals in the warming shelter. Goodman, Garner, Olbrich, Warner, and Westmorland parks also have skating and warming shelters, but they don't rent skates according to the web site.

Tenney Park
1338 Sherman Ave.
Madison, WI 53703
http://www.ci.madison.wi.us/parks/winterAct2.html


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