Blog

2020 is the year of online learning, and people across Texas and the rest of the country are trying to manage how to create more space for home classrooms. It could be that the dining table has turned into a desk for you and your children, perhaps your house has become a disaster zone, or maybe you are thinking of adding on or even finding a new home. 

Here are some tips for how to create a study area or a home office, no matter the size of your home.

Shield Pals, a Maryland-based personal protective equipment (PPE) retailer, creates unique reusable face shields for adults, children, and medical professionals, to help relieve the anxiety of kids visiting medical professionals during these unusual times. 

In partnership with Shield Pals, we're donating 25 shield pals and face coverings to B.I.G. Love Cancer Care to bring a smile on seven brave fighters' faces. Plus, we're giving away 3 Shield Pals to 3 lucky readers. Read on for details.

Enter our Halloween Costume Contest!

While many families in the Austin area have decided to skip trick-or-treating this year, kids and parents alike aren’t even thinking about not dressing up for Halloween!

Therefore, we’re looking for the cutest, coolest, scariest, ugliest, you-name-it kids in costumes, the 512 has ever seen!

We have some fun prizes sponsored by local businesses.

Read on for details and how to enter.

Great news: Austin is experiencing a record-breaking early voting turnout!

Downfall: long lines and long waiting hours, which are strenuous for parents who need to bring their children along with them to the polls.

This is where Austin based babysitter agency Babysitting Connection comes into play. In order to make it easier for families to get to the polls and get their vote and voices heard, Babysitting Connection is offering free childcare for voters in line at select Travis County polling locations during early voting as well as on Election Day. Read on for details.

It's time for turkeys and gingerbread houses! ArtBarnATX has some fun artsy events coming up!

Join a face-to-face art class at the Art Barn or get a to-go art kit and make a personalized keepsake gingerbread house, ceramic turkey luminary, or folded book art pieces at home.

Read on for class and registration info.

Today's featured books, My Daddy is a Monster/My Kids are Monsters and My Mummy is a Monster/My Children are Monsters by Natalie Reeves Billing and illustrated by Lisa Williams are part of  “The Monstrous Me Collection”. Both books are uniquely engaging and describe one story from two points of view, the children's and the father's and mother's respectively. Once you reach a certain place in the book, you flip the book over and read it again, it’s the same, yet different.   

Who's going to be the monster today, Mom or Dad?

Read the book review of a fellow Live Grow Play Austin reader and enter for a chance to win your own copy.

The show must go on – and it will!

While Austin’s beloved ZACH Theatre doesn’t offer any in-person performing arts classes and camps at the moment, kids and adults alike still have the opportunity to explore the world of acting, singing, dancing, role-playing, and story-telling.  

Starting the week of October 19th, ZACH Theatre offers interactive virtual classes for kids K-12. Classes take place once a week, in the morning or in the afternoon. Students can choose from a variety of disciplines. Free sample classes available.

Read on for details.

Keeping your new baby close to your heart in a wrap or sling not only feels natural, it makes things a little bit easier in those busy first few months. 
If you notice that it seems to make baby calmer, it's not a fluke — science has proven that wearing your baby can benefit their physical and emotional health.

So, what can babywearing do for you and your little one? Read on to learn about 23 evidence-based benefits of babywearing.

Today's featured book Perry the Fairy and her Tail by Tsila Glidai and Illustrator Tamar Efrati  is a charming lesson about acceptance, self- confidence and inclusion told by the sweetest grandmother to her curious granddaughter. This is the first book in a series of Tell Me A Story, Grandma Glee. Children ages 4-8 will enjoy this book as they engage in rhyming sentences on each page and beautifully hand- drawn pictures to compliment every page.

It’s fall, y’all, and what’s better than cozying up at home with the kids and a fun board game on a cold, rainy day? We just got a new board game and we love it: Ravensburger 3D Labyrinth!

Just like in the classic and other versions of Labyrinth, the goal of this game is to be the first to collect all of your treasures by moving walls and open passages of a Labyrinth, and to foil and block your opponents. Better get your thinking hat on!

Read our review and enter for a chance to win your own copy of the game.

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