It's New Year's, time to set goals and contemplate how we can make this year different from the year before. This year I want to focus on spending more meaningful time with my children and do more to take advantage of living in New York. To that end, I have created what I call a Life List for Raising NYC Kids. A life list is a list of things you want to achieve in your lifetime. This life list is all the things I hope to experience with my kids in New York before they grow up. Not just the stuff that is fun to do, but the stuff that I think will be important to do with them. The things that will shape them and be formative in their experience as little New Yorkers. The things that they will remember as adults and cherish as part of the cool experience of growing up in New York. Now, off I go to wring every drop of goodness from that damp, dirty rag that is New York City... Life List for NYC Kids (or 100 things to do with your kids before they grow up)
- Visit the NY Hall of Science
- Go on an audition just for the heck of it
- Wave to the cameras on The Today Show
- Have tea at the Plaza
- Ride the Shark Boat
- Climb the Statue of Liberty
- Ride the row boats in Central Park
- Go to Dylan's Candy Bar
- Go to Economy Candy
- Get locked up at the Police Museum
- Go kayaking on the hudson
- Take the ferry to Sandy Hook beach
- Ride a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park
- Have dim sum in Brooklyn's Chinatown
- Go hiking in the Staten Island Greenbelt
- See the new Liberty Science Center
- Go fishing in the East River
- Go on a fishing boat from Sheepshead Bay
- See the money train at the Transit Museum
- Go to the Brooklyn Children's Museum
- Get a taste of country life at the Queens Farm Museum
- Ride on a tug boat
- Sail on the historic schooner Pioneer
- Sail in the hudson
- Take a helicopter ride
- ride the Cyclone before it's gone
- Grab the ring at the Coney Island carousel
- Spend my wad at Dave and Buster's Arcade
- march in the Mermaid Parade
- Go to a Brooklyn Cyclone's game
- Fulfill a child's wish through operation santa claus
- See the ballet
- Watch a dress rehearsal of an opera at the Met
- Sleep over at the Bronx Zoo
- See the unicorns at the Cloisters
- Go horseback riding
- Go sledding in Central Park
- Cross-country ski down a city street
- Bike across the Brooklyn Bridge and get ice cream at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory
- Take the Roosevelt Island Tram
- See the piano dancers at FAO
- Visit the Sony Wonder Technology Lab
- Children's Museum of Manhattan
- Children's Museum of the Arts
- Sketch at Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Stargaze at the Hayden Planetarium
- See the rest of the AMNH after the dinosaurs and mammals
- Visit the top of the Empire State Building
- Take an art class at the MoMA
- Chinese Scholar's Garden in Staten Island
- Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
- Holiday Train Show at NY Botanical Garden
- Check out the Queens Zoo
- See the wandering wallabies at the Prospect Park Zoo
- Watch a movie under the stars
- Madame Tussauds
- Try all the flavors at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory
- Look up relatives in Ellis Island
- Visit new waterside playground in Chelsea
- Get colonial at the Fraunces Tavern Museum
- Do a medieval workshop at Cathedral of St John the Divine
- The Lower East Side Tenement Museum
- See the rollerbladers perform in Central Park (just West of the Sheep's Meadow)
- Fly a kite on the Sheep Meadow
- See Shakespeare in the Park
- Going biking on Governor's Island
- Find the secret Downing Street Playground in the Village
- Explore Battery Park City Parks from the South Cove to Penny Park
- Ride the Staten Island Ferry
- Have knishes and egg creams at Yonah Schimmel's
- See the giant buddha in the Mahayana temple
- The Skyscraper Museum
- Play vintage video games at The Museum of Moving Image
- The Museum of the American Indian
- Buy comic books at Forbidden Planet
- Free concert in Madison Square Park and Get lunch at the Shake Shack
- Buy flowers from the flower district
- Buy wholesale toys in the wholesale district (27th and 6th)
- Swing Clubs at the Chelsea Piers Driving Range
- Climb the rock wall on Broadway
- Visit the Science Barge
- Visit the Intrepid
- Test out the Whispering Gallery at Grand Central
- Coney Island Arcade
- Cook our own food in a Korean restaurant
- Sail boats on the boat pond in Central park
- Billy Johnson Rustic Playground in Central Park
- Explore Belvedere Castle
- Medieval Festival in Fort Tryon Park
- Ride the carousel in Bryant park
- See the to scale panorama of the City of New York at the Queens Museum of Art
- Get Egyptian at the Brooklyn Museum of Art
- See the new Greeks and Romans at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Go ice skating in Prospect Park
- Riverbank State Park carousel
- See the holiday lights in Dyker Heights
- Take a trapeze lesson
- See the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade balloons get inflated
- Watch the circus elephants march into town
- Swim in the floating barge pool
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