We asked EAT! Vancouver what was in it for families this year, and we got an earful.  Or would that be a mouthful?!

You can bring the family down to the 11th annual EAT! Vancouver Food and Cooking Festival at BC Place Stadium on May 24-26 to sample, shop, and rub shoulders with your favourite stars from Food Network Canada. This year’s festival welcomes Spice Goddess and mother Bal Arneson, baker extraordinaire Anna Olson of Bake with Anna Olson, Chuck Hughes of Chuck’s Week Off, and Executive Chef Cactus Club Restaurants, Chef Rob Feenie, all on the Food Network Celebrity Stage.

For the kids in everyone, Regal Confections will be presenting fun contests on the International Culinary Stage on May 25 and 26 to see who can hold an enormous bubble for five seconds, build the most original structure with candy blox, and count the number of licks it takes to get to the centre of a Tootsie Pop. Winners will receive prizes, but you can always visit the Regal Kidz Kandy Korner where PEZ, Ring Pop Gummies, Rockets, Tootsie Roll, Tootsie Pop, and Dubble Bubble will be available. If you’re lucky, you might spot the Regal candy girls who will be handing out sweet treats!

Also on the International Culinary Stage, the SuperChefs Cookery for Kids will teach younger kids the importance of healthy eating. Along with local restaurant chefs, children can learn concepts like Marvelous Meatballs and Tasty Indigenous Treats, It Hasta Be Pasta – Traditional Pasta Making for Families, The Art of Sliders and Creative Crepes, and Making Old-World Handcrafted Gelato for Kids.

Finally, EAT! Vancouver has responded to the demand from 2012 for more gluten-free products. Find out more about this year’s gluten-free exhibitors HERE

Tickets are $16 for adults ($14 online), $14 for seniors, $9 for youth 13-16, and free for kids 12 & under. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.eat-vancouver.com

Being welcomed by enormous stilt walkers, delighted by circus aerial dancers hanging from the high ceilings, enlightened by a speech by Keith Pattinson, author of What Every Kid Needs and Money Can’t Buy, and entertained by a well-produced fashion show were some of the many surprises encountered at the Under the Big Top 35th Anniversary Celebration and Fundraiser event for the Marpole Oakridge Family Centre. It was great to see how the community got together to help support this great organization for all the amazing things they have done for families in our community! And of course in a celebration like this a huge cake was a most!

For more information on the Marpole Oakridge Family Place and their programs, CLICK HERE

Music at Science World reached high on Monday May 6. This time it made it all the way to space!

Over 200 local young-students performed the Music Monday song I.S.S (Is Somebody Singing) directed by Maestro Bramwell Tovey of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and written by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield who join the fun and played his guitar all the way from the International Space Station!

It was an amazing experience to witness how music met science and technology when putting together a simultaneous musical performance by 600,000 of young musicians from all around Canada to space and back.

This event brings attention to the importance of music education, as Maestro Bramwell Tovey said, “Music is a universal-expressive language that we all should be fluent to be able to express what is inside ourselves. Music brakes down anger and aggression, music makes peace and harmony and those are good enough reason to make music part of everybody’s fundamental education and preserve music programs in our schools”.

Science World also believes in the importance of music in education. With that in mind, they are pleased to announce a complete, immersive musical experience (AMPED) opening October 2013. Get ready to be inspired, interact, make your own music and have creative fun at Science World.

Canadian Space Agency Live Webcast
http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/webcast.asp

Riverside Secondary School looks, on the outside at least, like your normal suburban high school. But Deb Nordheimer’s grade 11 physics class would like to tell you differently. This class is the first of Samsung Canada’s classrooms of the future, equipped with a fully interactive digital learning environment.
“This new system increases the engagement of my students with the lessons,” says Nordheimer, “ and allows me to closely monitor individual students, which greatly increases student accountability.”
For this pilot project, Samsung provided the class with 31 Samsung GALAXY Note 10.1 units, a 65-inch digital e-Board and powerful Samsung software. Not just for physics classes, this software can be configured by individual teachers, bringing to life whatever subject they are teaching.
With this system, teachers and students can share content with each other, and individual student’s work can be shared on the large screen. Teachers can administer pop quizzes during the class, can conduct polls and quickly assess how the class is comprehending the lesson.
After the class, the tablet goes back to being a regular tablet, containing everything the student needs to study and do homework.

To watch the classroom work, visit www.samsung.ca.

How Mindfulness helps children thrive
Thursday May 9 to Saturday May 11
Explore the latest science and practice that shows how Mindfulness fosters the development of compassion, confidence, and resilience in children, and helps them develop respectful and nurturing relationships.  The pieces of this conference are designed for parents, educators, clinicians, coaches, and more – all those who care FOR and ABOUT children.

Featured speakers:  Shawn Achor (author: The Happiness Advantage), Adele Diamond, PhD (UBC Professor), Goldie Hawn (The Hawn Foundation, developer of MindUP), Linda Lantieri (Director Inner Resilience Program), Rob Roeser PhD (Portland State Univ Professor, Mind & Life Institute), Clifford Saron PhD (Assoc Research Scientist Univ California Davis Center for Mind & Brain), Kimberly Schonert-Reichl PhD (UBC Professor), Paul Tough (Author: How Children Succeed), Roy Henry Vickers (Artist, Author, Storyteller)

All events are held at the UBC Point Grey Campus.

Register at www.dalailamacenter.org

Email heart-mind@dalailamacenter.org

By Monica Gonzalez, Events Coordinator for WestCoast Families.

Three billion batteries were thrown away into the garbage last year in Canada! Science World along with their partner Call2Recycle are on a mission to reduce this number starting today!

Travis Lulay of the BC Lions is lifted by the weight of all the batteries and cellphones brought in for recycling at Science World today.

It was a morning of learning the importance of recycling, but also a day full of fun at Science World’s Green Month event.

Students attended the Tip Zone Battery Drive to drop off their used batteries with the goal of tipping the scale and lifting BC Lions’ quarterback, Travis Lulay, off the ground, illustrating the power of recycling!

Science World staff delivered a simple message that will stay with our kids forever. There are four things you should never do with your used batteries and only one thing you should do with them:

1. Never throw them in the garbage
2. Never put them in fire
3. Never eat them
4. Never put them in a lion’s ear (that last one made many laugh except for Leo the Lion, the BC Lions mascot!)

As for the only thing you should do with your used batteries and cellphones, they kept it very simple:
Come to Science World and recycle them!

Thanks to the partnership between Telus World of Science and Call2Recycle, the battery and cellphone collection kiosk is here to stay! This 3-year project aims to increase awareness, make recycling easy, and accessible!

Families visited Science World today to drop off old batteries and cellphones for recycling.

To learn more about recycling and locations where you can drop your used batteries go to www.call2recycle.ca