Summer’s here and that means planning more one-on-one time with each child and with my wife. Without the same kind of tight schedule, I can spread out for a day to take my five year old to a pint-sized theme park. My eight year old wants to go to more baseball games. And my 12 year old prefers to attend a rock concert or two. We have a couple of local ticket discounters that we signed up for and that really help make concerts, ball games, and plays cheaper. The best, in terms of quality entertainment and price, has been Goldstar.com, which discounts tickets in cities around the country, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and New York, among a bunch of other locales. What kinds of in-town activities are you all doing during the summer? What concerts or ball games have you gone or will you go to?

With its candy-colored emoticon graphics and remarkable ease of use, FaceChipz ™ serves as a holiday gift that will outlast most of the presents parents might buy. This is because it offers something its grown-up counterpart, Facebook, cannot — a community made of kids with abundant safety features and no chance kids can wander to inappropriate pages or have inappropriate adults trying to log on to their profiles. Because of this, it allows kids to be children and parents to breath easier if they are concerned (and there’s plenty of reason to be worried) that Facebook is just not safe enough — even with some decent protective layers that parents can use — for their sophisticated grade-schooler, tween, or teen.

The FaceChipz ™ team has collected every safey certification imaginable (including the Socially Safe Seal of approval). And collecting is a key mechanism for the social networking site. Here’s how it works: Once a child signs up for FaceChipz ™ with a parent (both must have logins), the child can set up a page at which the kid can chat, play games, get e-mail, share pictures, etc. To get a friend to join, the child must purchase and register the code of a FaceChip, which looks like a poker chip only cuter. Then, the child can deliver or send the chip to a friend, who also registers the chip. In this way, only a child given a physical chip by another child can be a friend on FaceChipz ™. This kind of safety does have a price, albeit a small one, as the FaceChipz cost $7.99 for a pack of 5. But the concept is ingenius because it incorporates kids’ love of collecting with high-end Web technology. You can also earn points with the FaceChipz ™ with which kids can buy stuff on the Web site.

This really is a terrific invention that is already growing quickly and will continue to evolve to keep up with kids’ demands. As a sort of a bridge between Club Penguin and Facebook, it makes a safe home (kids can even block members who are mean to them) in a world of social networking that is a staple of contemporary children’s lives. It’s an indoor activity worth checking out, particularly with the extra time many of us will have over the holidays and the cold winter months.

Except for the time I miraculously won a local dads tournament, I suck at bowling. I usually depend on the bumpers they put up for my four year old to knock down pins. However, I enjoy rolling the black (or marbled green or electric yellow) ball throughout the year, particularly to beat the heat of summer. Now, my pal Scott Frager (who publishes Bowling Industry Magazine) tells me many of the country’s bowling centers have a Kids Bowl Free program till the end of summer. Sign up at the site so your kid can get 2 free games at your local bowling alley. The program also offers a Family Pass that entitles each adult member of the family to bowl 2 games a day for as little as $23.95 for the whole group. Merrily may you roll along.

I give out a lot of advice, but I always do it with the caveat that I, as a parent, I am thrown for a loss more often than I ever imagined. This summer, with three boys between the ages of 2 and 9, I’m finding the issue of stability to be paramount. While my whole family enjoys the freedoms of summer, without school and the usual extra-curricular activities, the lack of consistency is hard on everyone. We have more instances of siblings pummeling each other when they are on their days off from camp, more tears and tantrums over TV and snacks, and more frustration on the part of my wife and I because we have to be creative with so many days.

I always want more time with the children, so I feel guilty that — after several weeks of all-kids-all-the-time — I occasionally count the days until school starts. I don’t want to feel this way, but seem to be caught in a modern paradox. Given our contemporary lifestyles in which kids no longer go out to play in the streets or go fishing at the pond for hours, we parents must play “cruise director” much more, especially in the summer months.

So what are my wife and I doing about it? We’re now trying to duplicate as much of the school season schedule as possible. We’re getting ourselves up at a regular time in the mornings and doing breakfast with the kids before they get cranky. We’re heading out of the house a lot because we find that we get complacent and laze about until the kids go bonkers. We’re frequently (again, this is still imperfect) keeping to the bedtime schedule as well, though it’s easy to let the little ones stay up later without school in the morning.

There’s lots more we have to do. Please post your suggestions as to what you do to create consistency in the summertime.

Journalist Debbe Geiger asked me for some suggestions on what to do with the kids while they’re out on winter break. She specifically requested ideas that wouldn’t break Mom and Dad’s bank. My comments appear in her Newsday article (http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/localguide/kids/ny-lskids1224,0,163658.story?coll=ny-explore-kids-heads). Here are a few of my tips to help you between now and when the kids head back to school.

1. Visit Libraries - Go to the local library and loiter for a few hours. Browse books, read, check a few out. It’s a great way to explore and it costs nothing. Also, visit other libraries in your town or nearby areas. Try libraries with different ethnic themes, historical angles, and university book collections, too.

2. Play Games - Hang out and play old board games. Use this time to teach your kids your favorites. Play card games, Nerf basketball, and make up games, too. You can even try your hand at one of those video games your kids ask you to play with them. It’s a chance for them to teach you something.

3. Visit Museums - You have probably heard this suggestion before, but here’s a twist to it. Visit a museum, then go home and do art projects based on what you and your children saw. Hang the art in a gallery-style exhibit on a wall. It’s a good way to reinforce what they’ve learned and show them you’re proud of their art.

4. Teach Planning and Budgeting - With a little extra time during this break, educate your children on how to plan for outings and budget for them, too. Have them estimate the time it takes to do a road trip and how much a tank of gas will cost. Ask them to plan a dinner, budget for the food, and shop for it. They can cook with you, with you showing them how to measure and time the preparation. In this way, they learn a lot about math and life skills without even realizing it’s educational.

5. Set Goals for the New Year - Let your kids be like you and write down their resolutions or goals for the new year. Ask them to prioritize their aspirations and remind them that, while it’s hard to fulfill all our plans, it’s important to consider what we want and need to do to make our year great.

Whatever you do, enjoy the break and Happy Holidays!