Kid-centric : Buzz

Summer is a time to experience music in the great outdoors.

The New York Times features a list of classical music concerts, including one in California led by Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Music Director Marin Alsop. 

The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music takes place in Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista Aug. 2-11. "The lineup this season includes world premieres by Kevin Puts and Sean Friar, as well as recent works by Brett Dean, Philip Glass, Christopher Rouse and George Walker," the Times writes.

Read the entire story here. 

GettingSmart.com, a blog that highlights innovations in learning, recently featured Baltimore's Digital Harbor Foundation.

The foundation is located in Federal Hill site, at the site of a former recreation center that has become a technology hub where Balitmore City school students can learn about web design, mobile app development and digital media production.

"Less than a year old, the Foundation already had one spinout company, An Estuary, a professional development company," GettingSmart.com writes.  

Read the entire story here. 

We know that Baltimore is quirky and offbeat. Apparently travel guru Peter Greenberg has gotten this memo because he's named Baltimore the No. 1 Wacky & Weird Road-Trip Spot. 

"From the creepy brilliance of Edgar Allan Poe to the dark, irreverent humor of John Waters, a sci-fi nut, horror junkie, or simply a fan of good, old American kitsch, Baltimore is the number one quintessential capital of weird, cool and quirky sites in our country," Peter Greenberg writes on his travel website. 

The CBS News Travel Editor recommends visits to Port Discovery, the American Visionary Art Museum, the National Pinball Museum, National Museum of Dentistry and Geppi's Entertainment Museum. 

Santa Claus, Indiana and Albuquerque, New Mexico got the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively. 

The South Baltimore Recreation Center has officially reopened as a neigborhood technology center, thanks to the efforts of the Riverside community and Digital Harbor High School supporters.

Forbes takes a look at the new venue, where Balitmore City school students can learn about web design, mobile app development and digital media production. 

"The center’s grand opening was a packed house, where excited participants got to show equally excited visitors the fruits of some of their early work, providing a taste of what’s to come from the space," the magazine writes. "Shelly Blake-Plock, the executive co-director of the Digital Harbor Foundation, delivered such an impassioned welcome speech that you could almost see where all this excitement was coming from."

You can read the rest of the story here. 

It's another contest between Baltimore and the nation's capital. 

This time, it's a battle of wits between high school debate teams in each city on how the federal government should invest in transportation infrastructure.

The session will be conducted by the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues, writes the Transportation Research Board. The event takes place Jan. 16 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. 

You can read more about it here. 

Lesbian and gay singles living in Baltimore need look no further than their own home city to find their mate.
 
Baltimore ranked second in a poll conducted by Chemistry.com of cities with the most lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender singles looking for marriage and kids, beating out cities better known for their LGBT populations like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.
 
Richmond, Va. tops the list in first place. Los Angeles, Rochester, N.Y., and Harford, Conn., round out the top five.

You can see the rest of the list here. 

U.S. News & World Report has come out with its ranking of the best high schools in the nation and Maryland schools made the grade. 

High schools in Potomac, Bethesda and Rockville made the top 100. A total of 62 high schools in Maryland made the list, writes the Washington Post.

Schools were assessed on how well they meet state proficiency standards and prepared students for college. You can see the complete ranking here. 

Baltimore money manager T. Rowe Price released a study this month asking parents -- and their kids -- about how to save and make money. 

While three-quarters of parents say they talk to kids about money, a majority say they are not always honest with kids about money, writes Forbes.com. 

"Parents just aren’t comfortable talking finances," writes Forbes. "In fact, the survey revealed that they are more comfortable talking about bullying, drugs, and smoking than family finances or investing, and find talking about investing just as difficult as 'the talk' about puberty and coming of age."

You can read the rest of the Forbes write-up here. 

Children's museums are increasingly focusing on social outreach, and not just playful activities, writes the New York Times. 

The newspaper cites several children's museums that are using exhibits to target everything from childhood obesity to homeless students. Port Discovery Children's Museum in Baltimore has adapted exhibits to accommodate kids with special needs, the Times writes. 

You can read the story here. 

The Huffington Post recently checked out the National Aquarium in Baltimore. 

But it didn't see the usual sharks and stingrays at the downtown attraction. Instead, it went behind the scenes at the aquarium's Fells Point facility known as the Warehouse. The spot, which isn't open to the public, houses resources needed to take care of the aquarium's building and its animals. 

You can read the review and slideshow here. 

Broadway World has previewed an upcoming play at Pumpkin Theatre titled "Clever Rachel." The play by Towson children's theater company's is based on a children's book by Debby Waldman. 

"Rachel is smart, maybe the smartest child in the entire village, and she loves to solve riddle," Broadway World writes. "But Jacob, the smartest boy in the boys school, shows up to challenge Rachel. Will they fight each other and become enemies or find a way to work together to make their village a better place?"

The play debuts March 24.

You can read the rest of the preview here. 

The American Visionary Art Museum has gotten plenty of national attention for being one of Baltimore's cool, quirky and offbeat attractions. 

But the Washington Post has also declared the Federal Hill site a great museum for kids, citing pieces like a dinosaur made of trash, carved plastic foam cups and a sculpture made of 100,000 toothpicks. 

"The American Visionary Art Museum has a sense of humor," the Post writes. "Kids wouldn’t want to miss some of the non-art elements at the museum, such as the flatulence machine by the restrooms downstairs, the fun-house mirrors upstairs near the restaurant and the wacky and inexpensive gift shop where someone is almost always walking around doing magic tricks."

You can read the rest here. 

Construction began this month on the nation's largest museum devoted to African American history. 

And the $500 million Smithsonian museum will feature a number of Maryland artifacts, writes the Baltimore Sun. This includes a Harriet Tubman's silk shawl and a long house built by freed slaves from Montgomery County. 

"These are among 20,000 objects collected by the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which will open on the National Mall in 2015 as the 19th Smithsonian Institution museum," the Sun writes.

"Local experts on African-American history say it's appropriate that Maryland will be featured prominently, since many key figures come from the state."

You can read more about the museum here. 

Port Discovery, a children's museum in downtown Baltimore, has gotten national recognition from Forbes magazine. 

Forbes named it one of the 12 best kids' museum in the nation. 

"This 80,000 square foot facility resides in a renovated fish market and is one of the anchors of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor," Forbes writes. "Both the permanent and temporary exhibitions are heavily thematic, so when kids enter Adventure Expeditions, they travel back in time to 1920’s Egypt and search for a Pharaoh’s lost tomb, decoding hieroglyphics along the way in an educational detective puzzle of sorts."

Children's museums in Indianapolis, Boston and Brooklyn also made the cut.