Neighborhood Kids family fun in bellingham & whatcom county

Survey for the Future of Neighborhood-Kids

In 2008, Mindfly Web Design Studio launched Neighborhood-Kids.com, a free online resource for families in Bellingham and Whatcom County.

As with any service, tangible or online, Neighborhood-Kids.com has numerous operating costs, including web hosting, newsletter distribution, and general website maintenance and updates.

We would like to partner with those who use Neighborhood-Kids.com—event organizers, business owners, community members, and local families—to keep this service available.

We are currently evaluating the best course of action for Neighborhood-Kids.com. Your anonymous response will help us define a plan for the website’s future. Please take a few moments to respond to a survey about possible options that could help us sustain Neighborhood-Kids.com.

Click Here to Take the Neighborhood-Kids.com Survey

Calling All Experts

As we’ve mentioned before, what makes Neighborhood-Kids.com different from other parenting websites is our emphasis on our local Bellingham and greater Whatcom County community. We don’t just have articles with parenting ideas and fun stories about kids, and we don’t just have ideas for places to go as a family. We have both, and as often as possible, we try to put the two things together, like an article about the annual Kids’ Dog Show in Bellingham.

Doctors, teachers and other professionals can share their expertise on Neighborhood-Kids.com.

We also keep our content locally-based by featuring Bloggers and Authors who live in Bellingham, so they can speak specifically to raising kids and resources for parents in our community.

We want to keep extending our list of Authors by inviting site members to become contributors for Neighborhood-Kids.com. Anyone that has knowledge or information to share about kids for parents is invited to submit content. We’re especially eager to have more “Expert Contributors,” people who work in a professional capacity with kids, share their expertise on Neighborhood-Kids.com.

If you a busy “expert,” you might not have time to write and submit articles on a regular basis. That’s okay! Consider helping us out in our Forum by answering questions. We’d love to have various topics, such as Ask a Pediatrician, where people can ask basic questions about child development, education and other issues related to children. Teachers, child psychologists, nutritionists—all Neighborhood-Kids.com members who are willing to spend a few minutes answering questions in the Forum—are invited to participate.

If you’re interested in finding out more about becoming an Expert Contributor, please email us at info@neighborhood-kids.com so we can get you more information about this opportunity. And, as always, feel free to continue to leave comments on articles, submit a Tip of the Day, and post in the Forum to share your knowledge about our neighborhood kids.

Homepage Elements with You in Mind

As with most websites, a lot of thought and time went into designing “the look” of Neighborhood-Kids.com. We wanted an attractive and easy-to-use layout that would include many useful features directly on the Homepage, like our latest Article and links to our Local Bloggers. There are two other Homepage elements that we’d like to direct your attention to this week: the Tip of the Day and Art in You.

What quick tip would you like to share with other parents?

The Tip of the Day is a short piece of advice that various local parents have discovered along the way on their parenting journey. Each Tip is just a few sentences and can be about anything, from helpful solutions for teething babies (“Freeze some clean, damp washcloths and have them on hand for your baby to gnaw on while teething”) to suggestions for increasing the vegetable count in your child’s diet (“Add a can of peas, carrots or corn to Sloppy Joes mix”).

And since Neighborhood-Kids.com is all local (Bellingham and Whatcom County), you can make Tips that reference specific places or organizations in our community. It’s your chance to share your special discoveries with other parents. If you have a piece of advice to share, click Submit a Tip. Fill out the quick form and send it our way so we can get your words on the site.

Let others appreciate your child’s talent.
By Audrey, Age 8

Another cool detail included on the Neighborhood-Kids.com Homepage is Art in You. We wanted a “By Kids” feature and one thing that all kids love to do is create beautiful artwork. The images rotate, so every time you open up our Homepage, you’ll see a different piece of art by a local child. It’s always a surprise which art will be displayed, so you have to visit often to see if your child’s art will come up next!

If you have scanned versions or your child’s paintings or drawings, you can attach them to an email to info@neighborhood-kids.com with “Art in You” in the subject. Take a digital photo to submit sculptures and other 3-D masterpieces by your talented kids for Art in You. If you would like your child’s first name to appear on the site along with their artwork, be sure to include it in your email, along with their age.

You might even want to talk to your child’s art teacher about submitting their latest class project to Neighborhood-Kids.com. We’d love to include artwork by kids of all ages from all over Whatcom County.

We want Neighborhood-Kids.com to be a special kind of parenting website for two reasons: our emphasis on Bellingham people, places and things; and our hope of providing fresh, frequently updated material for parents. Please help us accomplish both these goals by sending us a Tip of the Day and your child’s Art in You.