February 01st, 2016

written by Jen #supermom

Back in September we interviewed Denise Clay, a mother of 2 little boys and a patient of Dr. Cao’s.  Denise is the co-founder of  www.skipkid.com, a site that helps parents and caregivers find local activities for their little ones.  As I know personally, the struggle is REAL….it’s not easy searching for and finding things to do with your child that are both up-to-date and local to your neighborhood in Brooklyn.  Denise and co-founder Callie (another patient of Dr. Cao’s) have created this resource to eliminate the frustration and help foster fun activity-filled days, especially necessary during these chilly winter months!  We thought we’d check back in with Denise as there have been several new exciting updates and improvements to the site since our last talk.


SSP: Denise, can you please tell us a little about SkipKid again and why this is such a useful website for Brooklyn parents?
SkipKid is a mobile website that features a complete, up-to-date listing of all drop-in activities in Brooklyn, sortable by neighborhood. It’s free to use and to subscribe.
When our children were a few months old, we began looking for activities for the kids and quickly realized that there was no reliable, comprehensive resource for drop-in activities in our neighborhood. Scheduling activities between naps and mealtimes can be a challenge, and we imagined other parents and caregivers felt the same way. So we started SkipKid.
We tried to make the site as user friendly as possible. SkipKid works on any computer or mobile device. Simply select your neighborhood from the drop-down menu to find a complete list of daily drop-in activities. We encourage users to subscribe for weekly emails featuring special weekday and weekend events as well.


SSP: What kind of activities and classes do you list on SkipKid?
There’s a huge range of classes on SkipKid, everything from art and music classes to movement and cooking classes. We also feature post-natal classes and groups for new parents (breastfeeding support, mommy/baby exercise classes, new parents support, etc).


SSP: How is SkipKid unique?
Many sites say they focus on local events, but we actually mean it! As all new parents and caregivers well know, little ones require a lot of scheduling, and optimizing the windows of time among naps, feedings, etc, requires careful planning. SkipKid helps parents and caregivers find activities that are walkable or within their own neighborhoods, which is different from existing sites that tend to list activities by borough. Moreover, we aim to have a complete list of activities–not simply events at the big-name venues like the Brooklyn Zoo and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, but the tiny neighborhood venues with sing-alongs and puppet shows. We want to build community by bringing people together at their own neighborhood shops.


SSP:  I understand you¹ve added new features to the site since the last time we spoke.  What are these updates?
One thing that we’re really excited about is that we’ve started to send out a couple of emails a week to our subscribers featuring mid-week and weekend family activities.


SSP: Does SkipKid currently have pages on social media, and what can we find there?
Yes, we’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We update all our social media regularly.


SSP: What’s next for SkipKid?  Are you looking to expand into other boroughs of NYC?
We launched SkipKid in September and have grown to have more than a thousand monthly users. We are looking to expand our reach in all the neighborhoods we cover, and we expect to move into Manhattan, too.


SSP: Is there anything else you’d like the readers to know?
We want to hear from you! If you have feedback for the site or an event you’d like featured let us know.


These winter months can be super challenging with babies and toddlers.  Rather than succumbing to cabin fever and too much screen time, get out there and see all that Brooklyn has to offer.  There are countless daily activities in our neighborhood of Park Slope, always a reason to get out and about – no matter how cold or drab a day!  Thankfully we now have SkipKid to help us navigate all of these options, and plan fun-filled days with our precious children!

www.skipkid.com


Posted on February 1st, 2016
Posted by Jen Valu