Creative ideas to help kids get ready for back to school

As summer vacaction is quickly coming to an end, you may be looking for fun, educational things to do with your kids to help kickstart their brains for back to school.

A Platform for Summer is an easy-to-use resource that offers a list of 75 fun, unique and educational online and offline activities for parents and children to do together. It's an offering of A Platform for Good, an online platform to help parents and teens to connect, share and do good online which will officially launch new content on Sept. 12.

The idea for the guide came from a desire to provide parents with a list of tech "can-dos," said Nancy Gifford, special projects coordinator for the Family Online Safety Institute.

"These days parents are inundated with information about dangers lurking online, but there is significantly less information about the wonderful myriad of resources and opportunities available at the click of a mouse," Gifford said. "Who knew you could use technology to visit museums all over the world, help scientists conduct research or go on a virtual space exploration?"

One of the goals of A Platform for Good is to create a dialogue among parents, teachers and kids about online safety.

"We hope parents can use the list to explore some of the exciting resources the Internet has to offer and use the online safety tips woven throughout the list to set, together, guidelines for how to interact online," Gifford said.

The site provides links to find local places where children can volunteer, sites to help them sharpen their math or geography skills and fun ideas such as sending a virtual lemonade to a friend on a hot summer day.

If you're looking to savor the last days of summer, you can also check out our list of 100 things to do with your kids on Long Island.