The bat mitzvah girl Amber Ridinger may have enjoyed her $27,000 dress and live performances by Ja Rule and Ashanti. But if your child wasn’t invited, don’t cry. New York City’s cultural institutions offer another kind of children’s partu that provides a civilized and fun induction into society.

One of the classiest was New York City Opera’s family benefit Saturday afternoon, which had the great fortune of starting with a performance of Rachel Portman’s marvelous opera “The Little Prince.” The story of a little boy devoted to his three volcanoes and a beautiful rose struck powerful chords in the audience, as evidenced by parent and child clinging tightly to one another during the opera’s final scenes, about love and the importance of home. Every child should have such an introduction to the opera.

Within moments of the final bows, the Grand Promenade of the New York State Theater was a wash of blazers and ribbons as children burst into play and eating. Sammy and Trudie from Imagination Playhouse painted faces and created balloon sculptures, while a buffet offered hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, jelly beans, and, most pleasing of all, ice cream. Guests could also hop in an aeroplane to have their photographs taken. Back at their tables, they sat around volcano centerpieces draped with miniature aeroplanes and yellow scarves just like the Little Prince’s.

Third-grader Sam Chapin consumed three chocolate sundaes and a burger. On his sugar high, he spoke to The New York Sun about the opera.

“I liked it,” Mr. Chapin said. Had he seen operas before? “I’ve seen a few. I like opera, but not completely. It’s okay. Well, sometimes I don’t completely like it. I don’t really like the plots,” he said. What did he think of the Little Prince’s story? “I couldn’t really imagine doing that,” he said. And he wasn’t sure of the ending. “It wasn’t clear if he found his way home,” he said.

Understanding the singers in this English opera was not a problem. “I understand except when they’re in different languages. Then I don’t have a clue,” he said.

How was the party? “I don’t go to that many, but I liked this one. I liked the food,” he said. The ballroom dancing (with instruction from the “Mad Hot Ballroom”-famous Pierre Dulaine) was less impressive. “I’m not that big of a dancer,” he said. (The girls, on the other hand, were twirling with enthusiasm.)

The party raised $350,000, more than double last year’s proceeds, the opera’s director of development, Jennifer Zaslow, told me. Guests included Paula Zahn, Amy Burton, Mary Sharp Cronson, Stephanie French, Marcia Mishaan, and Barbara Lyne (in earrings that looked like the evil baobab trees in the opera).

The chairwomen of the event included Kara Unterberg, Caroline Cronson, Olivia Flatto, and Ashley von Perfall. It’s a shame they were all adults. A children’s event committee could assist with cleanup.

How refreshing not to see any nannies, though grandparents and extended family were around to help out. Apparently, parents consider these affairs the highest quality time they can spend with their children.

Family benefits aren’t as frequent as adult benefits, but the next one, on December 10, is another enchanting affair: New York City Ballet performs “The Nutcracker,” then throws a party that includes dancing with sugar plum faeries and candy canes. Chairwomen include Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Celeste Boele, and Julia Koch.

On Monday, February 6, children will have (almost) free rein at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its family benefit, which Mortimer Zuckerman underwrites.

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With bagel in one hand, gin and tonic in the other, thousands of New Yorkers gathered Saturday morning to tailgate their way to athletic contests whose results will inevitably be gloated about in boardrooms over the next few days. At Baker Field in Inwood, Brown secured the Ivy League championship with a win over Columbia, 52-21. (Having lost every game in the Ivy League conference this season, Columbia yesterday disposed of its coach, Bob Shoop, whose three-year record with the Lions was 23 losses and 7 wins). In a close four-hour contest at the Yale Bowl, Harvard beat Yale, 30-24, in triple overtime (though Yale did have a victory Friday night when the Yale School of Management won a debate against the Harvard Business School). Elsewhere in the Ivy League, Princeton defeated Dartmouth, 30-0, and Cornell took down Penn, 16-7.

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Thanksgiving got an early start Friday when Citymeals-on-Wheels supporters gave thanks for the generosity and spirit of the organization’s founding director and president, Robert Preston Tisch, who died on Tuesday.Tisch’s daughter, Laurie Tisch Sussman, and grandchildren, Caroline and Emily Sussman, accepted the City meals Lifetime Contribution Award on his behalf.

“What my father would want us to do is continue to be creative and successful and lend a helping hand,” Ms. Tisch said in prepared marks read by her daughters.

The luncheon at the Rainbow Room gathered powerful women, including the editor of Glamour, Cynthia Leive, and honorees Bobbi Brown, Diane von Furstenberg, and Janet Sainer, who was the commissioner of the New York City Department for the Aging when writer Gael Greene hatched the idea to feed the city’s homebound elderly.

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Sean Combs is spending Thanksgiving at his home in South Beach, Fla.

“Hopefully it will be nice and sunny,” Mr. Combs’s mother, Janice Combs, told me Friday. She’s baking her famous red velvet cake.

Restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow will host a potluck dinner for 40 guests in Miam, then staying on the week after Thanksgiving to open Miami Social at the Sagamore Hotel. Donna Hanover will be enjoying a “a feast of companionship as well as lasagna and turkey” with her husband, daughters, and cousins in Smithtown, N.Y. She’ll likely still be kvelling about her daughter Caroline Giuliani’s star turn as Maria in her high school production of “West Side Story,” which had its run this weekend.

Kathleen Turner is letting a friend do most of the cooking, since she’s on crutches, resting up to bring “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” to London. She is making the stuffing, which is her favorite dish.

The editor of Food & Wine, Dana Cowin, is bringing maple-roasted brussel sprouts to dinner at her mother’s house.

Those with less definitive plans needn’t feel ashamed. As of Friday, the editor of Gourmet, Ruth Reichl, hadn’t started planning her menu for the Thanksgiving meal.

agordon@nysun.com