Free Things to Do With NYC Kids in August 2021
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Drew Kristofik
Drew Kristofik’s career took a twist from editing teen magazines to a seven-year stint at MacNeil/Lehrer, followed by a long run at Nickelodeon/Viacom as Director of Content for Nick Online and Editor-in-Chief of ParentsConnect.com. A founding member of the Webby Award-winning GoCityKids, she’s written for Family Fun, Vanity Fair, and New York. Her middle school novel, The Time Boat, is available on Amazon Kindle. Drew keeps the MommyPoppins New York Events calendar spot-on and can be reached at events@mommypoppins.com. Latest posts by Drew
Free Things to Do with NYC Kids All Summer 2021
Submitted by Drew Kristofik on
Free Things to Do Anytime in Summer 2021
See free June & July events | See free August events | See free September events
Many of the events we highlighted for June, July, August, and September occur on multiple dates, but you can enjoy the activities below all summer (although not necessarily every single day).
Best Things to Do This Weekend in NYC with Kids: Street Arts, EarthFest, Holi!
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Happy Earth Day, everyone! The official day is Thursday, but plenty of events are running on Saturday, including the Street Arts celebration, taking over West 103rd Street with music and dancing, Brooklyn Downtown's car-free bonanza, and the Bronx Zoo's annual Run for the Wild fundraiser. The American Museum of Natural History's Earth Day celebration is an all-online affair but action-packed as ever.
Kids Take Over Camp is designed to help kids build financial savvy and is offered at all three NYC Camp stores Saturday. You can toss some color around at the Brooklyn Children Museum's Holi celebration or enjoy the return of live art programs at Wave Hill.
For more outdoor art, check out Rock Center's Life Forces immersive installation, The Met's Sesame Street/Calder mashup, As Long as the Sun Lasts, or nature's own contribution to impressionism, the Randall's Island's cherry blossoms.
For more ideas, sprint over to our Event Calendar, check out our April GoList, and don't miss our spring day trip ideas.
Remember, it's time to book summer camps, and you can learn more about local and virtual options at our upcoming Online Camp Fair, where you can visit virtual booths and watch live camp demos from the comfort of your couch.
April GoList: Best Things To Do in April With NYC Kids
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It's been a full year since Mommy Poppins published a monthly NYC GoList, and so it feels especially hopeful to present this list of the best things to do in April. Spring is here; vaccines are proliferating, and, for the moment, the virus seems to be receding. We have a long way to go, of course, but we've also come a very long way. And that's worth celebrating!
Many of our usual go-to GoList spring events are virtual this year, including the Easter Parade and AMNH's EarthFest, or postponing until the fall (looking at you, Brooklyn Folk Fest) in hopes that we're 100 percent out of the woods by then. Still, we've found more than 10 totally worthy GoList must-dos for April, including the Atlantic Avenue Spring Fling, a very cool performance idea from NY Theatre Ballet, the long-awaited arrival of Kusama at the New York Botanical Garden, and more.
Read on for the full, fabulous list and find more seasonal happenings in our Spring Fun Guide. Of course, it's also time to book those summer camps. Slots are going fast for the 2021 season! Learn more about local and virtual summer camps with our upcoming Online Camp Fair. Visit virtual booths and watch live camp demos.
Activities To Get You Out of the House This Weekend in NYC
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Spring break is on the horizon, outdoor fun is beckoning, and some beloved kid spots reopen to the public. We are psyched. First up, the Intrepid is lowering its gangplank to the public again, offering some new opportunities for big ship fans, including a peek into the bomb elevators and access to the pilot escalator. Then, Six Flags Great Adventure opens its gates in Jackson, N.J., so coaster riders can once again placate their need for speed.
Saturday's Holi celebration in Riverside Park uses colored kites for COVID safety. Easter egg hunts and celebrations dot the landscape in every borough, and kids can welcome spring with a scavenger hunt/seed swap at the Old Stone House. If that's not enough, we've found 50 fun events and activities for the spring break week and have even more seasonal picks in our Spring Fun Guide.
Poppins@Home is poised to fill in any free time remaining with Snapology's planes, trains, automobiles camp program, an awesome virtual hip hop dance class, ballet for all, and bilingual music fun with 123 Andres all await, too.
Keep a vigilant eye on the Mommy Poppins Event Calendar as the city continues to open like the gorgeous flower it is.
Best Things To Do in DC in March with Kids: Cherry Blossoms, St Patrick's Day, Salamanders
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It's been a full year of social distancing, mask wearing, and waiting for the new normal to be over. But March in DC means spring and cherry blossoms, St. Patrick's Day, and... salamanders! And we are ready for all of it.
Cherry blossoms are always an IRL (in real life) thing, but this year's fest is also going virtual. You can join the Blossom Kite Festival from your own backyard, and Artechouse is putting a cherry on top of its new experiential exhibit, Renewal 2121, thinking ahead 100 years to what the world might look like. More into St. Patrick's green than pink? Head to Brookside for a Green and Growing Scavenger Hunt to go bragh. And Easter egg hunts (including one for dino eggs!) are starting to appear on the calendar too.
Things To Do in NYC This Weekend & Beyond: KAWS Opens, Pop-Up Ice Performance, Nature Explorations
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The last week in the-longest-February-ever brings some serious fun. Celebrate Purim with the Jewish Museum. You can also catch a gorgeous city skate pop-up concert in Midtown and check out the new Kaws exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Need more art? Artechouse's new installation, Geometric Properties, opens Monday, March 1.
Connect with the great outdoors by learning how to track animals, build a perfect fire, or simply look for early signs of spring in Inwood Hill Park.
Poppins@Home is a perfect place to find online fun for kids. Top picks this week include a Harry Potter-inspired Wonderful World of Wizards series. We've also got music classes from Alina Celeste and a preschool class teaching science through the alphabet.
As we head into spring, the Mommy Poppins Event Calendar should start blossoming with safe, fun outdoor activities—like Easter egg hunts! So check often to see what lies ahead.
Best Things To Do in DC in February with Kids: Nature, Black History Month, Winter Fun
Submitted by Drew Kristofik on
February, we're ready for you. Bring on groundhogs and Valentines and Presidents, the Lunar New Year, and Black History!
First things first, though, because the first week of February is Restaurant Week, and this year—of course—it's all about takeout. What better time to give that restaurant down the street a try?
We're still hunkering and social distancing, so we're all about outdoor fun, like the Great Backyard Bird Count (and a program all about hawks in Arlington), and we have big plans to finally attend the Animation First Film Festival and Sundance, from the comfort of our living rooms.
