Ride the Zip Line for Free

My little sister – who is in her thirties with several children, and not some 19 year old who doesn’t know any better – recently decided to jump out of an airplane. Voluntarily. She was given the opportunity to go sky-diving for free and she took it – there is a video to prove it. Now I don’t want to say that the idea of jumping out of plane scares me silly – but I will say that pigs will fly before I voluntarily choose to participate in this “sport.”

(You will notice the quotes around sport – I am just wondering how hurling yourself from an airplane qualifies as a sport!)

I will be totally honest – the idea of riding a zip line through the trees seems only slightly less terrifying to me – but I know that I am probably just a hyper conservative, scaredy-cat, old-fogey. But for those of you who do not share my paranoia conservative nature, the Washington Post reported this morning that Terrapin Adventures, which is located in Savage, MD near Columbia, is offering free rides on its Zip Line course this coming weekend (November 14 and 15) in exchange for a donation of five cans of food. The canned food will be donated to a food pantry in Columbia. You must make a reservation, and you can find more information at Terrapin Adventure’s website!. The website notes that anyone that weighs more than 70 pounds (and less than 250 pounds) can ride, so your school aged kids would be eligible!

More on the Maryland Science Center

Last week I wrote about the Maryland Science Center’s Friday After Five promotion, which allows you to visit the museum for just $8. I was poking around on the website, and I discovered that the Science Center is also has an Egg Drop, Price Drop promotion on Saturday mornings. If you visit the museum before noon on Saturday mornings, you can get $5 off the price of admission for everyone in your group. But even better than that, the museum will hand you an egg, and you can participate in the museum’s weekly egg drop! The museum will give you the materials to build an egg launch vehicle and then you can launch your egg from the third floor balconey and see if it lands unscathed. This is very cool, although I wonder how they get the lobby floor clean after all the unsuccessful vehicles hit the floor! This promotion is good every Saturday through December 26th!

Just Because its Thursday…

Fall Festival and Emancipation Day Celebration at Button Farm

Button Farm Living History Center in Germantown will be holding a Fall Festival and Emancipation Day Celebration on Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 am until 4:00 pm. Button Farm is a living history museum that depicts 19th century slave life in Maryland. There will be music, food, walking tours, hands-on history activities, crafters, demonstrations and more. Admission is totally FREE for this event. Button Farm is located at 16820 Black Rock Road in Germantown.

Art in the Park at Locust Grove

I am totally loving the Locust Grove Nature Center! They are a creative bunch working down there – and they are always trying share that creativity with kids. Its great. This Saturday, November 7th, the Locust Grove Nature Center is hosting Art in the Park – from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm you can drop by the Nature Center and create art out of natural objects. Use sand and sticks and other found objects to let your kids create. And the best part is that the program is FREE! The Locust Grove Nature Center is located at 7777 Democracy Boulevard in Bethesda.

Fridays After Five at the Maryland Science Center

The Maryland Science Center in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor is the only place that I have ever been that has a bed of nails that you can lay on and a full-sized T-Rex skeleton. Somehow I think a bed of nails belongs at the county fair or a Las Vegas magic show. We have even seen the T-Rex bones for free at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum. The County Fair and the Smithsonian are both a lot of fun – but both things in one place – now this is a great place!

And it truly is a great place, with a planetarium and the “Science on a Sphere,” Newton’s Alley with all the levers to push and pull, and the super duper fun Kid’s Room for children 8 and younger. It is not, however, free. Admission for one adult costs $14.95. A trip for your average family will set you back $50 – $60 – so this is a special event trip for most families that I know. So it was great to read that the Science Center has restarted its Friday After Five program. The Science Center is staying open late on every Friday through March 26 and admission is only $8 per person. (The Baltimore Aquarium also has a Friday After Five program which you can read about here.)

On a related note – if your school wants to schedule a field trip to the Science Center – the first 45,000 Maryland students to visit with an organized school field trip will receive FREE admission to the Science Center during the 2009-2010 school year. The link above provides more information!

Blacksmith and Friends at the Ag Farm Park

It is always easy to recommend an event at the Agricultural Farm Park in Derwood. The opportunity to get outdoors with your kids and try something new – something that they can’t do while sitting in front of an electronic screen – is always (as Martha says) a good thing!

(I am sorry for envoking Martha, who always manages to provoke a heavy level of guilt in me. Why, oh why, did I never learn to use that glue gun? Argh!!! OK – back to the topic at hand…)

The Agricultural Farm Park is holding its annual Blacksmith and Friends event on Saturday and Sunday (November 7th and 8th) from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm each day. The event is 100 percent FREE, and there will be hands-on metal-smithing activities for kids, food, demonstrations, sales of metal gifts and art, and other family friendly activities. The Agricultural Farm Park is located at 18400 Muncaster Road in Derwood. We have been to a number of events at the Agricutural Farm Park and they have all been great. Highly recommended – and no glue guns in sight!

Fall Fun and Halloween Revelry Around Town

I saw this pumpkin in the old part of downtown Frederick, and I was wondering if someone was having a bad day. It appears someone decided to make a statement about fall/harvest/halloween celebrations! Or maybe just having a little mischevious fall fun. It made me laugh though, so I thought I’d put it up on the blog!

I thought I’d share a couple of fun activities for the Halloween weekend. We don’t do scary Halloween at our house – Mom is into the fun and not the fear. I am all into the pumpkins and the large quantities of candy. Monsters and crazy men with axes – not so much. There are plenty of easy-going family activities going on this weekend for those of you who share my sensitive nature- so here are a couple of links:

The Montgomery Village Foundation is holding its annual Halloween Spooktacular at the Lake Marion Community Center on Friday night from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm.

Downtown Silver Spring will have its Monster Mash on Saturday from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm at Silver Plaza. There will be a costume contest, hay rides (I am not sure how this will be accomplished in downtown Silver Spring, but there you go!) and other fun family activities.

The City of Gaithersburg is hosting Halloween Family Fun Night on Saturday from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm. Activities will be held at the Concert Pavillion next to the City Hall, and there will be games, crafts and other activities.

Two churches will be hosting big fall harvest events this weekend, and each event is open to everyone. The Church of the Redeemer is holding a Harvest Festival on Friday night from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at the Maryland Soccerplex in Germantown. Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg holds its annual Harvest Party on Saturday night from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Admission to this event is one unopened bag of candy per child.

Please feel free to leave a comment if you know of any other Halloween activities that would be fun for families (ie. they don’t involve actors with fake blood hiding behind trees in the woods!)

Fall Frolic at Glen Echo

Glen Echo Park

Glen Echo Park in Glen Echo is hosting its annual Fall Frolic for families this coming Saturday, October 31st from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm. Kids (and adults too, I would imagine!) can wear their Halloween costumes and participate in a costume parade, paint pumpkins, and go trick or treating at the parks theaters and galleries. Most activities are free, with a few costing just $1. We love Glen Echo, and this should be a really fun event.

Air and Scare at the Air and Space Museum

Tomahawk Aircraft

This scary looking plane is the Tomahawk fighter that is hanging from the ceiling as you enter the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The Udvar-Hazy Center is the museum annex that is located right next to Dulles Airport, and the Center has some incredible stuff. You can find a real Space Shuttle, a high-speed Concord, and the Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan in WWII, among many others. If you are a military buff, the Center has fighter jets from all eras. You can even watch super close-up take-offs and landings of the airplanes from the Museum’s control tower.

It is really an amazing place – worth a visit just on its own. As an added incentive, however, the Air and Space Museum’s annex is hosting a fun event for Halloween called Air and Scare. From 2 pm to 8 pm on Saturday, October 24th, the Museum will have activities for families, including trick or treating stations, “spooky” expiriments, a costume parade, and much more. There will also be characters from Star Wars available for photo ops. (Yes, I admit it! – We have strong Star Wars geek tendencies at our house.) You can get more information on this fun event at the link above. Admission to the Museum is FREE, but the Museum charges $15 per car for parking. All Air and Scare activities are also FREE.