Free Family Days 2024
Thursday, October 24
10 am to 5 pm
Up, Up, and Away!
Join us at Chicago Children’s Museum for an exploration of flight. Visit our newest exhibit, Aim High: Soaring with the Tuskegee Airmen. Learn about careers in aviation with pilot cadets from local organization Tuskegee NEXT. Make your own pair of wings and soar your way through a miniature neighborhood. Build and test a flying machine in Tinkering Lab and create art about things that fly in the Art Studio. Even the youngest visitors can explore “things that go” in Pritzker Playspace!
Programming
Tuskegee NEXT: 10am-12pm and 1pm-3pm
Things with Wings: 10am-12pm and 1pm-3pm
Art Studio: 10:30am, 11:30am, 12:30pm, 1:30pm, 2:30pm, 3:30pm
Tinkering Lab: 10:30am, 11:30am, 12:30pm, 1:30pm, 2:30pm, 3:30pm
Pritzker Playspace: 10:30am, 11:30am, 12:30pm, 1:30pm
Museum entry is free for all on Free Family Days!
Advance tickets or reservations are not necessary for Free Family Days. Final admissions are allowed no later than 60 minutes before the museum closes. Find frequently asked questions and more information to help plan your visit here.
Prior Activities & Partners
On September 28, 2023 we explored the joyful and creative world of puppetry! We experienced the performance group Puppet Wonder Wagon’s stage show, created our own shadow puppets and put on a performance with the help of artist Anna Villanyi. After Free Family Day in the museum concluded, we greeted Amal, a 12-foot puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee child on a 6,000-mile journey across the United States, at the “Flyboy” Sculpture.
On May 25, 2023 we explored the theatrical arts with our friends at Chicago Children’s Theatre as they performed their interactive stage show, “The Red Kite Friendship Tour.” We also experienced the joy of dramatic play through puppet-making, puppetry performance, and theatrical sensory play.
On April 27, 2023 we celebrated Earth Month by making art out of natural and recycled materials with trilingual artist Selva Aparicio, interacting with live animals from the Flying Fox Conservation Fund like Roxy the Sloth, and using our senses to engage with natural materials!
On March 30, 2023 we traveled and adventured, practiced our skateboarding stance, made and decorated fingerboards, and played in a miniature skate park with Natty Bwoy Bikes & Boards. We explored skateboarding-inspired movement and poetry with performance group, Every house has a door and held tight to a circus wheel and defied gravity with CirquesExperience.
On February 23, 2023 we danced to the melodies and rhythms of West Africa with Kolaam Dance, we moved our bodies joyfully with Black Girls Dance, and found our inner superstar with K-Pop dance from the Korean Cultural Center of Chicago.
On January 26, 2023 we explored the wonders of sound with artist, Barbara Silverman; the surprising sounds that everyday objects can make with the Chicago Children’s Museum team; the science of sound at a Curiosity Station hosted by the Museum of Science and Industry; and an “instrument petting zoo” hosted by the Old Town School of Folk Music!