Free Family Events This Weekend! (February 16-18)

Brookfield Place’s Lunar New Year celebration will take place this Saturday! Photo via artsbrookfield.com.

Have an amazing weekend without opening your wallet! For even more activity inspiration, check out our Weekend Planner.

Friday, February 16

NYC Lunar New Year Students Day
10am-12:30pm & 12:30-3pm
Lincoln Center
All Ages
This Friday, students are invited to Lincoln Center to celebrate the Lunar New Year! Festivities include performances by the National Dance Institute, New York Philharmonic musicians, and the Lang Lang International Music Foundation, calligraphy art workshops, red envelop decorating, a Sugar Sculpture Folk Art demo, and more.

19th New Year Firecracker Ceremony & Cultural Festival
11am-3:30pm
Sara D. Roosevelt Park
All Ages
Celebrate the Lunar New Year with spectacle at this ceremony, full of firecrackers and cultural programming.

Saturday, February 17

Lunar New Year
2pm
Brookfield Place
All Ages
This family-friendly performance (which includes a lion dance) is a great way to celebrate the Lunar New Year with the whole family!

Saturday, February 17-Sunday, February 18

33rd Annual Half Moon Sword Dance Festival
Saturday: 1-3:30pm; Sunday: 12:30-2:30pm
Various locations throughout NYC
All Ages
Ten teams will perform the sword dance at various public locations across the city for free. Check website for times and locations.

Sunday, February 18

Losar Family Day: Himalayan New Year Celebration
12-4pm
The Rubin Museum
All Ages
Visit the Rubin Museum for an afternoon of arts, crafts, food and music in celebration of Losar, the Himalayan New Year. Paint with mud, interact with therapy dogs, drink Himalayan butter tea, go on a family gallery tour, and enjoy traditional Tibetan music.

Once Upon A Mattress

Bring your kids. Bring your parents. Bring your favorite pajamas! Once Upon a Mattress is back on Broadway, and it&rsquo;s &ldquo;pure let&rsquo;s-be-kids entertainment&rdquo; (New Yorker) fit for ages 7 to 107! Two-time Tony&reg; winner Sutton Foster stars as Princess Winnifred the Woebegone, alongside royalty of stage and screen Michael Urie and Queen of Comedy Ana Gasteyer. Adapted for a new generation by Amy Sherman-Palladino (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), this uproarious retelling of The Princess and the Pea introduces the unapologetically eccentric Winnifred to an uptight kingdom, where she charms, delights, and dances her way to the top&hellip; of a stack of mattresses. So give the babysitter the night off and your kids a night on the town &ndash; you'll all live happily ever laughter! Get tickets at&nbsp;<a href="https://onceuponamattressnyc.com/">https://onceuponamattressnyc.com/</a>

The Language Workshop For Children

After offering both group and private lessons for many years and analyzing the results over&nbsp;time, The&nbsp;Language Workshop for&nbsp;Children, founded&nbsp;in1973, has decided&nbsp;to emphasize private remote lessons at shorter intervals.&nbsp;Our skilled educators&nbsp;will&nbsp;focus their attention exclusively on the&nbsp;unique needs, learning style, and interests of your child.&nbsp;This allows a&nbsp;bond&nbsp;to develop&nbsp;between teacher and student, which&nbsp;has been&nbsp;shown to&nbsp;drastically improve retention.&nbsp; OUR METHOD&nbsp; Developed by the pioneers of language education for children, our programs bring decades of&nbsp;experience to your living room with individualized, active language classes. Each lesson is based on proven methods and materials perfected to capture your&nbsp;child&rsquo;s attention during the ages when he/she absorbs information the fastest. &nbsp;&nbsp; While other online language classes rely on videos for passive learning, we deliver interactive, and engaging lessons with native-fluent teachers. In addition, all our teachers are certified in the Thibaut&nbsp;Technique which has been featured&nbsp;in the New York&nbsp;Times, the&nbsp;Wall Street Journal, and many other well-respected&nbsp;publications.&nbsp;&nbsp; Our short one-on-one lessons give kids the chance to focus, hear pronunciation clearly, and practice speaking in their target language.  THE PROCESS&nbsp; First, students have a short meeting with our Director&nbsp;Francois&nbsp;Thibaut, in&nbsp;English, with&nbsp;their parent(s)&nbsp;present.&nbsp;Mr. Thibaut&nbsp;will determine&nbsp;the best course of study, including&nbsp;class length and&nbsp;frequency, the&nbsp;right&nbsp;teacher, lesson&nbsp;format and materials (or action games for younger students.) Then the learning&nbsp;begins!&nbsp;Mr. Thibaut will continually check in on your child&rsquo;s learning to assure they are getting the most&nbsp;of&nbsp;their&nbsp;classes.&nbsp; OTHER OFFERINGS&nbsp; We can also help your child prepare for: the French subject tests for SAT, AP &amp; CLEP, the European DELF/DALF, the Canadian TEF and other standardized testing, college entry exams, studying or traveling abroad,&nbsp;cultural changes when moving abroad,&nbsp;and much more!&nbsp; &nbsp;

Adventuring Portal

<a name="m_-1473885667065203258__Hlk72147528"></a>Adventuring Portal runs Dungeons and Dragons (D&amp;D) games for kids.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We have created a safe online space for tweens and teens to learn and play D&amp;D. Our D&amp;D Summer Camp session are a one-week experience.&nbsp;&nbsp;Monday &ndash; Friday.&nbsp;&nbsp;Each day will be 3 hours of gaming (with 2 breaks build in).&nbsp;&nbsp;15 total gaming hours for $180.&nbsp;&nbsp;If you have played with us before, you are entitled to 10% off.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Need your kids, nieces or nephews, grand kids or neighbor&rsquo;s kids to be occupied for a bit so you can get work done &amp; take care of your to-do list? Maybe your tween or teen is still a bit isolated and craves connection with their peers? Whether your teen/tween has played D&amp;D before or is brand-new to the experience, this safe space brings players together to have fun and solve problems as a team in ways few other online opportunities do. All our games focus on experiential learning.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our players leave knowing all the basic game play as well as experiencing: teamwork, bravery, compassion, generosity, negotiation, improvisation, gamer etiquette, strategy, critical thinking, problem solving, cartography and probability - all through online D&amp;D adventuring! We are an inclusive organization and welcome gamers who are LGBTQIA+ and those on any spectrum.&nbsp; All girls&rsquo; groups available.&nbsp; I am a parent, a certified elementary school and middle school math teacher and last summer in the midst of the mess started&nbsp;Adventuring Portal, an&nbsp;online Dungeons &amp; Dragons&nbsp;business&nbsp;for kids. There are so many benefits to playing D&amp;D and I hope you will consider us as a great way for your child to safely socialize, grow as people and have a great time.