🎨 5 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (27–28 July)

Hello DiLFs!

Exciting news: I’ve created a massive free download called Close your eyes and point: year-round activities and venues that are always great for kids. 

As the title suggests, it contains loads (more than 60) of ideas for child-friendly things to do in London. They’re all available year-round, so you can rely on them whenever you need to keep your children (and you) occupied.

Want a copy? All you have to do is recommend Dads in London to ONE person. That’s it! As soon as that person has signed up to the newsletter, you’ll get the download automatically.

Thank you hugely for your help in spreading the word about Dads in London!

Jeff xx

PS Whenever I update the free download, I’ll send you a new copy immediately. 

1: Attend a family fete with a bonkers range of activities

Museum of the Home Family Celebration Day: A Museum Takeover
Sunday 28 July, 11:00–16:00
136 Kingsland Road, E2 8EA
FREE 

OK, so here’s the gist: Museum of the Home has a permanent exhibition called Rooms Through Time, which contains full-size examples of living areas from various years in the past. It’s recently been refurbished to allow visitors to walk through the rooms (rather than peer in from a distance), and to include rooms from a broader range of years – including an imagined room from the future, which I’m sure won’t be an embarrassment in a few decades’ time. 

Anyway! While most of us don’t throw a massive “family celebration day” whenever we redecorate, that’s exactly what the museum is doing this weekend. There are many activities throughout the day, each one reflecting (often tenuously) an aspect of the exhibition. 

For example, you can learn to play traditional African songs on marimbas. And construct a den using sensory materials. And fold paper into swan sculptures.  And make a zine about your own experiences of home. And watch a performance where bubbles will glow and smoke. And be enthralled by a mythical performance by a dance company. 

Utterly bonkers, somewhat trippy, bound to be incredible. 

Find out more: https://www.museumofthehome.org.uk/whats-on/events/family-fete-museum-takeover/ 

While you’re there… 

👍️ Columbia Road Flower Market is open between 08:00 and 15:00 on Sundays only, and it’s less than a ten-minute walk away. One idiot reviewer brought down the average Google rating by complaining that he’s allergic to flowers, while another gave it one star despite having never visited. One very valid reason for many other one-star reviews is how busy it is: it’s heaving by the afternoon. But if you go early and don’t intend to drive there, you should be fine. And the flowers are beautiful. 

👍️ Shoreditch Park Playground was rebuilt last year, and Hackney Council have done an excellent job with it. There’s a fantastic hillside slide with climbing tower, balance beams, a sand-play area, and a variety of equipment for wheelchair users – including a “chair swing” and an accessible roundabout. The one drawback is that they’ve planted a load of wildflowers around the place, which are now taller than many three-year-olds; they’re very pretty but can make it hard to spot your kids easily. 

👍️ The Towpath Cafe is a bit of an institution. It’s so famous that – in common with the Granny Smith apple, John Travolta and Iceland (the supermarket) – it has its own Wikipedia page. The menu is one of those “big list handwritten on a blackboard” things, where you have to guess the portion size by how much it costs. There’s a focus on high-quality ingredients, and the location is hard to beat. 

2: “Enjoy” a day of gruesome greenery at Kew Gardens

Horrible Science at Kew Gardens
Saturday and Sunday, 10:00–17:00 (and every day until 1 September 2024)
Kew Gardens, Richmond, TW9 3AE
FREE with entry ticket to the gardens (adults £22, children 4–15 £6, under-4s free for weekend tickets when booked in advance)

Kew says it’s “making science fun” for the summer, and clearly I’m not their target audience for this information. 

If you want to make me excited about an event, promise me pop music from the 90s, free IPA all day, and a venue that’s reachable via a short walk or the Elizabeth Line. If you want me to be thoroughly unexcited (but my children in raptures), offer me activities like “Foul Fungi” (fungi “can be as vile as the most gruesome greenery!”), “Revolting Roots” (“you might not fancy the disgusting delicacies on offer in this underground diner”) and “Vicious Bug-Eating Vegetation”) (“sniff and touch some of Kew’s most vile, vicious and villainous vegetation”).

I’m taking one for the team, is what I’m saying. I can’t think of a worse way to spend a day, but my eldest is already busy googling the world’s grossest plants in anticipation. 

Find out more: https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens/whats-on/horrible-science 

While you’re there… 

👍️ You’re in Kew Gardens. Make the most of the rest of it – which is far less torturous. 

3: Learn the art of graffiti together (and have a backup career at the ready)

Kids Graffiti painting class with Art Play
Saturday 27 July, 10:30
Art Play, Old Spitalfields Market 16 Horner Square, E1 6EW
£60 (!)

While reading the event description, I genuinely expected them to reassure us by saying, “We’ll tell them it’s NOT ok to mess up shopfronts or write ‘Jocasta woz ere’ on the back of a toilet door.” But nope: it’s all positive stuff about being inspired by the vibrant street art in East London, learning how to use markers and spray paints, then “applying their new knowledge in a real-world setting” by freestyling on designated walls. 

Maybe illegal graffitiing isn’t cool anymore. Maybe all participants have to sign an honour code at the start of the session. Maybe the teacher is so bloody good that people will be thankful for our kids’ desecration of historical landmarks. Who knows. I’m sure it’s all been thought through, and I’m not going to worry about it anymore because it sounds amazing and – as adults can participate too – I want to have a go as well. 

Find out more: https://www.artplaylondon.com/service-page/kids-graffiti 

While you’re there… 

👍️  The venue for the graffiti class is a studio inside Old Spitalfields Market, which is a destination in its own right. There’s been a market on the site for over 350 years, and the Victorian buildings and stalls here were completely restored in 2018. You can buy clothes, food and lots of arts-and-craftsy stuff there – although I can’t be 100% sure you’ll find all the graffitiing paraphernalia you’ll need for your child’s next piece of bus shelter artwork. 

👍️  The Van Gogh immersive experience is around the corner. Artistic immersive experiences are everywhere these days, but this is one of the first, and – in my thoroughly non-expert opinion – one of the best. The final room with 360-degree images of his most famous work is legitimately (again, not an expert) wonderful. 

👍️  Brick Lane is a short walk away, so if you’re in the mood for a biryani, a bagel or – for a nice thematic tie-in – a Banksy, head here.

4: Paint the town (well, the Turbine Hall) yellow, blue and pink 

Uniqlo Tate Play: Oscar Murillo, The Flooded Garden
Saturday and Sunday, 10:30–18:00 (and every day until 26 August)
Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG
FREE

YESSSS: a new Uniqlo Tate Play activity! This one sounds like it could be the best yet. It takes place in the Turbine Hall (the massive entrance area), which is being transformed into a huge “painting garden”. Your job is to pick up a paintbrush and use wave-like strokes on a giant canvas to flood it with colour – specifically blues, bright yellows and pinks.  

The activity is inspired by Monet’s paintings of his flower garden in France, and builds on a series of paintings by the artist Oscar Murillo – who’s also the brains behind this collaborative project. (Murillo’s own paintings will be displayed in the South Tank of the Tate Modern for inspiration.) 

Unusually for Tate Play activities, there’ll be performances too: every Wednesday at 15:00, you can hear music from Mar, Río y Cordillera – a “folkloric mashup” consisting of almost 20 singers, musicians and percussionists from Colombia, whose instruments include a Colombian marimba, maracas, drums and wind instruments (says Google). 

Find out more: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/uniqlo-tate-play/uniqlo-tate-play-oscar-murillo-the-flooded-garden 

While you’re there…

👍️ It's a shame they de-wobblified the Millennium Bridge, because it would have been a child's dream. Thankfully, there are two new(ish) reasons your kids might want to walk along it after leaving Tate Modern: Harry Potter, and Guardians of the Galaxy. (I think the bridge features in both movies? I'm basing this information on Wikipedia because I've never seen either.) A third reason to “do the bridge” is seeing St Paul's from the other side of the river: it looks incredible.

5: Visit the most highly anticipated garden since Eden

Gardens at the Natural History Museum
Saturday and Sunday, 10:00–17:50 (and every day until the rest of time)
Cromwell Road, SW7 5BD
FREE (you don’t even need a free ticket – but you’ll still need a free ticket to enter the museum itself)

My son is fed up with the Natural History Museum because he’s been three times ever and that’s too much, apparently. This wouldn’t normally bother me, but right now we’re missing out on the most talked-about cultural moment since Taylor ‘n’ Travis became official. If I don’t want Monday’s watercooler chat to suffer, I need to find a way to get us there ASAP. 

The museum’s five acres of garden have been transformed to depict life on earth from the dinosaurs through to today – and as soon as you walk up the ramp from South Kensington’s tube tunnel, you’re inside it. The garden experience starts with a kind of 3D timeline of earth’s history: there are rocks, fossils and plants from different geological periods, showing how the world has evolved over 2.7 billion years. 

There’s also a massive bronze statue of a Diplodocus dinosaur, which was named “Fern” by a group of sensible school children who didn’t insist on Dino McDineface for reasons I’ll never understand. 

All of that is in the Evolution Garden, and next up is the Nature Discovery Garden – which has a network of ponds that contain tadpoles, frogs, newts, ducks and dragonflies. Throughout both gardens you’ll find paving stones that are embedded with crushed glass, pottery, and pieces of plastic to show how humans have had an impact on nature. 

Critics LOVE it and are raving about it in a way I’ve never seen. Maybe one day – when the Holocene epoch comes to an end – my child will allow us to visit it together.

Find out more: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/galleries-and-museum-map/our-gardens.html 

​​ While you’re there… 

👍️ The Design Museum these days isn’t so much “under the radar” as “parading past the radar with a marching band”, but it still gets only about 11% of the visitors that the Natural History Museum does. So: “under the radar” it is. While I dearly miss its annual Design of the Year awards, the museum’s other displays are usually worth a visit. A few weeks ago I recommended the new Barbie exhibition there, and – in case you’re wondering if I’ve changed my mind about suggesting it – I haven’t changed my mind about suggesting it. 

👍️ Dopamine Land is STILL going strong. It’s one of those multi-sensory experience thingammies that exist everywhere now, with infinity mirrors, a ball pond, floating lanterns, pillows to fight with, and lots of opportunities for Instagram-worthy photos. 

👍️ The ingeniously named Suzette is a nearby creperie that provides both sweet and savoury options. There’s also a children’s meal on offer: a small galette, a veg snack and a juice for £5.50.