Wheee! It's Free! 2nd Sundays at San Diego's New Children's Museum
Looking for free museum admission for the whole family? Target stores sponsors family-friendly free or reduced-priced admission days and arts & culture events across the country.
These free and frugal fun opportunities are available in 34 major cities. For example, the unbelievably modern and cool New Children’s Museum in San Diego is free the second Sunday of every month. You save $10 admission per person; that admission price is for each adult and each child.
So by going to the museum on the Target-sponsored second Sunday, a parent and child save $20; a savings of $40 for a family of four. And the New Children’s Museum stays open an additional two hours on second Sundays.!
How do you find out what free or frugal family fun Target sponsors in your area? Click on this link and select a city. It’s that simple!
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Joy to the Free!
*Want to learn more about Target? Read the book, On Target: How the World’s Hottest Retailer Hit a Bull’s-Eye.
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Learn about unique and exotic pets from reptiles to rabbits at Petco’s monthly free and family-friendly educational event called “Meet the Critters.” This weekend, Nov. 5 and Nov. 6, the Russian Tortoise is featured. From 1pm to 2pm kids and guests of all ages can meet this friendly critter who has a personality much like a dog’s. The free event is great for kids who can participate in hands-on activities, while learning about interesting pets.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for free ice cream at Marble Slab Creamery today, Sept. 28! Some people love great ice cream so much that they take culinary classes from colleges online in an effort to perfect their own recipes.
Marble Slab and its sister company, Maggie Moos Ice Cream and Treatery, are both handing out mini-waffle cone ice cream concoctions from 3 to 6pm today! I’m going to try the Cookie Dough Drizzle!
The catch? Not all ice cream shops are participating. California, for example, has only one shop offering the free ice cream, but thankfully for me, the shop isn’t too far away.
So before you drive, check HERE for participating Marble Slab Creameries and HERE for participating Maggie Moos.
Enjoy the free fun!
Thanks to the annual Smithsonian Museum Day, Free Fun Guides has something to look forward to every last Saturday in September! But it also means museum lovers have to make some tough choices — which of the hundreds of participating museums to see for FREE!
Smithsonian Magazine created Museum Day as a way to share the spirit of the Smithsonian museums, which offer free admission every day. Through the magazine’s sponsorship, hundreds of museums across the U.S. are opening their doors for free to anyone who shows a Museum Day Ticket. Its easy to get the Museum Day Ticket, which admits two people to a participating museum. First Sign Up Here for the free ticket. The ticket is emailed to you and then you have to print it out.
A pretty simple way of getting into a top rated museum for FREE!
(Not a museum type? Check out the Free Admission to National Parks and Public Lands on the same day, Saturday, Sept. 24!)
Get back to nature on a national scale and visit a National Park for FREE on Saturday, Sept. 24. All 392 National Parks and all other national public lands are admission-free for National Public Lands Day. The fee-free day for national parks, forests, trails, monuments and other public lands falls on the same day as the Smithsonian Museum Day, when hundreds of U.S. museums are also admission free.
National Environmental Education Foundation
If you love the outdoors, consider signing up or just show up for one of the volunteer projects at dozen of public lands sites on Saturday. Spend the morning helping clean up and restore our national natural treasures, then spend the afternoon just enjoying and exploring them.
Target sponsors hundreds of free fun things to do in 34 major U.S. cities. These free opportunities to experience the arts and culture run from free admission days at major art museums to two-for-one tickets for family-friendly plays to free ethnic festivals.
Where are these Target free fun things to do? Find them here!
Atlanta
Baltimore
Boston
Charlotte
Chicago
Cleveland
Dallas/Ft. Worth
Denver
Detroit
Ft. Lauderdale
Houston
Indianapolis
Kansas City
Long Beach
Los Angeles
Memphis
Milwaukee
Miami
Minneapolis/St. Paul
New Orleans
New York
Orange County. CA
Philadelphia
Phoenix
Portland
Raleigh
Richmond
Sacramento
San Diego
San Francisco Bay Area
Seattle
St. Louis
Tampa
Washington, D.C.
Where the First U.S. Pretzels Were Baked © www.discoverlancasterpa.com
Celebrate National Pretzel Day year-long for FREE in the pretzel-making capitol of the U.S. — Lancaster County, PA., where the first U.S. commercial pretzel bakery was established in Lititz in 1861 by Julius Sturgis.
Twist it Up!
For free pretzel fun visit the Intercourse Pretzel Factory and get a free 10-minute tour where you can learn to hand twist pretzels. This bakery is one of the few left that twists its hard pretzels by hand.
Founded in Lancaster in 1946, Herr Foods began as a potato chip factory and moved over the county line to Chester Co.. While it didn’t start producing pretzels until 1981, you can see how they do it, with their free guided factory tour.
Celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, you can visit the historic Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery, in Lititz. Although they no longer commercially make their pretzels here, this is where U.S. pretzels began. See the original ovens built by Julius Sturgis and learn the history of pretzel baking in America in a small museum. Frugal fee of $3 adults, $2 children for the tour.
You might get your free fun in if the bakery is offering fresh-from-the-oven pretzel samples in their storefront bakery.
*Thanks to contributor Judy Colbert for the pretzel tours tip!
Know of any other pretzel, bakery or other fun food tours? Email us! editor@freefunguides.com
Scoop up some free ice cream!
One of the Free Fun Guides editors’ favorite free things to do is treating ourselves to a Free scoop of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream every year. So Cone & Get It on on Tuesday, April 12!
What do you have to do to get this free scoop of Ben & Jerry’s? Just show up at the nearest Ben & Jerry’s (find locations here) 12 – 8pm and ask for a free scoop!
Some stores may limit the selection to certain flavors but hey, it’s free!
On the road but don’t know where the nearest Ben & Jerry’s is? Download the new Scoop of Happiness app for iPhone and Droid users.
Want some more free fun? Sign up for Ben & Jerry’s ChunkMail to get the inside tips on new flavors and freebies. You’ll get a Buy One Get One Free ice cream offer on your half-birthday, too!
FREE LEGOS!
My young nephews, Hayden and Max, are LEGO maniacs. And who could blame them? I love the colorful bricks that connect like a puzzle to create 3D worlds of wonder.
And your child, ages 6 to 14, can get a FREE mini-build set if you happen to have a LEGO store nearby. One day each month (usually the first Tuesday in the U.S.), LEGO stores offer a free special model workshop with a mini-kit often tied into a holiday. Kids get to build and take the LEGOs home, for free. Like the Christmas tree pictured here.
So what could be be better than free LEGOs? How about signing up for the Free LEGO Fan Club? A free 2-year subscription to LEGO magazine comes with membership, and in the current issue, there’s a coupon for a free child’s ticket to LEGOLAND with any adult admission.
Free times three!
Play on!
If you love going to Borders, you’ll want to maximize the free fun, all of it family-friendly, that the bookseller has to offer.
Join in on Family Game Night tonight (Jan. 27) at Borders across the U.S. Find fun board games in the cafe, such as Sort it Out, Top Trumps and Billionaire. Game time is 6pm and is best for ages 6 and up. (We’re waiting to find out if Borders will continue this Thursday night tradition for the rest of the year.)
Like most family oriented bookstore, Borders offers free storytimes throughout the month. Check will your local store to see when the free fun happens.
Have you gotten your Borders Rewards card yet? It’s Free and you can sign up online or in store. With the Rewards card you’ll get coupons in your email for discounts online and instore, free shipping for online purchases of $25 and 30% off hardcover books. You can upgrade to Borders Rewards Plus — it usually costs $20 but they have an offer to get it $10 right now. You’ll get a coupon book worth $100 in discounts for upgrading.
Want to get into the Digital book age? You can do it for Free on your PC, laptop or mobile phone with Borders FREE e-reader app. Tap into 1 million public domain titles for FREE by downloading them onto the free app.
Borders online also offers dozens of free videos with interviews of fave authors, concerts and quick cooking lessons. My favorite? How to make olive oil pizza dough from the cookbook Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.
*Disclosure: This is not an ad. No money or other compensation was exchanged for this post.