Eight Family-Friendly Things to Stream This Weekend in Boston
Get the kids (and yourself) off the couch.
Parents, we know it’s not easy to keep the kids entertained without leaving the house. Keep your weekend full with our roundup of fun livestreams from Boston people and places.
ImprovBoston Draws Your Conclusions in Once Upon a Doodle
This weekly improvised show takes suggestions from its virtual audience (that’s you and your kids) and spins them into silly stories and drawings. If everyone enjoys it, maybe it can turn into an off-screen game around the house—admit it, you’ve been waiting for an excuse to order an easel online.
Free, Sundays, 6 p.m., Twitch
Baby Music Time with a Yoga Twist
Evan of Jamaica Plain’s Blissful Monkey Yoga Studio is offering online versions of his music-based classes, one for all ages at 9:30 a.m., and another for babies at 1 p.m. every day but Saturday. Testimonials from parents on his page praise him as a charming presence with seemingly endless well of ideas to get kids moving and provide a bit of structure to days that can feel like blobs of time.
Free, daily, Facebook
Let Watson Adventures Give Your Family Something to Come Together Over: Trivia
In the before-time, Watson Adventures used to create neat scavenger hunts that had participants running around a number of U.S. cities including Boston. They can’t do that anymore, so, in addition to a number of virtual scavenger hunts, they’ve also launched a family trivia night. The questions are intended for families whose youngest participant is at least 10, with topics including “cartoon characters, snack foods, board games, famous places, songs, and surprising moments in history.”
$45-$75, Saturdays, 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. and Sundays, 1 p.m., Watson Adventures website
Photo by K Ellenbogen
Catch Up with the Creatures of the New England Aquarium
Boston has a most excellent aquarium which is one of the many, many local treasures you cannot experience right now. But throughout quarantine they’ve been livestreaming “Virtual Visits” every day at 11 a.m., with representatives checking in on the various animals who call the place home and answering viewer questions. The aquarium’s website also has activities for young aspiring oceanographers.
Free, daily, Facebook
Photo provided
Anne Ku Teaches Your Family Ukulele
Though she’s quarantining in the U.K. presently, Anne Ku is a longtime Boston resident who’s offering ukulele classes through Zoom. You’ve got one lying around from when you thought you’d be the next Zooey Deschanel, don’t you? If not, they’re pretty cheap. Ku’s “Ukulele Boot Camp” is a seven-week course, but you can drop on any one class for $15. You only need to know how to hold and tune the instrument. At the link above she offers a variety of other classes at all skill levels.
$10-$99, multiple days, Zoom
Urbanity Dance Helps Your Kids Keep Moving
Dance might be a fun, artistic way to foster awareness of the body in a time when it might seem to have nothing to do. Prolific local dance troupe Urbanity is offering two classes aimed at kids during quarantine. Angelica Monteiro teaches Sunday Hip Hop at noon every Sunday for kids 6-12 years old, for a suggested donation of $10. The last Friday of every month is Urbanity’s Friday Family Dance Party.
Free-$10, Sundays and last Fridays, Instagram
Travel Back in Time with Pay-Per-HAP VIP Watch Parties
Cambridge-based storyteller Judith Kalaora founded her company History at Play in 2010 to, in her words, “chronicle the lives of influential and often forgotten women.” Each Friday during quarantine, she’s inhabiting the role of a different historical figure. This time it’s Hedy Lamarr, a mid-20th century polymath who was a popular actress and film producer as well as an engineer who co-developed a torpedo guidance system during World War II. Her innovations are still employed in modern Bluetooth and wifi technology.
$25, Fridays, 7:30 p.m., Facebook
The Library Offers a Grimm Escape
The Boston Public Library is hosting a variety of online games for bored teens in quarantine. This one is a modified version of an escape room, meant for player aged 13-18, and hosted by Puzzle Break, the Seattle-based company who pioneered the craze in the U.S. The team must cooperate to save a fantasy realm from an evil witch. There’s a limited number of participants for each session, but the game will run weekly at least through the end of May.
Free, Tuesdays or Wednesdays, 4 p.m., Zoom
Image via Clyde Peterson
The Uniquely Animated Family Drama of Torrey Pines
This film’s coming-of-age story might appeal to teens, and perhaps provide some perspective, because whatever any given teen’s travails might be, they probably haven’t been kidnapped by their schizophrenic mother and taken across the country while also beginning to realize their gender wasn’t the one assigned to them at birth. That, however, is how the film’s creator, Clyde Peterson, came of age. The superficially innocent look of Peterson’s paper cutout animation underscores the serious, complex psychological themes. It streams via ArtsEmerson.
Free, through May 10, YouTube
