This week between Christmas and New Year’s, posting will be light as my husband’s taken the week off and the whole family and I are personally visiting lots of new places of hands-on learning and entertainment. 

In the meantime, here are some more links of ideas for your own discoveries this week:

• Venture to a free nature center you haven’t yet tried out, maybe the Rock Creek Park Nature Center and Planetarium, National Wildlife Visitor Center or other local nature center (scroll down for link list.)
• See all that gift packaging recycled at a recycling center.
• Visit the Maryland Science Center for oodles of interactive science play for kids toddler on up, and if you have kids 8 years old and up, be sure to spring for tickets to the special exhibit DaVinci: The Genius.
• Get a sitter and go see Avatar in 3D on the big screen, don’t wait for it to go to DVD.  Trust me.  The visual experience reminded me of seeing my first IMAX, The Dream is Alive, when I was a junior high hayseed on my first visit to DC at the Air and Space Museum.  Rated PG-13, I believe Avatar is appropriate for kids middle school and up.
• Go duckpin bowling (thanks Patti!) in White Oak – my kids and I have been twice this break already.  Or check out other lanes in the area.
• Go hear free Native American storytelling, and then chow down at the yummiest cafeteria in the Smithsonian family!

Need more ideas?  Type your ideal outing adjectives into the search box at left and then explore the findings in the APISS archives.  Happy hunting!

I’ll be back online soon reporting on the fruits of our field research for your own family fun in 2010!