The New Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley at the Adventure Theatre at Glen Echo is a ton of silly, song-filled fun.  My kids were cracking up the entire time.  This production takes the classic book and series that we grew up with and grows it into a big, whimsical production with humor aimed right at the pre-k through elementary school set.

There’s a singing mail lady, a bratty but brainy brother, clueless parents (the kind in all the BEST kids’ movies and plays),  guys dressed up like girl hula dancers, talking paintings at the Louvre and a flat-as-a-pancake Stanley who gets to travel the world for the cost of a postage stamp.

My family and I laughed the hardest when Flat Stanley’s brother loves Harry Potter a little too much (going so far as to shout Expelliarmus! mid sibling brawl) and when Stanley has a very L.A. Story experience when he goes to visit his Hannah Montanaish friend on the West Coast.  And OK, especially when the male hula girls with hairy legs and black socks really got into shaking their grass skirts.

It’s a riot. 

The songs are also pretty cute.  They’re not the stuff of Disney animated films or Broadway musicals, but it’s family theatre, not RENT for kids.  We liked the  original compositions and the actors sung their hearts out.

It was one of our fave shows at the Adventure Theatre to date, and with my kids’ previous devotion to Go, Dog.  Go!;  Babe The Sheep Pig; Goodnight Moon and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, that says a lot.

Upcoming Showtimes

Friday evening 7pm March 12

Saturdays and Sundays 11am & 1:30pm until April 3

Spring Break Daytime Weekday Performances March 29 – April 1

ASL Interpreted and Autism-Friendly Performance – April 3 at 1:30pm

Weekday Fieldtrips for Schools at 10:30am, schedule here

Tickets available for weekday 10:30am performances depending on school field trip bookings

You can book a birthday party performance viewing (or a LIGHT SABER birthday party, my son covets this big time) too

And local youth actors are also putting on performances of Alice in Wonderland – check out the performance times for this show (I haven’t seen it) here.

Tickets:  Adults $15, Children 12 and under $12, all children must have  a seat

Highly recommend for your rainy weekend!

Tomorrow, Friday March 12th, those oft-mentioned DC area kids performers that inspire rabid fandom, Rocknoceros and The Great Zucchini, are performing together.  The goofiness and rocking starts at 6:30pm at the Children’s Learning Center in Rockville.

The Great Zucchini is the wacky comedic entertainer who taps directly into the preschooler brain, with over 12 years of experience making kids laugh.   Dude, he’s the only kids performer who has ever performed at DC Improv (and he’s also the reigning KING of the DC area kid bday party.) Rocknoceros jams to music for kids and their parents too, but don’t just trust me:  NPR named them “Best Family Music of 2009.”

Here’s the deets for their combo show tomorrow:

When: Friday March 12th

Time: 6:30pm, doors open at 6:00pm

Where: Children’s Learning Center, 4511 Bestor Drive, Rockville, MD 20853

Price: $10

Tickets can be purchased at the door but shows sometimes sell out, so you can also buy tickets now.

Please mark your calendars for a fun moms’ night out on Friday night March 19th at the Playseum in Bethesda.  Come join me for kids-free revelry and fabulous deals on the awesome children and baby clothing of Polarn O. Pyret.  Admission is totally free (and gives you the chance to scope out this awesome open gym/playland for kids gratis) and picking up some spring clothes for your kids and baby gifts for those on your list is optional of course.  But FUN is not optional…it’s a given!  RSVP here.

But I highly recommend the super high-quality clothes, and if you like them too, at this mom’s night out 20% off will be slashed from the prices and your choices will be mailed to your home two day air free of charge.

I personally heart the Polarn O. Pyret knit clothes for babies, kids and expectant moms too.  (In fact, if I didn’t already yearn to have another baby, these fabulous maternity tops would definitely put me over the edge.) The Polarn O. Pyret clothes totally remind of the stuff in the Crewcuts and Hannah Andersson catalogs…but the difference is that these Scandinavian knits, crisp cottons and outerwear last forever and are so classic-cute. Go ahead and browse here.

And the Polarn O. Pyret peeps are NOT paying me to say that.  (Maybe they’ll lob me a hostess pressie of a preppy button-down for Charlie or chic swimsuit for Eve, if I’m lucky.)

But what they ARE doing is hosting a girls’ night for all of us locals to get together and sip snacks and nibble on drinks (wait, you know what I mean) without me having to vacuum my house or mix up artichoke dip.  Afterward, if you’re free, we’ll head out to a bar in Downtown Bethesda…and you never know where the night will lead when moms are on the loose.

So who’s in?  RSVP your attendance on Friday night March 19th with an email to RSVPaparentinsilverspring@gmail.com.  I hope to see you there so I can thank you IN PERSON for reading this site!

National Building Museum Discover Engineering Family Day this Saturday

Reminder: Leave a comment, be entered to win $50!  Full details here.

SATURDAY & SUNDAY

Maple Sugaring Festival at Brookside Gardens, 11am-3pm both days, no registration required. Stop by and see an American tradition, watching the whole maple sugaring process from start to finish.  Everyone gets to sample a tasty treat too!

SATURDAY

Family Fun at The Electric Maid in Takoma Park: Let’s Pretend, 10:30am. Let’s Pretend will include an imaginative adventure with theater games and an interactive performance. Takoma Park’s very own Gretchen Weigel Doughty will lead the “actors” in a warm up, read a story, engage in exercise and experiments based and direct the groups performance. Fun for kids 8 and under! The event  will last approximately 45 minutes. Suggested donation is $5 per child. The Electric Maid is located at 268 Carroll St. NW near the Takoma Metro station.

Discover Engineering Family Day at the National Building Museum, 10am-4:30pm. Touch robots, make slime, build a few things, learn a bunch of things. The National Building Museum and the National Engineers Week Foundation invite you to debunk the myths of engineering and discover how professional engineers turn an idea into reality by participating in this free, hands-on and fun-filled festival.

African American Pioneers in Aviation at the National Air & Space Museum, 10am-3pm. Hands-on activities for kids and the chance to meet some of the original Tuskepee Airmen!

Magical Stories Out of Africa – free performance at The National Theatre, 9:30am & 11am, tickets distributed first-come-first-served 30 minutes prior to each performance, seating limited. Long before children heard Mother Goose rhymes or “Jack and the Beanstalk,” stories were told in Africa about wise lions, wily snakes, and how the world began.  Anna Mwalagho brings alive these tails in a cultural journey.  Helen Hayes Gallery at the National Theatre – 1321 Pennsylvania Ave, NW.

Black History Month Family Celebration at the National Postal Museum, 11am-3pm.  Family activities that celebrate the history of African-Americans in U.S. history and the postal service.

Rocknoceros Family Happy Hour at Jammin’ Java, 7pm. What’s a Rocknoceros Family Happy Hour? It’s a night out for the whole family, where the signature drink special is buy a beer, get a juice box, the kids hear their fave Rockno classic songs and the three guys even play some classic rock cover tunes for the parents.  $10 per person age 1 and older.

SUNDAY

Sixth and I Purim Party, 10am. Make your own costume, decorate Purim cards, assemble mishloach manot baskets and eat delicious hamentaschen. Bring your own king size pillow case for the costume making.  Cost is $8 per person/$18 per family in advance, $10/$20 at the door.

The Great Zucchini Performs Great Kids Village Silver Spring, 10:30am.  The children’s Adam Sandler takes the stage at this great children’s play space.  What could be better?  Melted snow?  Hey, we can’t have everything.

National Zoo’s Wild Side Stage: Lucas Miller Performs, 11am & 1pm.  This hilarious singing zoologist will entertain and educate kids.  Special exhibit tie-in at the Invertebrate Exhibit.  More info here.

Sunday Experiment for Families at the NASA Goddard Visitor Center, 1pm-3pm. Elementary school students and their families are invited to the Goddard Visitor Center on the third Sunday of every month, from September to May for a free afternoon of eye-opening, hands-on activities that will help you experience what it’s like to be a NASA engineer.

Chinese New Year Parade in Chinatown, 2pm-5pm. Bring in the year of the tiger with a roar. There will be lion and dragon dances and a five-story high firecracker to be be lit at 3:45 p.m.

Bring On the Comets [Comments] – a little background music for your listening pleasure…

First off, THANK YOU ALL for your patience as I work to iron out any wrinkles in the new A Parent in Silver Spring website design. I transitioned from homegrown Blogger to professional-website-trying-to-be-bigtime Wordpress.  This means there are still some tweaks to be made, but in the long run all will run more smoothly.

Some items we are still working out:

• Please view A Parent in Silver Spring on the web through a Firefox or Safari browser.  In Internet Explorer, the website currently cannot be viewed…save for a wonky double exposure of the top header.
• Some RSS feed subscribers may have been lost. If you would like to read updates to APISS through your Google reader or other feed reader, please resubscribe.
• Broken links are currently being fixed as fast as I find ‘em!

Some items that have been fixed:

• The Activities Calendar and School Open House Calendar have now been fixed so that you can view them and navigate as before.  (I have been researching other calendar softwares, and so far, even amongst those programs for which I would have to pay a pretty penny, I’ve found that Google’s capabilities really are the best.)
• Here’s the famous lost 100 Things to Do in Washington DC With Kids.  It will be periodically updated and will permanently live in the middle sidebar and footer of the page for your use.

The reward for your loyalty and patience - every month I will be giving away a gift card or gift certificate of at least $50. 

This monthly giveaway is totally separate to any other giveaways that I may hold on A Parent in Silver Spring or APISS Reviews.

To be entered for the monthly giveaways, all you have to do is comment on posts.  Here are the deets:

• Leave a comment on any new post (starting with this one, posts earlier than this one do not count.)
• Leave one comment per post – multiple comments on the same post will be counted just once.
• This means if I write 30 posts a month and you leave a comment on each one, you’ll be entered in the drawing 30 times…and um, them’s purty good odds.
• When you leave a comment, please click the FOLLOW button directly below the comment text box.  This way I can notify you that you are a winner.  (I HIGHLY recommend simply clicking the follow button and entering your email for notification of replies to your comment, rather than leaving the text to your email address within your comment – this is how you get gross spam.)
• Constructive criticism, differences of opinion = completely fine.  Offensive comments or spam = will be deleted.
• Friends and fellow bloggers are eligible.
• All winners will be drawn completely Randomly.
• All winners must reside in the United States.
• Comments sent to me via email are always appreciated, but will not be counted for this monthly giveaway series.

Additionally, every new subscriber to the A Parent in Silver Spring email feed, in which you receive new posts to the website in your email box (typically 5 times a week), will receive a bonus entry!  Subscribe here.

Going forward, featured businesses may provide the gift certificates and gift cards.  All giveaways in this series will be worth at least $50 each and require no further purchase of goods or services from the winner.

(Have a business you’d like to promote through giving a gift to gracious A Parent in Silver Spring reading parents?  Send me a line!)

This month the $50 is totally on me and will be COLD HARD CASH…well, sort of – it’s a VISA gift card, that I will send to the winner via certified mail.

So please leave comments, comments, comments galore!  Write what you like, what you don’t, what you think needs to be changed, events that are happening in your community, your own great finds…whatever!

Bring on the comments!