San Francisco

This weekend, Target (you know, that place where you buy diapers and bathroom cleaner and toys and the occasional dress or shirt) presents Arts & Wonder, a free family event with free general admission to six of San Francisco's leading museums and free art activities and performances.

This weekend-long marathon of free family fun kicks off Friday, July 16, 2010 from 5–8:45 pm at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, where you can turn Target's canine mascot Bullseye into a work of Andy Warhol-inspired "Pup" art and watch a ballet performance celebrating the work of Impressionist painter Edgar Degas. General admission and activities and performances are free, but if you want to see the Birth of Impressionism exhibition (highly recommended!) you'll have to get a special timed ticket—$15 for adults, $10 for children 6–17, and free for kids 5 and under.

If you're looking for a fun and unique overnight experience for the family, why not consider sleeping over at a museum? Local institutions including the California Academy of Sciences, the Aquarium of the Bay, and the USS Hornet Museum all offer exciting programs where families, youth groups, and classes can spend the night. It'll kind of be like the movie Night at the Museum, except that the dinosaurs and dioramas won't come alive after hours (we hope)!

The California Academy of Sciences launched its new Penguins and Pajamas program this summer. Kids 6 and over and their adult chaperones can camp out overnight at the museum on June 18, July 16, and August 13, 2010. Starting at 6:30 pm, overnight guests can explore the Academy after hours, attend a special penguin talk, and take in a planetarium show. Settle in for storytime before bed with cookies, milk, and Pierre the Penguin, the Academy's new children's book about its famous wetsuit-wearing penguin. Breakfast is in the Academy Café, and the whole experience ends at 8:30 am.

King Tut is in the news again this week. While it seems he had some pretty miserable health problems, he also had a lot of really beautiful and amazing stuff, much of which is on view through March 28, 2010 at San Francisco's de Young Museum. If you haven't seen the show yet, this weekend may be the time to do so, because it's free! That's right, this Saturday and Sunday, February 20 and 21, admission to Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs will be absolutely free, courtesy of the generous folks at Target

The only catch is that the free tickets to see Tut are handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, and a limited number of people can go through the exhibition each day. Expect the free tickets to be gone early in the day. There's a limit of four tickets per adult, and tickets will be timed and dated. The museum box office will open at 8:30 am on Saturday and Sunday; the first exhibition entry is at 9 am.

Directly underneath the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge sits one of the Bay Area's most evocative and exciting attractions: Fort Point. Fort Point was constructed on the northern tip of San Francisco in the 1850s to guard the entrance to the Golden Gate. It's the only 19th-century masonry fort located east of the Mississippi, and it's been run by the National Park Service as a National Monument since 1970. It's always well worth an outing, especially if a special event such as this weekend's Civil War Living History Days happens to be taking place.

Familar to fans of the movie Vertigo (it's shown in the scene where Jimmy Stewart fishes Kim Novak out of the Bay), Fort Point is sits right underneath the southern end of the bridge and commands a superlative view of the Golden Gate and San Francisco Bay. Despite the traffic whizzing by overhead, it's not hard to imagine what this place would have been like a century and half ago when it was an active military intallation, and of course this stretch of the imagination is made easier by the living historians on hand at the fort this weekend.

San Francisco's Aquarium of the Bay offers free admission this week for Marin County residents, from Monday, January 25 through Thursday, January 28, 2010. Aquarium of the Bay is providing free admission in celebration of its recent transition into a nonprofit nature center. As the only aquarium dedicated to showcasing the diverse aquatic life of the San Francisco Bay and its watershed, Marin County residents are encouraged to come out and meet their underwater neighbors.

To get free admission to the Aquarium of the Bay, Marin County residents must present one proof of residency: a valid driver's license or ID card with Marin County address, utility bill, or a bank statement that includes your Marin County home address, along with photo ID.

Happy Zoo Year! January is a great month to visit the San Francisco Zoo, especially since you can take advantage of free admission for kids for the entire month! As part of its New Year's celebration, the zoo offers one free admission with one paid adult's admission for children ages 4–14 who color and bring in a penguin coloring sheet (downloadable from the zoo's website), or a hand-colored image of their favorite zoo animal.

All children must be accompanied by a paying adult, one coloring sheet must be presented per child, and this deal cannot be combined with any other offer.

The San Francisco Zoo is located at Sloat Boulevard and the Great Highway in San Francisco. Winter hours are 10 am to 4 pm (last admission at 3:30 pm). Regular admission prices are $15 adults, $12 seniors 65+, and $9 children 4–14; children 3 and under are free. For more information, visit www.sfzoo.org or call (415) 753-7080.

Looking for something to do this weekend that doesn't involve Halloween? Two interesting new exhibitions open at local museums this weekend that could be perfect outings for your family.

At Sausalito's Bay Area Discovery Museum, families can explore the hidden habitats and secret lives of forest animals in the special exhibition Animal Secrets, which runs from tomorrow through May 9, 2010. Specially designed for children ages 3–8, Animal Secrets uses imagintive role-play and hands-on activities to help children discover nature from an animal's point of view. Environments to be explored include a stream, meadow, woodland, cave, and naturalist's tent.

The Bay Area Discovery Museum is open Tuesday–Friday 9 am–4 pm and weekends 10 am–5 pm. Admission is $8 for children 1–17 and seniors 62+ and $10 for adults; free for children under 1 and members.

For more information, visit www.baykidsmuseum.org or call (415) 339-3900.