Children and Family Friendly

Boston’s Carnival has been rolling since 1973, and its main day is one of the biggest Caribbean celebrations in the Northeast. The Grand Parade steps off in Roxbury and winds through Dorchester to Franklin Park, where masquerade bands in feathered, jeweled costumes — some of them months in the making — dance behind soca and…

A week before the Grand Parade, Boston Carnival hands the road to its next generation. Junior Carnival is the youth edition of the city’s long-running Caribbean celebration: kids and teens in full masquerade costume — feathers, rhinestones, crowns, wings — parade through Franklin Park with their own mas bands while families line the route and…

The littlest masqueraders get a day of their own at Franklin Park when the Boston Society of Caribbean Culture and Heritage stages its Kiddies Caribbean Carnival. Young children parade in small mas bands, decked out in the full sequins-feathers-and-regalia treatment, while soca plays and families cheer them through the park. The event exists to keep…

The Museum of Science straddles the Charles River dam between Boston and Cambridge, with hundreds of hands-on exhibits spread across three color-coded wings. The signature act is the Theater of Electricity, where a two-story Van de Graaff generator — among the world’s largest — throws real indoor lightning during live shows. Add the Hayden Planetarium…

The cobblestone plazas around Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall double as one of the country’s longest-running street-performance pitches, with acts working the crowds daily from late morning into the evening. On any given pass you might catch jugglers, acrobats, magicians, comics, or musicians ranging from electric violin to singer-songwriters — a rotating roster that mixes…

Boats leave Central Wharf, right beside the New England Aquarium downtown, and run out to Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary — some of the richest whale feeding grounds on the East Coast. Humpbacks are the headliners, breaching and tail-slapping close enough to hear, with fin whales, minkes, dolphins, and seabirds rounding out the cast. Aquarium…

Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park sits between the North End and the harbor, and on midsummer Sunday evenings its lawn becomes a free open-air cinema. The Friends of Christopher Columbus Park, the volunteer group that keeps the place blooming, put on the series, with films rolling at dusk under the park’s famous lighted trellis and the…

A Boston summer ritual going back more than two decades, Free Friday Flicks brings family blockbusters to the DCR Hatch Shell lawn on the Esplanade, presented with WBZ NewsRadio. The movie starts at sundown, but the evening starts earlier: families spread blankets while the Charles turns pink behind them, and the pre-show warms things up…

One evening each summer, the Boston Children’s Museum stays open after hours and turns its Fort Point waterfront home into a carnival, with game booths, performances, music, and carnival food for sale beside the landmark Hood Milk Bottle on Congress Street. The draw, beyond games and the prizes every kid walks away with, is the…