🎧 14 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (31 January–1 February)

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Hey DILFs!

It was my eldest son’s birthday party the other weekend, and the entertainer kicked things off with a few icebreaker questions (more “Do you like pizza?” and “How old are you?” than anything about working independently or ideal company culture). One question was “What’s your favourite colour?” and I was ASTOUNDED by how many kids said green.

Apparently, blue wins basically every poll going – then red, then purple – and green barely gets a look-in. So maybe children are different? Maybe they change their minds later on, once they’re less obsessed with Hulk, Kermit, Shrek, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Minecraft Creepers. Or maybe my son’s friends are all anomalies.

So obviously I’m crowdsourcing this…

What’s your child’s favourite colour? Let me know here!

Results next week.

Now onto the more useful stuff – what to do this weekend.

Cheers,

Jeff xx

PS Dads in London readers get 20% off adult tickets to The Organ in Space at Sinfonia Smith Square this Saturday: use the code ORGANDAY20. There’s more info about the event below.

1: Escape into a sweet, low-stakes show where the worst thing that happens is “more flowers”

Flyaway Katie
Saturday 31 January, 11:00 and 14:00
Half Moon Young People’s Theatre, 43 White Horse Road, London E1 0ND
£9 per person
Age guidance: 2–7

Nothing dates a children’s book faster than the main character’s name.

When Flyaway Katie was published in 2004, Katie was the ninth most popular girls’ name in the UK, which explains why the boys at my school would always guess “Katie” if we didn’t know a girl’s name – and we’d usually be right. Fast forward to today and it’s drifted down into the 400s, meaning you’re now statistically more likely to shout “Katie” across a playground and accidentally summon someone’s mum.

All of which makes this adaptation feel slightly like a time capsule from peak-2000s primary school.

Based on Polly Dunbar’s book, the story follows Katie on a fairly grey day, staring at the bright birds in the picture on her wall and wishing for a bit more colour. At which point the colours start turning up one by one in puppet form – a caterpillar, a bee, flowers, a lion, various small creatures with wings – with gentle songs as everything gradually gets brighter.

It’s a calm, 45-minute show, with new puppets appearing every few minutes to keep things ticking along. At the end the children get invited onstage to meet the puppets, which tends to be the bit they’re still talking about at bedtime – while you’re busy worrying that your own name will soon be as old-fashioned as “Elmer” and “Vernon”.

Find out more: https://www.halfmoon.org.uk/events/flyaway-katie/

While you’re there…

👍️ Want to relive that time you stayed in a yurt on the Mongolian Steppe, eating hearty mutton stews and dipping bread into salty milk tea? Then head over to London’s only yurt cafe, right by Limehouse DLR.

It’s a tent-like setup run as a social project by Royal Foundation of St Katharine, and the food will transport you straight back to those vast, windswept plains: sausage sandwiches, toast with Nutella, and full English breakfasts. There’s also a heated outdoor area and, sarcasm aside, it all looks pretty great.

2: Dance with dinosaurs after hours like you’ve broken into the museum

Dino Disco for Kids
Friday 6 February, 19:00–21:00 (also Friday 27 March and Friday 10 April)
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 5BD
£20 per person
Age guidance: 6–12

We’ve all done our fair share of silent discos by now, so the idea of paying £20 a head to trek out to West London and do another one doesn’t immediately feel essential. And we’ve all seen the Natural History Museum during the day when it’s free – so why pay £20 per person to do it all over again, just because it’s at night?

When I was a teenager I ended up at a birthday party at Madame Tussauds because it turns out I had friends in high places (or at least one friend in one high place). I’d been to Tussauds a bunch of times already, and I’d certainly been to lots of birthday parties, so combining the two should have been fairly unremarkable. But it was great! Standing next to waxworks is one thing; doing that self-conscious teenage half-dance beside far-too-realistic versions of Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Elvis and Madonna is quite another.

This event at the Natural History Museum is similar, only better: instead of awkwardly shuffling past wax celebrities, you’re dancing beneath a full blue whale skeleton. You also get the run of the museum after hours, headphones on, three DJs to choose from, and significantly fewer genocidal dictators lurking in the corner.

Dino Discos have become extremely popular recently, and tickets for this Friday were nearly gone when I last checked. (DILF Club members got the heads-up weeks ago, so you might want to sign up for advance warning next time.) If this one’s sold out, there’s a waiting list. And future dates in March and April are already up on the booking page.

Find out more: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/events/dino-disco.html

3: Experience the closest thing to space travel that doesn’t involve a billionaire

Planetarium Go!
Saturday and Sunday (and daily until 1 March), various timeslots throughout the day
£15 per person per show (under-4s free, family packages also available)
Battersea Power Station, Circus Road West, SW11 8DD
Age guidance: different shows are suitable for different ages

Speaking of Madame Tussauds… who else is still slightly annoyed, years later, that the Planetarium isn’t next door anymore?

If you want to learn about stars these days, you either have to trek to Greenwich (great if you live in Greenwich, a massive faff if you don’t), or lie on the living room floor watching a NASA video on YouTube and pretending it counts.

Not anymore! Introducing your third, albeit temporary, option…

Planetarium Go! is setting up at Battersea Power Station for just over a month, bringing an inflatable dome and a full 360° screen to everyone’s favourite decommissioned power plant. Inside, you’ll get to experience space precisely as nature intended: indoors, seated in comfy chairs, with a frankly alarming amount of technology doing the hard work.

You can choose from a variety of 20–30 minute films (depending on age and attention span), with options ranging from straightforward tours of the Solar System and the history of astronomy to things like 3-2-1 Lift Off, about a hamster scientist trying to get a broken robot back into space. That second one is aimed at ages 6+, but it sounds like scarily dystopian grown-up content to me.

If you fancy it, it’s only in London until the start of March. After that it heads to Sheffield, which is arguably even further away than Greenwich.

Find out more: https://london.planetariumgo.co.uk/

While you’re there…

👍️ You’re near Battersea Park, home to a sub-tropical garden, a herb garden, a children’s zoo, a boating lake and some of the best views in London.

👍️ Or if the weather’s rubbish, try pottery painting at Bonbon Pottery, inside the power station itself.

4: Spend an hour with charming, slightly chaotic creatures that won’t bite or invoice you

The Zoo That Comes To You
Sunday 1 February, 11:00 and 14:00
Jacksons Lane Arts Centre, 269a Archway Road, N6 5AA
£14 per person
Age guidance: 5–11

Have you seen how much a ticket costs at London Zoo these days? £31.80 for an adult, £22.20 for a child, £13.50 for a falafel burger that looks like this (from the on-site restaurant, rated 2.7 stars), and FIFTY-SIX POUNDS to spend 20 minutes standing next to a giraffe while someone in a fleece explains what a giraffe is.

At which point you start to wonder whether there might be a slightly more cost-effective way for your children to engage with the animal kingdom.

Enter The Zoo That Comes to You, which takes the sensible approach of putting some (not-real-life) animals in a suitcase and bringing them to a theatre instead.

I haven’t been to this one myself, but after watching a few clips and skimming some reviews, it looks properly charming. There are two performers, live music, and a cast of beautifully made puppets playing everything from an outrageously theatrical iguana to a baby orangutan you’ll want to smuggle home in your coat.

And while it all sounds fairly light on paper, the animals come with actual backstories – habitat loss, deforestation, the usual mess we’ve made of things – so the kids get the fun of meeting them and you get the bonus of them accidentally learning something along the way.

They are, of course, technically fabric and foam rather than fully operational wildlife. Still, you get to sit about three feet away from them, nobody charges you £56 for eye contact, and you leave knowing a bit more about how they’re getting on in the wild, which feels like a decent compromise.

Find out more: https://www.jacksonslane.org.uk/events/the-zoo-that-comes-to-you/

5: Hear what happens when a building-sized instrument clears its throat

Meet the Organ
Saturday 31 January, 10:00, 11:00, 13:30 and 14:30
Sinfonia Smith Square, SW1P 3HA
£6 per person
Age guidance: 7+

You know those times when you think you understand something completely, and then you ponder it for more than a second and realise you very much don’t? I had that experience at least twice this week.

The first was when my eight-year-old asked how soap works. Think it’s a slam-dunk of an answer? Try it. See how long you last before you start Googling under the table.

The second was while researching this event at Sinfonia Smith Square. “Hang on,” I thought, “what actually is an organ? It’s basically a big piano, isn’t it? Louder? A few more keys?”

No. Saying an organ is “basically a big piano” is like saying a lighthouse is basically a big torch.

With a piano, you press a key, a little hammer hits a string, the note rings out and then fades away. An organ pushes air through pipes instead, which means the sound just keeps going for as long as your finger is down.

And then the differences get… differenter. Instead of one keyboard, you’re usually looking at two, sometimes three. There’s also a row of switches to change the sound, and a whole set of pedals that aren’t effects but actual notes – so the organist is down there playing the bass line with their feet like they’re operating heavy machinery.

If your brain is now doing what mine did, and you’d quite like to see this wildly over-engineered Victorian contraption up close (and have a go yourself), this workshop is basically your only realistic shot at one – unless you live somewhere with a living room the size of IKEA.

Find out more: https://www.sinfoniasmithsq.org.uk/event/meet-the-organ-2/

While you’re there…

👍️ Want to continue your appreciation of the organ?

There’s also The Organ in Space on the same day (and in the same venue), where all 3,574 pipes get put to work for music from Star Wars, Interstellar and Thunderbirds – with a full space-themed lighting setup.

On the keys is Roger Sayer – the original organist on Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar soundtrack – so it should sound fairly enormous.

Dads in London readers get 20% off adult tickets with the code ORGANDAY20.

Other listings

This section now brings together both new events I don’t have room to expand on and selected older ones from past newsletters that are still running. If you see a “(see my write-up here)”, that’s your cue to click through and rediscover whatever Past Me felt strongly enough to write about.

Ryoji Ikeda: Data-Cosm
Until 1 February, various timeslots
180 Studios, 6 Surrey Street, WC2R 2ND
Adults £12, under-12s free

Little Red Riding Hood (interactive play space)
Until 22 February (drop in during any time during your visit)
Discover Children’s Story Centre, 383–387 High Street, E15 4QZ
Free with entry ticket (adults and children £10, 1-year-olds £5, under-1s free)
Age guidance: 0–8

Winter Lights 2026
Until 31 January, 17:00–22:00
Throughout Canary Wharf
FREE

REPLAY: A Limitless Recycled Playground (see my write-up here)
Saturday and Sunday, various slots throughout the day (and daily until 12 April)
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
£7.50 per person
Age guidance: different sessions for 6 months–3 years and 4–11 years (younger children can join older siblings in the older session if necessary)

Squirrel
Until 22 February, various times
Unicorn Theatre, 147 Tooley Street, SE1 2HZ
Adult + child £25, extra child £12.50
Age guidance: 6 months–4 years

Walthamstow Curling Lounge (see my write-up here)
Thursday–Sunday throughout winter
Big Penny Social, 1 Priestley Way, E17 6AL
Adults £10, children £7 (per hour)
Age guidance: 5+ (note: you can book evening slots too, but children are only allowed in the venue until 18:00)

Superhero City Adventure for Kids in Kensington Gardens (see my write-up here)
Available all days and times (it’s self-guided) throughout the season
£6 per group
Europe sculpture, Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens, SW7 2ET
Age guidance: 4–8

Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2025
Until 8 February, 10:30–18:00 (until 21:00 on Fridays and Saturdays)
National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, WC2H 0HE
Adults £9.50, 12–18s £4.75, under-12s free

Grinchmas Afternoon Tea Sightseeing Bus Tour (see my write-up here)
Daily until 31 January, various time slots
Departs from Victoria Coach Station, 164 Buckingham Palace Road, SW1W 9TP
Adults £52, children £47
Age guidance: 5+