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- ⛺ 15 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (10–11 January)
⛺ 15 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (10–11 January)
Jeff – Dads in London
January 07, 2026
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Hey DILFs!
This Sunday, while you’re out and about doing many of the fabulous things I’ve discovered for you, keep an eye out for people who are wearing nothing on top of their underpants.
If you don’t yet know about the annual Official No Trousers Tube Ride, here’s the gist: a bunch of people gather in a big group, head down to the Tube, get on a train, remove their lower garments (down to their underpants) and travel around for a bit. Then everyone goes off for a drink or two somewhere, still in their underwear. It all needs to stay as low-key as possible in order for it to look like everyone’s simply forgotten their trousers.
You could join in if you like, but I recommend just going out for the afternoon with your kids and seeing if you can spot anyone participating. Ideally, ordinary Londoners will be completely baffled.
The meeting spot is where the pagoda used to be in Chinatown: https://maps.app.goo.gl/RWqyxxRwtp798jDS9. And you can find out more on the group’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/867384226240336
And now for some activities that are more weather-appropriate (except for one)...
Enjoy!
Jeff xx
Creative Creatures Play
Saturday and Sunday, various time slots (and daily until 14 January)
Horniman Museum & Gardens, 100 London Road, SE23 3PQ
Adults £3, children £6
Age guidance: under-7s (there’s a dedicated area for under-3s)
Have you ever been invited to a work meeting that starts at something like 13:55 or 10:40? It’s a brilliant tactic on the part of the organiser, because such a specific time makes you assume there must be a reason for it – and that therefore you absolutely cannot be late.
I can only imagine the events schedule at the Horniman is being run by someone who’s dealt with one too many late arrivals and no longer has any patience for excuses, however genuine, like: “I walked an extra 20 minutes to a tube station with a lift, but the lift was out of order and my two-year-old refused to get out of her pram for the escalator until I bribed her with a giant Build-A-Bear Bluey.”
So to rectify past traumas I'm sure, Creative Creatures Play has slots starting at 10:10, 11:25, 12:40, 13:55, 15:10 and 16:25 – and each session gives your children 45 minutes to pack in an impressively dense hit list of animal fun.
In that time, they’ll be spinning spider webs and building nests like weaver birds, dressing up as snails, foxes, frogs and sharks while learning about camouflage, and getting stuck into family craft challenges like jellyfish-making and nature rubbings. There’s plenty of movement too – jumping like frogs, charging like rhinos, climbing and balancing like monkeys – plus a dedicated under-3s area with soft shapes, touch panels, and lots of animal-inspired textures and colours to explore.
And yes, it’s the final weekend – a neat contradiction to several paragraphs on punctuality, delivered only now for something that’s been running since November.
Find out more: https://www.horniman.ac.uk/event/creative-creatures-play/
While you’re there…
👍️ Check out the gardens of the Horniman, which feature a small-animal enclosure, a butterfly house, a nature trail, an ornamental garden, a sound garden (with large musical instruments for playing) and tons more.
👍️ The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs (about 20 minutes from the Horniman by bus) were built in 1854 and are the first dinosaur sculptures in the world. Funnily enough, they’re actually a pretty crap representation of the real things – due to the inaccuracies of early palaeontology. Information boards around the park give insights into the differences between what we knew then compared to what we know now.
The Tale of the Loneliest Whale
Saturday 10 January, 11:00 and 14:00
Half Moon Young People’s Theatre, 43 White Horse Road, London E1 0ND
£9 per person
Age guidance: 4+
If there were a drinking game for kids’ theatre descriptions that “celebrate diversity and being yourself”, the past year of newsletters would have slowly tailed off into something like hgia;hbin;aeiognfea;ion[=beaga//'veenabsfjas;kf.
Sometimes it feels a bit cynical – like the marketing people are thinking, “Parents are going to be lapping up tickets if they think their unique little precious snowflake will feel ‘seen’ after watching what’s essentially Damien from The Omen, but with a diagnosis.” Sometimes it feels more practical: word counts need padding, so they reach for those same soft-focus phrases about difference and acceptance – so broad they could be lifted wholesale into almost any blurb. And sometimes I think they really do mean it, but the delivery is too subtle: no one’s noticing the important message about the poor, misunderstood bear (or equivalent) because he’s ginormous, he growls, and all the children are understandably terrified.
This show, however, really does mean those words – and, crucially, earns them. It’s about a whale who sings his song out into the ocean, but no one ever sings back. He notices other sea creatures calling to one another and forming bonds, and slowly realises he’s different – and that being accepted as he is might not be straightforward.
Then one day he hears another song. It’s strange and unfamiliar, but it fits his own perfectly. So he sets off to find its source – travelling through glowing coral caves, past swarms of jellyfish, facing down scary sea monsters, and meeting a turtle with ADHD – in search of the one creature he’s certain will understand him. By the end, the whale realises there’s nothing wrong with him at all – and that being different isn’t something to fix.
The show was developed through workshops and conversations with children, including those with experience of autism, ADHD and other forms of neurodivergence, and their insights shaped everything from the characters and music to the pacing and sensory feel of the piece.
There’s plenty of audience participation, lots of singing, and a good amount of laughter – but also space to be quiet and take in the beautiful puppets, the lovely set, and the surprisingly delicate music. It’s one of those rare shows where the blurb finally turns out to be telling the truth.
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.
Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid
Sunday 11 January, 14:00 and 16:00 (also Saturday 17 January, 14:00 and 16:00)
The Well Walk Theatre, 49 Willow Road, NW3 1TS
£12.72 per person
Age guidance: 6+
The Kid is a Charlie Chaplin classic, and it’s extremely easy to watch at home. It’s on Prime Video if you have it, it’s on YouTube, and it’s almost certainly been chopped up into hundreds of tiny clips elsewhere, because apparently the best way to enjoy any kind of visual content now is to watch it 30 seconds at a time.
But if your family is anything like mine, you’ll never actually stay home and watch it from the sofa. The moment you announce “Movie afternoon!!!” while putting the kettle on and dragging duvets off beds for hot chocolate and winter cosiness, at least one child will declare they’re only watching a film if it rhymes with Shay Shop Hemon Nunters.
And that’s why going to the cinema still matters. It’s basically the only way we can get our kids to try something that isn’t relentlessly sweet, aggressively noisy, or part of a cinematic universe that now feels more like homework than entertainment.
Chaplin turns out to be a surprisingly easy sell (once it’s longer competing with the options above). You can describe it as “a man in a funny hat who keeps falling over and ends up looking after a kid”, which pretty much explains it. It’s also refreshing to watch something where everyone is laughing at the same thing, rather than the usual setup where the kids are enjoying the pratfalls and the adults are politely acknowledging a joke that’s clearly been slipped in just for them.
It came out in 1921 and people absolutely lost their minds over it. Not just because it was funny (although it really is), but because it turned out to have a heart, which nobody was really expecting. Contemporary reviews talked about how it managed to pile big laughs and proper sadness into the same film, sometimes within the same scene, and how Chaplin turned out to be far better at the quieter moments than anyone had given him credit for. Jackie Coogan, who plays the child, was also widely agreed to be infuriatingly good.
If you’ve been meaning to take them to the cinema for something a bit different, this is a good way to do it. And if not, it’s still a very pleasant way to spend an hour watching something that’s been doing the rounds for over a hundred years.
While you’re there…
👍️ If you’re ok with spending the entire day at The Well Walk Theatre, you could also watch Barbapapa in English – which is apparently a “delightful 1970s animated children’s series” that’s based on a picture book by a French-American couple that became a classic across Europe. It features “lovable, shape-shifting, candy-coloured characters” and I now feel ashamed not to know about it. There’s some decent background info on the Wikipedia page, if you’re interested.
👍️ Already have plans for Sunday but still fancy the idea of a Charlie Chaplin film? You’re in luck: The Well Walk Theatre is also showing The Circus on Saturday. This one was also a huge critical and commercial success, although not quite as much as The Kid.
👍️ Hampstead Heath is right there. Make the most of it!
👍️ Or for something less outdoorsy, Hampstead institutions The Flask, The Wells and The Holly Bush are within stumbling distance.
No obligation at all, but here’s the link if you fancy it:
x
Walthamstow Curling Lounge
Saturday and Sunday, 12:00–18:00 (and Thursday–Sunday throughout the season)
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)
If most sports put you off because they’re too competitive, too shouty, or seem to require a willingness to humiliate someone you love, curling might be the sport for you.
Not because it’s “gamified sweeping up” (absolutely not), but because curling is built on an unusually strict code of good behaviour.
In the official, professional version of the sport, they have something called the Spirit of Curling, which sounds like something that begins with mindfulness and ends with you cutting off your old friends, but is actually the core ethos of the game. It puts sportsmanship, integrity and basic human decency ahead of winning – to the point where curlers are expected to congratulate opponents for good shots, never cheer their mistakes, and call their own fouls if they mess up.
It also means helping out newcomers, shaking hands before and after a match, staying quiet while other people take their shots, and generally behaving like someone you wouldn’t mind sitting next to for an hour. You’re even allowed – encouraged, in fact – to concede a match early if it’s clearly not going your way, not as a sulk but as a polite acknowledgement that everyone would rather stop playing and have a drink together. Winning unfairly is frowned upon; losing well is considered perfectly respectable.
Since curling became an Olympic fixture in 1998, a lot more people have realised it looks like jolly good fun and that they’d quite like to give it a go themselves – ideally without having to locate a frozen Scottish loch (where the sport has its roots) or set aside three-plus hours for a single game.
The market responded with pop-up curling: smooth synthetic lanes instead of ice sheets, stones with little wheels rather than brooms, and games that take about an hour rather than an entire afternoon. The rules are simplified, the pace is quicker, and the emphasis is firmly on having fun rather than achieving curling enlightenment.
At Big Penny Social, that’s exactly what you’re getting. It’s relaxed, well-organised, and pitched firmly at people who want a good hour out rather than a new sporting identity.
Find out more: https://bigpennysocial.co.uk/curling
Available all days and times (it’s self-guided) throughout the season
Superhero City Adventure for Kids in Kensington Gardens
£6 per group
Europe sculpture, Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens, SW7 2ET
Age guidance: 4–8
The appeal of this activity will depend largely on how fussed you are about retaining feeling in your feet this weekend. It only lasts an hour, though, and it’s fairly active, so I suppose it’s less punishing on the extremities than standing still at the side of a football pitch. Try telling yourself that while your winter-immune child spends ages inspecting a lamppost for clues and you blow air into your hands like a film character in every scene ever made that features people being cold.
If you’re willing to stick a finger up at the forecast, Kid Quest looks like a very decent way to avoid watching Home Alone for the eleventieth time this winter. It’s an outdoor, self-guided adventure for kids aged roughly 4 to 8, where you follow clues around the city and solve puzzles as part of an ongoing story that involves animal characters and superhero themes.
You do need a phone, but mostly as a set of instructions. It tells you where to go and what to do next, then gets out of the way. The whole thing was developed with input from a child psychologist to encourage teamwork, critical thinking and actual conversation, without turning the phone into the main attraction.
You can start whenever you like and go at your own pace. Reviews of the summer version were excellent, and I’m choosing to believe that nobody’s judgement of a puzzle game hinges entirely on whether they played it in better weather.
Find out more: https://fever.pxf.io/RGANaX
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.
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
Harland Miller at the Design Museum (see my write-up here)
Until 25 January (Friday–Sunday, 10:00–18:00; Monday–Thursday 10:00–17:00)
Design Museum, 224–238 Kensington High Street, W8 6AG
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+
Me (see my write-up here)
Until 25 January (various dates and start times)
Little Angel Theatre, 14 Dagmar Passage, N1 2DN
Adults £17, children £15
Age guidance: 2–5
Dracapella (see my write-up here)
Until 17 January (various dates and start times)
Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, N4 3JP
£22.50–£47.50 per person
Age guidance: 10+
The Firework-Maker’s Daughter
Until 18 January, various start times (usually 11:00 and 14:30 on weekends)
Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, SW19 1SB
£10–£29 per person
Age guidance: 6–12
The Gruffalo’s Child (see my write-up here)
Until 11 January, various start times
£10–£24 per seat
Lyric Theatre, 29 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 7ES
Age guidance: 3+
Bluey’s Big Play (see my write-up here)
Until 11 January, various start times
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
£17–£37 per person
Age guidance: suitable for all
Family Workshops – Plant Puppets
Saturday and Sunday, 12:00 and 15:00
Little Angel Studios, Sebbon Street, N1 2EH
£10 per person
Age guidance: 4–8
Out of The Box
Sunday 11 January, 11:00 and 14:00
Jacksons Lane Arts Centre, 269a Archway Road, N6 5AA
£14 per person
Age guidance: 5+
🌟 The Golden Ticket: an extra weekly email about the events seriously need to book ahead for. (Because the best things book up waaay in advance.)
🌟 Access to my complete database of future events (the ones you’ll need to book), so you can browse, plan and book any time.