Family Friendly Weekend Ideas in KC During the School Year

Weekends during the school year hit differently than summer weekends. You have got maybe one usable day, everybody is tired, there is laundry, and somebody has a game at 8am on Saturday that eats the whole morning. The idea of a big family outing sounds lovely and also completely impossible.

So this is my running list of Kansas City weekend ideas that actually work when you only have a few hours and limited patience. A lot of them are free, most of them are close, and I have personally done every one of these with tired kids.

Heads up, some of these are affiliate links, which just means I get a tiny commission at no cost to you.

The free things that are genuinely good

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. General admission is free, always, and that fact alone makes it the most useful building in Kansas City for a family. You can go in for 40 minutes, look at three things, run around the lawn with the shuttlecocks, and leave. There is no pressure to get your money’s worth because it did not cost anything. Special exhibitions are ticketed separately.

The Money Museum at the Federal Reserve Bank. This is my favorite thing that nobody knows about. It is free, it is downtown near the Nelson, there is a real vault and a gold bar you can touch, and they hand kids a little bag of shredded currency on the way out. Weekday and weekend hours differ and you go through security, so check the current hours before you drive down.

The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Also free, also right there in the same area, and small enough that a short attention span is an asset rather than a problem. You can pair it with the Nelson in one trip.

The KC Streetcar. Free to ride, and for a lot of kids the streetcar is the entire outing. Ride it from the River Market down and back, get out somewhere in the middle, and you have filled two hours for zero dollars.

Kaleidoscope at Crown Center. Free art free for all where kids make a spectacular mess you do not have to clean up. Sessions are timed and generally require reserving a spot online ahead of time, so this is a plan a day ahead activity rather than a spontaneous one.

Saturday mornings, which are the easiest win

The City Market in the River Market is the big one, and it runs year round rather than just in summer, which makes it a genuine cold weather option. Go early, get produce, let the kids pick something weird, and eat somewhere in the market. Parking is easier before ten.

The Overland Park Farmers Market in downtown Overland Park is smaller, more manageable with little kids, and has a lovely neighborhood feel. Parkville has a good one too, and you can combine it with English Landing Park right there on the river.

Farmers markets are seasonal for the outdoor ones and the schedules shift year to year, so check before you build a morning around it in November. I keep a collapsible market tote in the car so I am not juggling produce and a kid at the same time.

Worth actually paying for

• Science City at Union Station. Full of hands on stuff and reliably good for a rainy Saturday. Even just walking through Union Station itself is fun, and the building is free to enter.
• The Kansas City Zoo and Aquarium out at Swope Park. Fall is genuinely the best time to go. The animals are more active in cooler weather and the crowds are a fraction of what they are in June.
• The National WWI Museum and Memorial. Better for older elementary and up, and the view from the tower is the best one in the city. Worth it for the view alone.
• Wonderscope Children’s Museum in south Kansas City for the under seven crowd. This is a burn off two hours and go home happy situation.
• The Arabia Steamboat Museum in the River Market. A genuinely wild story about a steamboat dug out of a cornfield, and kids get into it more than you expect.

When you want to leave town without really leaving town

Weston, Missouri is about 40 minutes north and it is the perfect low effort day trip. Historic little downtown, orchards and farms nearby in the fall, and it feels like a vacation for the cost of gas.

Parkville is even closer and does the same job in half the drive. Lawrence, Kansas is about 45 minutes west and Massachusetts Street is a great walking afternoon with older kids. Louisburg, Kansas for the cider mill is the southern version.

All of these are better on a Sunday than a Saturday, when the crowds are lighter and nothing has a wait.

Roughly what happens when, through the school year

• September and October: The best outdoor weeks of the year. Pumpkin patches, orchards, the zoo, and the Renaissance Festival out in Bonner Springs, which runs weekends in the fall. Do everything outdoors now.
• November: It gets dark early and everything moves inside. The Plaza lights get switched on Thanksgiving night, which is a genuine Kansas City tradition and worth doing once even in a crowd.
• December and January: The Crown Center Ice Terrace, museums, and the Central Library downtown. Check current hours and season dates for the rink, since they shift each year.
• February and March: The grim stretch. This is when the indoor play places and the free museums earn their keep.
• April and May: Everything opens back up, the farmers markets return, and you get outdoors again right as the school year ends.

My honest take on the big productions

I have learned that the elaborate family day out is usually a worse time than the small one. The 90 minute outing where everybody is still in a good mood beats the six hour one that ends in a parking lot argument. We do one thing, we get a treat, we go home. That is the formula and it works almost every single time.

Also, and I know this is not a hot take, but a lot of the most expensive family attractions are not better than a free museum and a park. Pay for the zoo. Pay for Science City on a rainy day. Be a little skeptical of the rest.

If you only do one thing

Keep a running list in your phone of three things you could do this weekend, and add to it whenever you hear about something. The reason weekends get away from us is not that Kansas City lacks options. It is that at 9am on a Saturday nobody can think of a single one. Having the list already written is the entire trick.

The other thing that saves these outings is a small kit that lives in the car. Mine is a couple of insulated water bottles, a pack of wet wipes, and a few snacks I top off on Sunday nights. It is not exciting and it has rescued more Saturdays than I can count.

Small outings, more often

You do not have to make memories every weekend. Some Saturdays are for laundry and nobody leaving the house, and those are good weekends too. But when you do want to get out, this city makes it easy and mostly cheap, and the streetcar is right there being free.

xo, Pam