Skip to main content

Kids World returns to DC’s Franklin Park for weekend of free fun

By Jason Fraley

Are you looking for something fun to take the kids to this weekend in the nation’s capital?

Kids World returns to Franklin Park in Northwest D.C. this Saturday and Sunday from noon to 7 p.m. after last year’s inaugural event drew over 7,000 people over three days.

WTOP caught up with the DowntownDC Business Improvement District to preview the festivities.

“It is a free, free, free, free, two-day immersive experience for children of all ages,” Director of Marketing and Communications Ebony Walton told WTOP.

“We’ve got more than 30 activations for kids. … We launched this last year and this will be our second year bringing Kids World back. … We got our thinking caps on saying, ‘What if we do something exclusive for the kids, knowing their parents come with them?’ It really is a family-friendly event.”

The central hub of the event will be exciting performances on the Main Stage.

“The Main Stage really is all-kids talent,” Walton said.

“We’ve got talented kids’ bands, we’ve got poets, we’ve got entertainers. We’ve even got a kids’ DJ, so DJ Princess Christiona, she is going to be on the ones and twos spinning those tunes for the kids. There’s a brother and sister [Kalu and Marrkan] that are going to be hosting, we’ve even got a kids’ roving reporter and we’re going to be doing giveaways from this stage all throughout the day.”

You can also engage children’s imaginations with a special area called Storyland.

“Storyland is the ultimate story experience,” Walton said.

“There will be live storytellers along with characters from Dr. Seuss. There’s also going to be a super-huge screen where the story is going to be visual with graphics, while the person is reading. Some of our favorite stories like ‘Cat in the Hat,’ ‘Corduroy Bear,’ ‘Curious George’ and ‘The Lorax’ will come to life, along with a pop-up bookstore turning the page with more than 3,000 books for kids.”

Meanwhile, kids can also enjoy hands-on activities in the Creativity & Discovery Corner.

“There are going to be hands-on activities where kids can let their imaginations soar with engaging learning sessions,” Walton said.

“There will be a painting-palooza, a beading bizarre where kids can come and make different sorts of jewelry with beads, a coloring corner and even face-painting! This Creativity & Discovery Corner is really going to be good, especially if you like getting your hands dirty and being active.”

After that, kids and parents can get active by exercising with a Super Workout.

“We’re going to have Wonder Woman on hand, the Black Panther, Spider-Man and Supergirl for action-packed workouts,” Walton said.

“They’re gonna lead workouts from the stage, get kids up moving and grooving, having a good time with the music. We’re going to have double Dutch and rope jumpers. … We can get Wonder Woman to do the jump rope with her lasso and Black Panther doing ‘Wakanda Forever’ while he’s jump-roping.”

You also don’t want to miss the hilariously-named Teddy Bear Social.

“We’re gonna have teddy bear characters, everybody from Paddington Bear to the Care Bears, the Berenstain Bears, I think we’ve even got the Charmin Bear,” Walton said.

“There’s going to be a teddy bear parade with giant teddy-bear giveaways, but the star of the show is Francis and his baby sister Francesca. Francis launched last year, he’s a 16-foot bear, and Francesca is about 12-foot, she’s making her debut.”

Don’t forget to stop by the Bubble Garden — just follow the bubbles to find it.

“Listen, I did this last year and it was so much fun, my inner kid came alive, it was just bubbles everywhere,” Walton said.

“This year, we’re adding a secret bubble maze so you and go through the maze while there’s bubbles. In addition to these giant bubbles and giant animal topiaries, we’ve got a beekeeper coming to do a demonstration. … It’s not just for the kids, parents can come and act like they don’t have a care in the world.”

Other activities include trackless train rides, video games, outdoor games like giant Jenga and Connect Four, a Hero’s Hangout where kids can climb into real police cruisers, fire engines and ambulances and the Little Bites Boulevard with tasty treats from food trucks offering everything from cheeseburgers to healthy smoothies.

“You are trying to figure out what to do with your kids, [so] I want you to transport yourself to the ultimate getaway for kids,” Walton said.

“This park is just over five acres and we are completely taking it over. When we say it is a Kids World, it is a Kids World! All family-friendly events, all free, all day long on both days … more than 30 activations. You’ve never seen anything like it. … You’ve got to come. You don’t want to have ‘F.O.M.O.'”

Find more information here.

Listen to our full conversation here.

Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

© 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

Pete Buttigieg returns to first-in-the-nation South Carolina with a fresh appeal to Black voters

By CNN
Orangeburg, South Carolina (CNN) — Pete Buttigieg has been to this small but historic city in South Carolina’s Midlands at least twice before, as an underdog presidential candidate in 2020 and then as the better-known transportation secretary under President Joe Biden in 2023.Now a private citizen eying a second White House bid, Buttigieg returned this weekend with renewed urgency, appealing to Black voters who have newly solidified influence in the 2028 nominating process and whom he failed to win over in his last presidential campaign.Buttigieg told party activists during a morning speech in Florence that Republicans were using redistricting as “the culmination of a generational project to dismantle Black representation.” He held a roundtable with students at a historically Black college where he discussed his idea of reparations for slavery. And during an evening speech to the storied NAACP branch here, he said President Donald Trump’s second term may feel all too familiar to activists who fought for civil rights in Orangeburg in the 1960s.“The mid-2020s does not represent our nation’s first experience with corruption and self-dealing, with bigotry and exclusion, with inequality and injustice, with undemocratic behavior or with political violence,” Buttigieg said, adding that prior struggles played out “not on some distant shore, but in places like Orangeburg.”With a midterm election looming where both parties are campaigning over the cost of living, Buttigieg chastised fellow Democrats whom he said prefer to prioritize economic concerns over tackling more fundamental questions about democracy. He argued that civil rights legends such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Jesse Jackson have shown that Americans “can — and we must — do both.”His trip to South Carolina, Buttigieg’s first since leaving the Biden administration, marked the beginning of a new phase of political maneuvering ahead of the next presidential election, with Buttigieg making a concerted effort to get in front of Black voters and demonstrating new bonafides from his transportation secretary tenure.It was also the first major visit by a potential 2028 candidate to the state since the Democratic National Committee voted on August 15 to keep it as the location for the first presidential primary in the nation, a nod to the political power of its large Black electorate.Buttigieg brushed off a question about his 2028 plans after his speech in Florence, telling reporters he is “totally focused on 2026.” But there were ample reminders of speculation about his next move on Saturday, including a scattering of homemade signs reading “PETE” and “2028” that sprung up when he took the stage. Surveying the enthusiastic crowd, he observed he should “come here more often.”One fan, 64-year-old retiree Karen Ench, wore a “Pete Buttigieg 2028” shirt to the speech. Contemplating his 2028 ambitions afterward, she said she thought he was “really taking it much more serious” and focusing on areas of improvement from 2020.A 2028 bid would undoubtedly start with higher expectations for the onetime mayor of South Bend, Indiana, compared to his first run.“The Pete Buttigieg of 2020 is not the Pete Buttigieg of 2026,” said Marlon Kimpson, a Black former state senator who backed Biden in the 2020 primary. “He has name recognition, he’s no longer introducing himself. I think people generally like Pete, and that’s a big deal in an open race because he starts out at a plus. But as we look at his economic agenda, just for the average South Carolinian, with emphasis on the African American community … and the political infrastructure he has deployed in our state, there will be questions with respect to those issues.”Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign, despite winning the Iowa caucuses with a much Whiter demographic, came to an end in South Carolina, dogged by his weaknesses with Black voters. After powerful South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn endorsed Biden and gave his flagging bid a shot of momentum that ultimately propelled him to the presidency, Buttigieg finished fourth in the Palmetto State and dropped out a day later.Biden received 61% support from Black voters in South Carolina, while Buttigieg got 3%, according to exit polls.Colleen Condon, a Charleston lawyer and longtime party activist who backed Buttigieg in 2020, said that “2020 is so hard to compare against” due to the unique circumstances of Clyburn’s support for Biden. Now, Condon, who is White, said, Democrats are “anxious for someone young and energetic” and noted Buttigieg would bring more experience to the 2028 race.“He has done a lot of work in the last eight years, (including) as secretary of transportation, in showing his ability to work on the federal level,” Condon said.‘What he’s actually done’In interviews across the state on Saturday, Black Democrats agreed Buttigieg’s experience as transportation secretary has distinguished him since he last sought their support. He played a high-profile role in promoting Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law, visiting communities small and large across the country to announce funding for long-awaited projects.In Florence, Mattie Thomas, a member of the South Carolina Democratic Party executive committee, said she did not know about his time as mayor but now she sees him as “one of our best transportation secretaries.”“I think he’ll fare extremely well this go around because people, they’ve seen what he’s actually done,” Sandra Burgess Glover, a retired educator, said in Orangeburg as Buttigieg mingled with the dinner crowd before his speech.Buttigieg was showered with praise at the dinner for his June 2023 announcement in the city with Clyburn of a $23 million federal grant to better connect Orangeburg’s two HBCUs to downtown. Orangeburg Mayor Michael Butler prompted a standing ovation for Buttigieg when he brought up the project, calling it “a long time coming.”Deloris Frazier, a member of the Orangeburg County Council, embraced Buttigieg as he worked the crowd before the dinner, telling him that she keeps a photo in her home of the two of them from that day in 2023. She told CNN afterward that she’d support Buttigieg for president if he ran, joking that she would take the photo and “just blow it up and make it bigger.”Earlier Saturday, Buttigieg visited one of Orangeburg’s HBCUs, Claflin University, and held an hourlong roundtable with about 20 students. The conversation topics ranged from artificial intelligence to reparations for slavery, which was a litmus test in the 2020 primary.Buttigieg said he still supported legislation to create a commission to study reparations. But he said he learned as transportation secretary that the federal government could take “reparative” steps sooner, pointing to his efforts to combat decades-old urban planning that led to highways cutting across Black neighborhoods.“I have a perspective on that that I didn’t have before when I didn’t have a chance to work on federal policy,” Buttigieg said.Usir Jackson, the president of the Student Government Association, said afterward he found Buttigieg “down to earth” and “authentic.”Buttigieg, who took notes at some points, appeared moved when the roundtable topic turned to young voters feeling disillusioned – and Jackson shared why he still makes sure to vote.“I do it to respect people who came before me,” Jackson said, “so I could vote.”Hurdles remain with Black votersFor all the praise of his record in the Biden administration, some of Buttigieg’s admirers acknowledge he needs it to translate into far more Black voter support than he saw in 2020.While the crowd he spoke to in Orangeburg was overwhelmingly Black, the audience that came to see him earlier in the day in Florence, at the state Democratic Party’s Spratt Issues Conference, was mostly White.State Rep. JA Moore was a crucial Black supporter for Buttigieg in 2020 in South Carolina, backing him after then-California Sen. Kamala Harris dropped out. Moore said in an interview that any potential 2028 candidate needs to focus less on tailoring a message to Black voters and more on developing a “cadence” of regularly reaching out to them where they are.“What we call it is the difference between a ‘come here’ and a ‘been here,’” Moore said. “I think one of the things people missed about Joe Biden – he was a ‘been here’ in the sense that he had been coming to South Carolina for over 40 years.”Some Black Democrats said he may continue to face hurdles in the state as a gay man, an issue that came up in 2020 as he reached out to socially conservative church congregations. “This is the Bible Belt,” Thomas said matter-of-factly.“Sometimes they want to categorize a candidate or individual because of their sexual preferences,” said Brenda Montgomery, a 67-year-old training specialist from Lake City who saw Buttigieg in Florence. “But for me, he is everyone. He represents everyone, and I really like him as a person because he is approachable.”Buttigieg, whose crowd in Florence was dotted with some small rainbow flags, does not go out of his way to talk about his sexual orientation. But on Saturday, he spoke regularly about his two children, who are mixed-race, that he adopted with his husband, Chasten, noting fatherhood is the biggest personal change he has experienced since 2020.It’s a life change that would be put to the test by another grueling presidential campaign, which South Carolina Democrats see as likelier than ever. While he mostly avoided talk of 2028, he said in Florence that he was excited about South Carolina’s first-in-the-nation status and how it would spotlight the state’s diversity.Buttigieg has fielded the 2028 speculation by becoming one of the most prolific endorsers in the midterms, with an eye on supporting Black Democrats and Democrats running in Republican-leaning territory. He kicked off his South Carolina trip on Friday night by headlining a fundraiser in Charleston for Nancy Lacore, a retired Navy officer running for an open House seat in a district that Trump carried by 13 percentage points in 2024.Condon, the Democratic activist who helped host Buttigieg’s fundraiser for LaCore, said it was “extremely early, but I’m very inclined to” support Buttigieg again in 2028 if he runs.Moore said it was too early for endorsements but said he especially likes Buttigieg for at least one reason.Buttigieg “has the ability to learn and adapt,” Moore said. “I find that refreshing and appealing.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
Read Next Story

Related Stories

Canada Carney Housing
National
Carney says US asked ‘too much, offered too little’ as trade talks collapse
3 hours ago
Canada Carney Housing

Carney says US asked ‘too much, offered too little’ as trade talks collapse

Reports of sexual assault in U.S. military declined for third straight year

PlaySmart video game screen capture

This new video game can help prevent depression in teens, researchers say

Donald Trump at NATO summit in Turkey

Analysis: The world Washington built is fraying. What comes next?

Tropical Weather Hawaii Extreme Weather

Former teacher, 93, among the deaths blamed on storm as Hawaii residents struggle to clean up