In partnership with
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🎉 The Naperville FunTimes
Your Weekly Family Fun Guide
Issue #21 • Friday, July 31, 2026
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Happy Friday, Naperville families! 🌼
August starts tomorrow, which means the countdown clock just started ticking on summer. School supplies are already stacked by the front door at Target — but we’ve still got a solid stretch of long evenings and warm water left. This week we’re leaning all the way into it: a free movie under the stars tonight, peak-harvest sweet corn on Saturday morning, and a lake you can actually paddle across.
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📅 This Week’s Top 3 Family Picks
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A Night at the Movies — “Homeward Bound” on the Hill at Rotary Park 🎥
| 📍 Rotary Hill, 443 Aurora Ave, Naperville |
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| 🕐 Tonight — bingo 7:30pm, movie 8:30pm |
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The Park District’s free Friday movie series kicks off tonight, and they picked a good one: Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey — the one with Shadow, Chance and Sassy walking across the wilderness to get home. Zero dialogue about anything scary, one very good golden retriever, and a lot of kids crying happy tears at the end. Show up around 7:30 for an hour of bingo before the screen goes up. Bring a blanket, a couple of camp chairs, bug spray, and snacks. The hill fills in from the shade line out, so getting there early is worth it — and if your youngest conks out halfway through, nobody notices in the dark.
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⭐ Why We Love It
It costs nothing, it wears the kids out, and it’s the rare Friday night where the whole family ends up horizontal on a blanket looking at the same thing. Also: bingo. Nobody expects to get competitive about bingo, and then everybody does.
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Naperville Farmers Market at 5th Avenue Station — Peak Sweet Corn Season 🌽
| 📍 5th Avenue Station, 200 E. 5th Ave, Naperville |
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| 💰 FREE to browse (bring cash for corn) |
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| 👶 All ages — stroller friendly |
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August is when this market stops being pleasant and starts being genuinely great. Illinois sweet corn, heirloom tomatoes that actually taste like something, peaches, and buckets of late-summer flowers all peak in the same two weeks. Give each kid a few dollars and a job — one picks the tomatoes, one picks the flowers — and suddenly grocery shopping is an outing instead of a chore. Go early. The best tables are picked clean by 9:30, and the parking lot gets tight after that. Grab a pastry on the way in and let the kids eat it on the curb while you shop.
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⭐ Why We Love It
Kids who help pick the vegetables are dramatically more likely to eat the vegetables. That’s not a parenting theory, that’s just what happens when a six-year-old personally selects a tomato and then guards it all the way home.
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Paddle Silver Lake at Blackwell Forest Preserve — Rent a Boat for $15 🚣
| 📍 Blackwell Forest Preserve, Butterfield Rd, Warrenville |
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| 💰 Parking FREE • kayak $15/hr • canoe or tandem $18/hr |
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| 👶 Ages 5+ in the boat, any age on the trails |
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| 🕐 Rentals daily through September — go in the morning |
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Twenty minutes from downtown Naperville there’s a lake where you can hand over fifteen dollars and be on the water in ten minutes. No membership, no reservation required (though calling ahead on a hot Saturday is smart). Kayaks, canoes, rowboats and paddleboats all rent by the hour, and there’s an ADA-accessible launch with handrails if getting in and out is the tricky part. Silver Lake is calm and small enough that you can see the whole shoreline from the middle, which takes the nerves out of it. Afterward, the preserve has shaded trails, a fishing pier, and Mt. Hoy — an 836-foot hill the kids will absolutely want to run up. Pack water; there’s not much shade at the boat launch.
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⭐ Why We Love It
An hour on the water is the cheapest “we did something real today” a family can buy in DuPage County. Kids who’ve never paddled figure it out in about four minutes, and the drive home is always quiet.
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🍽️ Kids Eat Free This Week!
Both of this week’s deals land on Monday — which, honestly, is the night that needs the help. Two Naperville spots, two free kids meals, zero cooking.
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⭐ Top Pick: 🍕 Freedom Brothers Pizzeria & Alehouse
MONDAYS • DINE-IN
One free kids’ pizza with every regular-priced pizza, sandwich or salad. It’s a rock-n-roll themed brick-oven place with guitars on the walls and cotton candy on the dessert menu — loud enough that nobody notices your toddler, which is the whole point.
📍 1293 S. Naper Blvd, Naperville
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🍺 Quigley’s Irish Pub
MONDAYS
One free kids meal per full-price adult entrée (burger specials excluded). Right in the middle of downtown, so you can walk the Riverwalk afterward and call it a whole evening.
📍 43 E. Jefferson Ave, Naperville
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Deals change without much warning — a quick call before you load everyone in the car never hurts.
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That’s the last Friday of July, folks. Five more weekends until Labor Day — so if there’s something on your summer list you haven’t gotten to yet, this is the nudge. Pick one thing, put it on the fridge, and actually go do it.
See you out there,
The Naperville FunTimes Team 🧡
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