In partnership with
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🎉 The Naperville FunTimes
Your Weekly Family Fun Guide
Issue #25 • Friday, August 28, 2026
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Happy Friday, Naperville families! 🌿
First full week of school is in the books, everybody survived, and the reward is a wide-open weekend before Last Fling swallows the next one whole. This week we’ve got Shakespeare under the stars with a puppet show warm-up, a wind tunnel where your kid can actually fly, and a bison herd twenty-five minutes from your driveway that nobody ever charges you to see. Two of the three are free.
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📅 This Week’s Top 3 Family Picks
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Shakespeare in the Park: “Romeo & Juliet” — Free, Outdoors, With a Puppet Show First 🎭
Wheaton College’s Arena Theater and the Wheaton Park District have been doing this together since 2013, and 2026 is the first year they’ve gone for a tragedy — “Romeo & Juliet,” outdoors at the Memorial Park bandshell, completely free. Here’s the part that makes it work with kids: a puppet show starts at 6:45 PM every night, before the play. So the little ones get their own thing, the older ones get the sword fights, and you get to sit on a blanket in the last really pleasant week of August. Gates open at 5:30 — bring lawn chairs and blankets, because the stadium seating is limited and goes fast. Concessions have pizza, popcorn and soft drinks, so dinner is handled.
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iFLY Naperville — Your Kid Can Actually Fly, and They’re Old Enough at Three 🦧
There is a 20-foot vertical wind tunnel on Freedom Drive pushing air at over 120 mph, and for two minutes your six-year-old gets to float in it. Not a simulator — actual weightless flight, with an instructor in the tunnel holding on the entire time and the wind speed dialed to your kid’s exact weight. They’ve flown three-year-olds and a ninety-eight-year-old. The starter package is two one-minute flights (which sounds short until you watch a kid come out of the tunnel), gear and training included, and most first-timers add the “high flight” where the instructor takes them up to the top of the tube. Yes, it’s a splurge. It’s also the thing they will describe to their entire class on Monday.
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There Is a Bison Herd 25 Minutes Away and Nobody Charges You to See It 🐂
Fermilab is a particle physics laboratory with a four-mile particle accelerator underneath it, and it also keeps a herd of American bison out in the restored prairie, because the lab’s first director wanted a living reminder of what the land used to be. The grounds are open to the public every day from dawn to dusk, for free. There are marked pullouts along the road where you park, walk up to the fence, and stand about thirty feet from an animal the size of a minivan. The spring calves are big and lumpy and ridiculous by now. Bring bikes if you have them — the roads are wide and quiet — and walk the prairie path, which is at peak wildflower right now. Two notes: adults 18 and over need a REAL ID to get past the gate, and the indoor Lederman Science Center is weekdays only, so the weekend visit is an outdoor one.
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🍽️ Kids Eat Free This Week!
One of these works every single day, including this weekend. The other is your Wednesday, Sept 2 plan. Dine-in, adult entrée required at both.
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Next weekend is Last Fling, which means carnival lines, parade chairs and a whole lot of noise. This one is the quiet one. Use it on something small — a blanket, a fence with bison behind it, a play in a park. Nobody has homework yet.
See you next Friday,
The Naperville FunTimes Team 🧡
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