Entertainment / Family Fun

FAMILY FUN: In-Cider Information

By David Burke | Monday, October 13, 2008 | () comments

Get your fix of jonathans, golden delicious and Granny Smiths at the 20th annual Apple Festival, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Mississippi Valley Welcome Center, south of LeClaire, Iowa.

Samples of apples and cider will be available, and apples, cider, caramel apples, pie, pumpkins, gourds and Indian corn will be for sale. Displays will be featured along with hayrack rides and a petting zoo.

From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. is a cemetery walk, with a trolley available to nearby Glendale Cemetery. At each stop, costumed actors will portray figures from LeClaire’s past, including its first mayor, Capt. Adrian Davenport; Lt. Joseph Barnes, a Civil War veteran and boyhood friend of LeClaire native Buffalo Bill Cody; pioneering female Dr. Alvina Kattenbracker; and Philip Suiter, the first licensed rafting pilot.

Also, Autumn Days are taking place in downtown LeClaire, with a bake sale, sidewalk sales, face painting and live street entertainment.

get out

What’s new in the museums

“Day of the Dead,” today through Nov. 16, Figge Art Museum, Davenport

The Figge relives a 3,000-year-old cultural tradition with “El Día de los Muertos,” when family and friends gather to celebrate the lives of relatives and friends who have died.

Traditionally, families would create altars or “ofrendas” to invite the souls to come home and make them feel comfortable and joyful during their stay. The altars can include photographs, personal belongings and symbolic items.

This exhibition will include seven Day of the Dead altars created by the Casa Guanajuato Mexican Cultural Center, Latino Unidos, Augustana College; Latinos Unidos, Moline High School; the Imelda Crinklaw family; and the Jose Lopez family.

The exhibit is free to museum members or with a museum admission.

road trip

Fall Festival, Fulton, Ill.

Several new activities have been added to the festival, which has increased its running time from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today.

New events include a small arts and crafts show, a hay bale maze, a 2-mile run/walk, a Mark Twain impersonator and a public safety day program. The One Hat Band will perform from 2 to 4 p.m.

Returning events will be free children's games, bounce houses, pumpkin painting, dancing and gymnastics performances and the Riverboat Rustlers Square Dancers.

For complete details about the event, visit CityofFulton.us on the Web.

Family movie guide

“The Express”

Rated: PG for thematic content, violence and language involving racism and for brief sensuality.

Translation: Racist language and behavior, sports violence, a brief nonexplicit sexual situation (underwear) and a very sad death.

Recommendation: 12 years and older

Family discussion: How were Ernie Davis and Jim Brown different and what role did that play in determining which got the Heisman Trophy? What were the most important things Ernie and his coach taught each other?

If you like this, try: “Remember the Titans,” “Glory Road.”

“Body of Lies”

Rated: R for strong violence, including some torture, and for language throughout

Translation: Extremely strong and graphic violence, including very explicit torture scenes, bombs, guns, characters injured and killed, grisly wounds, very strong language, drinking, smoking, some crude sexual references, nonsexual nudity

Recommendation: Mature high schoolers

Family discussion: How do you decide when the ends justify the means? When do you know whether your tactics will eradicate terrorism or inspire even more?

If you like this, try: “Traitor,” “The Situation,” “The Hunting Party.”

“City of Ember”

Rated: PG for mild peril and some thematic elements

Translation: Dark, dystopic themes, a sad death, a reference to the deaths of parents, characters in peril, injured and killed, and a scary and gross monster with a lot of teeth

Recommendation: 10 years and older

Family discussion: Why were the kids the only ones to question what they were told? Why didn’t assignment day include jobs such as journalist or designer?

If you like this, try: “The Wizard of Oz,” “Spy Kids.”

— MovieMom.com

road trip

Fall Festival, Fulton, Ill.

Several new activities have been added to the festival, which has increased its running time from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today.

New events include a small arts and crafts show, a hay bale maze, a 2-mile run/walk, a Mark Twain impersonator and a public safety day program. The One Hat Band will perform from 2 to 4 p.m.

Returning events will be free children's games, bounce houses, pumpkin painting, dancing and gymnastics performances and the Riverboat Rustlers Square Dancers.

For complete details about the event, visit CityofFulton.us on the Web.

stay in

Family TV best bet

“Nanny McPhee,” 6 and 8 p.m. Sunday, ABC Family Channel

A bewildered widower (Colin Firth), who has no idea how to control his unruly brood of seven children, hires the title character nanny (Emma Thompson), a heavy woman with moles on her face and a single protruding tooth. The children are raising havoc. But Nanny, aided by the special cane she taps to work her magic, gets the better of their bratty behavior. As the children lose their wicked ways, Nanny McPhee loses her unsightly physical characteristics. The children say, “Please,” and a wart disappears, for example.

— Linda Cook, 2005 review

Game review

Send grade-schoolers on ‘Brain Quest’ on DS

“Where do tornadoes occur most frequently?” Would your children know it’s in the Midwest United States? They would if they had been playing “Brain Quest: Grades 5 & 6,” one of two new “Brain Quest” games from Electronic Arts for the Nintendo DS. The other is “Brain Quest: Grades 3 & 4.”

These two games bring the popular grade-specific flashcard sets to the DS platform. Both games offer three ways to explore the popular “Brain Quest” questions. Each game boasts 6,000 questions covering six academic subjects. And within each game, you can select the grade level at which you want to play.

If you want to jump right in and begin answering questions, select the Brain mode. From within that mode, you then choose which of six academic subjects you want to explore.

The questions vary in format, but they include multiple choice, selecting an image, matching, sorting, fill-in-the-blank, word builder (add a letter to the beginning of a word to change it into another word) and cross-out (cross out a letter in a misspelled word). You answer the questions by using the DS stylus and the touch-sensitive screen.

“Brain Quest” has snappy packaging of grade-appropriate academic questions in a video game format. While this is not a traditional video game with cutting-edge gameplay and deep storytelling, this is an excellent compilation of academic questions made fun by the variety of ways in which you answer the questions. This game is so supportive that even reluctant learners will want to play.

— Jinny Gudmundsen, Computing with Kids

get a sitter

John Heffron, 7:30 and 10 p.m. today, Penguin’s Comedy Club, Freight House Entertainment Complex, 421 W. River Drive, Davenport

He’s a “Last Comic Standing” and one of the first comics in training.

John Heffron, who won NBC-TV’s “Last Comic Standing” in 2004, is in the Quad-Cities to perform at Penguin’s and get in some training time at mixed-martial arts guru Pat Miletich’s gym in Bettendorf.

The Detroit native is featured in the new MyNetwork TV series “The Tony Rock Project” and has just completed the taping of his third special for Comedy Central.

Tickets are $22 at the door.

you and the kids

Turning milk jugs into monsters

Here’s a quick and inexpensive craft that will bring out the poster-paint Picasso in your kids. It uses objects you’d otherwise trash or recycle such as plastic milk jugs. You may have to spring for some paint.

Courtesy of FamilyFun.com, this craft is a winner for elementary school-age children. When we started this craft in our front yard, several neighborhood kids mysteriously appeared and wanted to join us.

Since we only had three milk jugs, we hustled and found a few other plastic containers. We learned a valuable lesson: Don’t do that. Stick with the gallon-size milk jugs because their thin plastic can be sliced at the end of the project for inserting the precious nose pieces. With the thicker plastic jugs, we had to tape on the monsters’ noses.

Yes, these are critical details.

You’ll need a gallon-size, plastic milk jug, two milk caps, a 16-ounce plastic container (deli or butter tub), duct tape, acrylic paints in various colors, paintbrushes, tinfoil, pushpins, thin cardboard or poster board and a craft knife

More important are the craft instructions. You can find those at qctimes.com.

MONSTER JUG HEADS

Assembly:

1. Turn over a clean, gallon-size milk jug and rest it in a plastic container (for ease in standing upright, and for making the Jug Head’s thick neck). Attach the jug to the container with duct tape (preferably on the sides and in back), then coat the jug, tape and deli container with acrylic paint. (You don’t even have to remove the paper labels. The paint will conceal it all.)

2. When the head is dry, paint on the face, e.g., bloodshot eyes, a menacing grin, cool scars and a head of greasy black hair.

3. To create bolts in the sides of the monster’s neck, cover the milk caps with tinfoil and attach them with pushpins. (Our pins weren’t long enough, so we had to reinforce those with duct tape.)

4. Cut a nose out of thin cardboard or poster board and slip it through a slit cut in the monster’s face. (If you’re using a container made from thicker plastic, you may need to tape on the nose.)

— The Associated Press