Family Area
This special interactive area features hands-on crafts, quiet games and active games, and other creative learning activities for young audiences and their families. The Family Area will also feature a variety of performances sure to delight festivalgoers of all ages.
All activities are FREE, and open from noon to 5 PM on Saturday, Nov. 14, and Sunday, Nov. 14.
Family Area Partners
Mississippi Children’s Museum
Jackson Hinds Library System • Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians
Mississippi Department of Archives and History—Eudora Welty House & Garden and Two Mississippi Museums
Mississippi Museum of Art • Mississippi Museum of Natural Science • Mississippi Public Broadcasting
National Park Service • Toot, Teach & Roll
The Family Activities Area invites children and families to engage in a wide array of hands-on crafts, quiet and active games, and creative learning experiences. From designing buttons from the Civil Rights Movement to exploring sensory bins and crafting paper flowers from book pages, the area offers something for every curious mind. Sessions with interactive music, dance, and games—from Choctaw to West African drumming to Double Dutch—encourage movement and cultural exploration, while traditional Choctaw games and crafting homemade tambourines like those played in churches across the state bring Mississippi’s folklife to life. Children can broaden their cultural understanding at MCM’s traveling exhibit Celebrations: Asian Culture, and leaf through books of folk tales from the Jackson Hinds Library System.
Also, explore Toot, Teach & Roll’s story lab and add to a collaborative art experience. Young visitors to the Family Area can try Choctaw beading, earn a National Park Service Junior Ranger badge with the National Folk Festival logo, meet Ed Said from Mississippi Public Broadcasting, and get up close with Mississippi wildlife through live animal exhibits and nature artifacts.
