Family Day at Habourfront Centre

By William Yang & Sunni Zhou

On Sunday, February 17th, 2013, there was an event at Harbourfront Centre located in Downtown Toronto. There were lots of family and kids’ activities, and all of them were free to the public. Almost everyone was there and, it was one of the biggest events we have ever seen.

Kids were crowded at every single booth. We were glad that we went early, so we didn’t need to wait in long lines to participate in any activities. The activities were all different and unique. It went from milk testing, (decide which milk brand tastes better) to snow castle building (I really admire the staff who were standing there for hours in the freezing weather).

The most awesome and fantastic thing was... FREE COTTON CANDY! Listen up kids! That was a once in a lifetime chance, I mean who gives FREE cotton candy out? We usually beg our parents to buy us a bag in a Disney show, or we have to exchange it with our hours of hard play and collection of tickets we gained through Chuck E. Cheese games. See the picture; we had a rack of cotton candy marked FREE.

Sunni and William enjoying free cotton candy

Some events were:

• Skating/skating performances/Le Patin Libre at 12:30 pm and 3:00 pm.
• Snow castle building at 11:00 am-5:00 pm.
• Street Dance Canada Competitions at 12:00 pm, 2:00 pm and 5:00 pm.
• Vibrating toothbrush painting at 11:00 am-5:00 pm.
• Gelatin art engraving (they called it magical painting) at 11:00 am-5:00 pm.
• Lego playing and building at 11:00 am-5:00 pm. There is also a feature LEGO® building class by the LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Toronto’s Master Model Builder!
• Museums: A showcase of work created by some of the youngest – and most talented artists around.

There were many more free activities available all day long. The one that I paid most attention to was the street dancing.

Street Dancing

The Canadian Street Dance Championships (CSDC) is an annual competition that qualifies dancers to compete at the world street dance championships. It features categories for kids, youth and adults in solo, duo, crew, as well as battle competitions in hip hop, popping, locking, break-in’, crump and house. There were many professional dancers that practiced before the competition, but there were also many audience members who volunteered to show their wacky and cool moves. During the performance, there was a DJ, who was playing awesome tunes and pop music to match the style of dance the dancers were doing. In the middle of the dance, the MC asked, “Are there any children in the audience who want to show their break dancing moves?” After that little speech, everyone started calling each other’s names, but only two little kids went up. One of them was a girl that looked about 7-9 years old and the other one looked like he was around 3-5 years old. After that, the MC called all the adults to come up. The winner got one free ticket to the national street dance competition.

Gelatin Art Engraving:

The gelatin art engraving was really fun. There was a medium sized plastic box that was filled with gelatin, toothbrush-like paintbrushes, cups of different colours of paint, white paper, and an object that looked like a comb. The instructor said, “That is the most important thing in all of these tools.” It was something they used to spread the paint in the gelatin. The instructions are simple. 


First, take a paintbrush and dip it in paint.


Next, shake/wiggle the paintbrush over the gelatin so the drops of paint could fall in the gelatin and make little dots. Now, repeat step 1 and use a different colour.


After, repeat all of these steps until the box is filled with different coloured dots. Then, take the comb-like thing and spread (only using the tip with the spikes) the gelatin any way you want.

Now, take a piece of paper, and gently place it on the gelatin. After a few seconds, gently lift it off.

Finally, take your picture and hang it somewhere to dry. You can definitely make a new one after the first one. When you’ve dried it and it’s hard, it will look something like this. The fun part about this art is that you can design the gelatin any way you want with any colours you want. You can even make a smiley face on the gelatin.

LEGOLAND Discovery Centre

There was another wonderful place called LEGOLAND Discovery  Centre. This wasn’t just any Lego centre; it was a centre with building classes by the LEGOLAND Discovery Centre’s Toronto’s Master Model Builder!

Rhyme Timez

At around 4:00 p.m. we went to watch a show called RhymeTimez. At the show there was a really crazy man
who kept on dancing with flashing lights everywhere in the background. The show was about random characters having rap battles. The first round was a cat vs. a dog. In the end the dog won the match because the cat barely ever rhymed. The second round was Sunny Sunshine against Old Man Winter. This battle was the weirdest because Old Man Winter looks like a huge hairball and he thinks he is a little kid. Old Man Winter totally owned Sunny Sunshine. The last fight was the turtle vs. the hare.This round was really close but the turtle won.

“My favourite battle at RhymeTimez was the turtle vs. the hare. I voted for the turtle because I love Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle,” said a young boy named Josh, who claimed to have gone to every single event at the Harbourfront Centre.