3 Ways That MommyPoppins.com Makes Planning What To Do With Kids In Boston The Easiest

This post originally appeared on the PlanitWide blog in April ‘14.

Summary:
MommyPoppins is a comprehensive resource that makes it easier to plan activities with kids of ages 0 to 12 in Boston by providing filters for:
a) Age group
b) Area (city & suburbs)
c) Type of activity

Traveler Type: With Kids of Ages 0 to 12

Ask any parent, travelling with kids takes planning if you have any hope of having a good time. Not to mention, depending on the age of your child, the challenges you might face towards having an enjoyable trip are just as varied.

That’s why, the two most important things to figure out when you are considering visiting or have already decided to visit a destination with kids are:
i) If age appropriate activities are even available & what they are
ii) Convenience of getting to these activities from where you’re staying.

For Boston, Massachusetts there’s a resource that checks both these boxes like a gold star student: MommyPoppins

This site covers all the bases in terms of being a comprehensive resource. You get a sense of that from the homepage itself via the 100 things to do link.
Within this list are more links to external resources that will give you everything you need to know about any of those activities. Helpfully, when it comes to museums & restaurants, it hosts relevant information in dedicated sections of the site.

From what I can tell, anything you might find with respect to what to do from any other resource on kids activities is on this site (links to these other resources later in the post).

Once you’ve gotten the lay of the land, the real fun is in how MommyPoppins makes it easy as 1-2-3 to quickly narrow down what you might be interested in doing in Boston by allowing you to filter information by:

a) Age Group

Just click on the section that corresponds to how old your kid is. How easy is that?
Not to mention, if you’ve got kids in different age groups, you now have an easy way of figuring out what might interest any age group.

b) Area (City & suburbs)

As with the Age filters, just click on one of the areas in this menu to find out what the possibilities are in any of these areas. Nothing in the city exciting enough for you? Try getting out of downtown, you might besurprised at how much fun awaits in the suburbs.

The one thing to keep in mind is that the age and area filters don’t work together if you use them from the menus shown above. You have to pick one or the other.

However, there is another way you can combine these filters — and others (more on that below).

c) Type of Activity

Getting to this filter is not straightforward like the others but the annoyance is worth it. You’ve got to click on the event calendar link, which then shows you a whole host of filters, including activity.

As you can see, along with Age & Area filters, the event calendar gives you additional options to filter by:
i) Date
ii) Keyword and
iii) Major activity categories like indoor, outdoor, free & recurring.

Using these filters in the combination that applies to you allows you to narrow down the list of things you can actually do with your kids very quickly.

The other cool thing about this site is that they don’t focus only on the commonly suggested things to do that all the usual resources you might consider give you. There’s information on some very local things to do, which while are not “attractions” from a tourist standpoint, may be exactly what will interest your kids (like in the example below).

This is also why the information here is great even if you’re a resident of Boston. It’s not common to come across a resource that caters to visitors & residents alike in this manner.

Bottom line, this Daddy’s got MommyPoppins favorited!

Epilogue:
To have the best trip possible, you need to rely on more than popular resources or perceptions of utility. At PlanitWide, our goal is to serve up the best resources like Mommy Poppins to help you make your itinerary as awesome as it can be.

If you found this post valuable, join our mailing list for more analyses like this & become the most well informed traveler on the planet.

About the Author

Anuj is the co-founder of PlanitWide. He was drinking lemonade when he wrote this.
Feel free to say hi to him on Twitter @AnujAdhiya