The best things to do in Boston this weekend: May 9-11

While it's not time to sunbathe on the beach just yet, you can still kick up some sand as you stroll Revere Beach and keep your eyes up to the clouds during its Annual Kite Festival. Held this year on May 10 from 11am-2pm, this event is known as the kick off local beach season and is packed with fun for the whole family. Children will have the opportunity to build, decorate, and fly their own kites (while they watch the pros take to the skies with theirs), listen to live music, and enjoy other family friendly activities throughout the afternoon.

You just know that when the ducklings come out to play, it must be time for another beloved Mother’s Day event in Boston. Families celebrate the Boston-based book “Make Way for Ducklings” by Robert McCloskey on May 11 this year, as more than 1,000 children gather on Boston Common for Ducking Day. They'll be dressed as feathered friends to enjoy a puppet show, activity booths, face painting, lawn games, live music, and magic, all at Parkman Bandstand. Following is a parade of people marching behind the famous Harvard Band to the Public Garden as they all retrace Mrs. Mallard’s steps to the Make Way for Ducklings sculpture in the Public Garden. While inclusion in the parade costs $35, soaking in all cuteness is free.

It's the outdoor flower fete we've all been waiting for, and we're blooming with excitement. The time of year is here when America’s first arboretum hosts its famous annual Lilac Sunday event, a beloved Mother's Day (this year on May 11) tradition for locals and visitors alike. Guests of the Arnold Arboretum enjoy tours of one of the premier lilac collections in North America (the arboretum boasts more than 407 lilac plants of 173 kinds), as well as family activities, displays, food vendors, and picnicking (on this special day only) for a memorable day from 10am-3pm.

Part telephone hotline, part vinyl record, and part live performance, Utopian Hotline uses real voicemails left on a public hotline to create a moment of community — inviting audience members to re-imagine our shared future. A cosmic conversation with Theater Mitu’s latest creation and inspired by the 1977 NASA Voyager mission (the launch of a vinyl-style recording of sounds found on Earth into space), as well as Covid-19 pandemic uncertainty and isolation, this experimental performance asks: what would our next message into the distant future be? This collaborative performance from May 1-18 is done in partnership with SETI Institute, Arizona State University’s Interplanetary Initiative, and Brooklyn Independent Middle School.