Of course, at 7 p.m. Saturday is the big Dan Zanes concert at the N.C. Museum of Art. Zanes will bring his Grammy-award winning family music to Raleigh for the first time. Zanes is huge in the world of kids music (many of you have probably seen him on Disney's Playhouse). He'll bring a blend of folksy, traditional music that's a lot of fun. He promises it will be like a mini-Grateful Dead concert for families. The event actually starts at 5 p.m. with special activities and giveaways. If he comes back (fingers crossed), I'd love it if they could make the show a little earlier in the day for those of us with young kids.

Also ...

You might not be headed to the tropics for your summer vacation this year, but you can at least get a taste of them this weekend during the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences' A Day in the Tropics.

The day-long event runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the downtown Raleigh museum and is being held in conjunction with Chocolate: The Exhibition. That special exhibit, which runs through Sept. 7, explores the plant, products and culture of chocolate.

And the tropics, after all, are where chocolate comes from.

Saturday's event includes kids crafts and games and educational stations across the museum with information about chocolate and the tropics. Kids will make tropical puzzles and play snake limbo, for instance.

But the highlight for many visitors might be the live animals on display, including servals, patagonian cavies, kinkajous, parrots, iguanas, tropical fish and snakes.

At 2 p.m., Janine Tokarczyk, of the Conservators' Center, a nonprofit based near Mebane that preserves threatened species, will present Serval Safari! Tokarczyk will bring some servals and talk about the cats, which are native to Africa.

Serval Safari! is recommended for all ages. Other presentations, including talks about fairly traded chocolate, chocolate truffle making, and neotropical migrant birds, are best for people ages 8 to 10 and up.

The event is free and admission will be reduced on Saturday to the Chocolate exhibit. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and $3 for kids ages 5 to 11.
Regular admission to Chocolate is $7 for adults, $5 for seniors and $4 for kids ages 5 to 11.

And don't forget the museum is offering $1 off admission into Chocolate on Sundays in July withe the purchase of ice cream on the Bicentennial Plaza from noon to 4:30 p.m. Ben & Jerry's will be serving up some cold treats on Sunday.

After visiting the tropics at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, cross Bicentennial Plaza to the N.C. Museum of History, which will be offering an informal drop-in program from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday called A Closer Look: Museum Sleuths. A museum docent will help kids become a museum detective and teach them about how unusual artifacts are identified.

Duane Deardorff, a UNC-Chapel Hill physics professor, will demonstrate the basic laws of physics and relate them to daily life. The Physics of Everyday Phenomena presentations are at 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. Saturday at Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill.

Borders stores in the Triangle will be celebrating SpongeBob at a variety of events at their stores on Saturday starting at 2 p.m.

Get ready to save on children's clothes, toys and other gear at a host of consignment sales across the Triangle starting next week. The public sale dates for the gigantic Kids Exchange at the N.C. State Fairgrounds of Blue Ridge Road in Raleigh run July 24 through July 26. On July 26, items are sold for 50 percent off. This is a popular sale that can get pretty busy. Go early and prepared and if you plan to buy a lot, bring something to cart it all around. More than a dozen other sales are scheduled to open in the next couple of months. Go to www.trianglemom2mom.com/content/2009-fall-consignment-sale-season for information about other consignment sales in the area.

As always, there's more on the Mom2Mom calendar.