BANGOR – Is Pinetop Perkins your cup of tea, but not your child’s? On Saturday, parents can boogie the night away at the National Folk Festival while their children have the run of the Maine Discovery Museum during a special Parents’ Night Out event.

“It will be a fun night,” Trudi Plummer, museum director of education, said Thursday. “I guarantee you that it will be. The children will own this place for the night. Short of giving them the key, they can do anything they want.”

The program, which is open to children ages 5 to 12, runs from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. and costs $20 per child ($17 for museum members).

Museum staff decided that having Parents’ Night Out just after the festival’s Children’s Area closes at 6 p.m. would be a public service.

“We realized that there are 700 volunteers at the festival who wouldn’t mind being able to attend while having their children close by,” Plummer said. “We don’t make a whole lot of money off Parents’ Night Out, but we think that it’s an important contribution to the community.”

Children can enjoy papermaking, art activities, an animal presentation, animal movies, pizza and lots of attention from an army of energetic volunteers Saturday night.

“We have lots of Girl Scouts that participate, and a ratio of one staff member to five kids, at minimum,” Plummer said.

She added that the whole museum will be open to the children, and many activities will depend on what they want to do.

“If the kids want to serve pretend food at the diner for a half an hour to one of the volunteers, that’s OK. The kids really get to run the show.”

On a recent weekday, the museum hummed with activity as children of all ages sang jazzy nursery rhymes in the recording studio, scrambled up a two-story tree, and giggled into a giant human mouth. Others prowled in the colorful Ghanaian marketplace and relaxed in the cozy library.

Plummer is looking forward to Parents’ Night Out.

“We’ve never had problems filling in the time,” she said. “The kids never run out of stuff to do.”

Reservations for Parents’ Night Out are required. Call 262-7200 for more information.