Children's Museum of Manhattan

The Children's Museum of Manhattan is 5 floors of educational fun for kids from 6 months to 12 years. At this Upper West Side institution, there's pretty much something for everyone here and they also offer lots of classes and special programs throughout the day. This both mixes it up and makes it easier to handle being there with children of different ages because you can drop older kids off in a class and go visit the little kid areas that would bore older kids.

The third floor is completely for little kids. It has activities appropriate for children as young as six months with a "crawling obstacle course" and board books. There's a cool fire department with really real fire fighter costumes, a truck that flashes lights and a fireman's pole. There's even a little game where kids have to put out the fires with their laser hoses.

Other sections have a play market/bodega, a physics area where kids can experiment with different cause and effect puzzles, a neat phonics area that speaks the sounds of lettered tiles when you feed them to a crocodile or place them on special racks to form words, and more.

The ground floor has the special exhibit, which right now is Ancient Greece. Kids can follow the story of Odysseus in The Odyssey, climb a Trojan horse, do karaoke with the Sirens, etc.

I wouldn't put The Children's Museum of Manhattan in the world-class category. I think they could work a little harder on making the exhibits truly outstanding and the classes are kind of run-of-the-mill. My kids took a Greek Theater Mask-making class and they were not told anything about the significance of the mask or anything, they were just shown how to do it.

So it doesn't compare with taking a free kid's art class at MoMA that's for sure, but CMoM is a great place to go during the week, either during the day with babies and toddlers or after school with older children. On the weekends it gets so crowded that it's hard to really enjoy the museum. Admission is $9 per adult and child, so it's not cheap, but you can spend many hours there on a cold winter day and get your money's worth.

Find more great activities like this in our Indoor Activities Guide.

Find more must-see museums and hot spots in our Culture Guide.