5 Best Sights in New York City, New York

What looks like a giant block of yellow cheese is actually the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, an interactive space where kids can run, touch, and play with abandon. Exhibits include a greenhouse, a rooftop play space, World Brooklyn—a warren of rooms dedicated to various NYC cultures—and the new Air Maze, where kids can insert objects into a topsy-turvy pneumatic-tube system. Check their calendar for ongoing programs, including their Drag Story Hour, which celebrates gender diversity.

A long-running community outreach program that used to operate a mobile children's museum out of a purple bus has now found a permanent home within the cavernous, former Powerhouse building in Mill Pond Park. Kids can play and create in this bright, colorful, and bilingual space (English and Spanish) with two arts and crafts areas, a learning area about local nature, a flowing water play table to learn about boats on the river, and "The Block"—a kid's version of a neighborhood street scene. Programs, like story times and animal encounters, are scheduled regularly.

In this five-story exploratorium, children ages one to seven are invited to paint their own masterpieces, float boats down a "stream" (seasonal), rescue animals with Dora and Diego (in an exhibition created in collaboration with Nickelodeon), and walk through or crawl under larger-than-life contemporary sculptures at Inside Art. In the immersive, comic book–inspired Superpowered Metropolis exhibit, a trio of lively pigeons—Zip, Zap, and Zoom—guide you through a 1,500-square-foot space equipped with interactive features like a climbable, two-story tree house. Special exhibits are thoughtfully put together and fun. Art workshops, science programs, and storytelling sessions are held daily.

The CMA encourages children ages 1 to 15 to get creative through a variety of mediums. Along with the requisite children's museum offerings like pencils, chalk, and paint, you'll find a clay bar; a media lab with mounted cameras and a recording studio; a small slide and colorful ball pond that kids can play in; an airy exhibition space with rotating exhibits (and workshops inspired by exhibits); a permanent collection of children's art from more than 50 countries; and classes in ceramics, origami, animation, filmmaking, and more. Check the website for a busy calendar of events.

The National Museum of Mathematics (aka MoMath) transforms math into hands-on fun for all ages—even if numbers aren’t your thing. Solve mind-bending puzzles, ride a trike with square wheels, make your own color patterns with magnetic tiles, play brain games at interactive stations, and much more. Adults will love it as much as kids, making it a rare museum where everyone can geek out. Don’t miss the stellar gift shop, packed with clever, math-inspired finds.