Things to Do with Kids in Amsterdam-West

The Amsterdam Museum turns 100, and it is celebrating with a festival of tours, creative workshops, exhibitions and birthday cake.

For families, the easiest way in is the giant city model, where projections show a small village on the Amstel growing into today's city, with 30,500 hand-placed buildings to spot. Much of the program is pitched at adults, so a visit to the model suits kids better than the talks and tours.

A comic, dreamlike fairy tale about a king who is afraid of everything, most of all the elephants he says are coming. To keep them out, he invents strange rules, puts up odd signs and confiscates everyone's apples. Everyone obeys except Samar, who won't let herself be scared. It's funny first, and it asks what happens when one person refuses to be led by fear.

Lennox knows his dad is ill, but nobody will tell him what's wrong. When his dad leaves for the hospital without his lucky necklace, Lennox and his best friend go after him. RIGHTABOUTNOW INC. and Dutch National Opera turn Zindzi Zevenbergen's award-winning book into a hip-hop opera, with a live band mixing jazz, gospel, Afro and hip-hop. It suits kids ready for a story with real stakes.

Offlab Studio is a series of three hands-on workshops led by two designers, Nina and Tina. Each one is its own project: a poster with a message the kid picks, made with collage, paint, stamps and drawings; a design printed on clothing; and a small book folded from one sheet of paper.

There's no right or wrong way here. Groups are small, and the focus is on trying things out.

A festive musical concert where new band member Selim Dogru from Turkey discovers his bandmates don't know Sint Baba's true origins. The show blends Dutch and Turkish sounds through songs and performances, with fairy tale characters unexpectedly appearing on stage. Includes treats and a cozy gathering after the show.

A dancer on the floor and an aerial acrobat on a rope play with flashlights, mirrors, shadows and colored light. The show builds slowly from small beams of light. It is told through dance, light and music, so it needs no Dutch. Near the end, the children step onto the stage themselves. LiCHT won the 2026 Jonge Zwaan for the most impressive Dutch youth dance production.

The classic outlaw story, retold with Robin as a girl. She and her friends fight poverty from the forest, helped by Marian, the king's tough daughter, and they have to choose: pick up their bows again, or come up with a clever trick?

Het Kleine Theater and Garage TDI play it with acrobatics, heroic music and plenty of jokes, and it turns out the fight against greed still feels current.

Santa's son is meant to take over the family business, but he can't stand snow, hot chocolate or skiing, and he's allergic to reindeer and Christmas trees. What he wants is to grow up to be the Easter Bunny. Three actors play and sing the story on a giant pop-up set by Rianne van Duin. It's based on the picture book by Marc-Uwe Kling, the author of De NEE-hoorn.

Het Kleine Theater stages Hans Christian Andersen's winter fairy tale about a girl alone in the snow who strikes her matches one by one, and with each flame a dream or a quiet wish appears. The company keeps the sad side of the story but gives it a cheerful, hopeful turn, so this match girl lives happily ever after. Two actors share the stage with a live musician.

MaxTak's new music-theater show loosely retells Peter Pan. Peet's overprotective parents keep their kid at home, so Peet plays the game Neverland for days, until a boy named Pan pulls Peet inside. The island promises freedom on Pan's terms, then Jacky Haak sails in planning to sell it to a tech millionaire. Expect a live band, sword fights and real talk about friendship, peer pressure and power.

A girl goes looking for her big sister and asks everyone she meets if they have seen her, adding one more clue each time: blue eyes, a coat with pockets, a yellow hat. Hoge Fronten turned Joke van Leeuwen's prize-winning picture book into a show with live music, painted sets and oversized costumes drawn from her illustrations. Van Leeuwen herself acts and plays music on stage. Performed in Dutch.

Three pop stars set out to look grown-up, harmonious and cool, then find their audience is mostly small kids. Pops of the Top is a lip-synced slapstick concert and a nod to the classic girl band, full of would-be hits, onstage fuss and squabbles over who gets the solo. Nobody speaks a word, so kids need no Dutch to follow along.

Four acrobats fall from the sky onto a garbage dump full of old stuffed animals, broken toasters and empty bottles. With acrobatics, humor and imagination they build a bright new world out of what everyone else threw away. A wordless circus theater show about teamwork, reuse and second chances, for kids who like movement and slapstick.

Three dancers see the world the way a toddler does: a reflection in a shop window is thrilling, and a knocked-over plant pot means earthworms, not a mess. BonteHond tells it all through movement, music and giant folding paper fans, with no spoken words, so kids need no Dutch to follow along. A gentle first theater trip for toddlers and preschoolers.

Meneer Monster theater group performs this physical slapstick adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's classic picture book. A clever mouse outwits three hungry forest animals through imagination and trickery, but faces unexpected consequences when his inventions become real. The production features live actors, winter-themed staging, and hot chocolate service.

A mole pops up to see if the sun is up, and something lands on his head. Poop. He sets off to find the culprit, quizzing a parade of animals who all swear it wasn't them, until two clever dung flies crack the case.

Meneer Monster (the makers of the Dutch stage Gruffalo) plays the Holzwarth and Erlbruch picture book as physical slapstick with almost no words, so kids need no Dutch.

Playhood is a roleplay play space built as a child-sized neighborhood: a bakery, a supermarket with shopping carts, a fire station, a theater and more, all stocked with props and dress-up outfits. Kids run the shops while parents play along or sit in the Good Hood Café on site.

At the Good Hood Pizza shop, kids put on a chef's hat and apron, pick their ingredients and top their own pizza.

Candy Castle is an indoor play paradise inside a restored historic church, with climbing frames, slides and tunnels set under the old church interior. The main play structure is for bigger kids, and a separate toddler zone keeps the youngest apart.

Play zones are laid out so parents can watch from the seating, and a café serves food with halal and gluten-free options.

Ten Katemarkt is a neighborhood street market that has run along Ten Katestraat since 1912, on both sides of Kinkerstraat. During market hours the street is closed to traffic, so kids can walk the stalls on foot.

The Hannie Dankbaarpassage leads straight into De Hallen, a former tram depot with a food hall, cinema and library, handy for lunch or a rainy-day break.

The Park Playground is a free-roam virtual reality arena in a business complex at the Houthavens. Groups put on wireless headsets and walk around a shared play field together, solving puzzles in an Egyptian pyramid, cracking an escape room or teaming up on a space mission. Hosts brief each group before play, and a bar serves drinks and snacks afterward. Younger kids get fewer choices, since most games include mild scares.

At the west end of the Vondelpark, Het Kinderkookkafé has let children do the cooking since 1981. At the Help-jezelf-Bar, a self-serve counter at kid height, young kids follow photo cards to bake cookies, decorate cakes, build a pizza or cut vegetable shapes, then eat at the family table. Staff handle the oven. Parents get coffee, toasties and homemade cake. Older siblings join in too.

Brediusbad is a heated outdoor pool on the edge of the Spaarndammerbuurt, near Westerpark, set in a quiet green spot behind two tall hotel buildings. It has a 33 by 25 meter deep basin for swimmers with a diploma, a shallow basin for younger children and a round toddler pool with a spray fountain. A lawn beside the pools has room for towels and snacks, and the whole pool is smoke-free.

Fabrique des Lumières is a digital art center in the Zuiveringshal, a former gasworks hall on the Westergasfabriek site by Westerpark. Famous paintings and photographs are projected across the walls and floor of two rooms, set to music. Kids can wander through the images, sit on the floor or the tiered seats, and watch the pictures move around them.

The program rotates, with each show in its own daily time slot.

A neighborhood city farm on the Kostverlorenvaart canal in Oud-West, open since 1996 on a plot locals still call "het landje van Ome Kick". Kids meet six goats, two Gasconne pigs that hunt for hidden nuts, sheep, rabbits, guinea pigs and chickens that roam a long mesh tunnel through the garden.

Boerderij Westerpark is the city's largest farm, run by staff and volunteers in the middle of Westerpark. Kids meet Kunekune pigs, Dutch spotted and Frisian milk sheep, pygmy and Nubian goats, several breeds of chicken, golden pheasants, pigeons and the farm cat.

When the meadow is open, families can walk in among the goats and sheep. De Hooikeet, the farm's neighborhood café, serves coffee, tea and apple pie.

Het Woeste Westen is a nature playground next to Westerpark, split by old ditches into themed islands. Kids pole rafts through the ditches, splash in a running stream, pump water into a play pond and build huts from loose branches. Over a hundred tall willows shade the woodland strip, where a rope course runs between the trees.

Best for kids who are happy to come home muddy.

Westerpark joins an 1890s city park with the grounds of the old Westergasfabriek gasworks, whose restored brick buildings now hold cafés, a cinema and Theater De Krakeling, a theater for young audiences.

The older eastern part has a pond with ducks; the newer western part has a shallow play pond where kids wade in summer. Wide lawns suit picnics and ball games, and there are public tennis courts.