Need a plan for the kids before the week is out? This list gathers the family events coming up over the next few days: theater shows, hands-on workshops, fairs and exhibitions. It updates itself as plans come and go, with the soonest at the top. Check each listing for the language and age range before you book, since plenty of shows are in German.
Basel's Herbstmesse, "d Mäss" to locals, has run every autumn since 1471 and is the biggest funfair in Switzerland. Rides, game booths and food stalls fill squares on both sides of the Rhine: old-time carousels and a Ferris wheel beside the Münster, faster rides in Kleinbasel, and a pottery and craft market under the plane trees on Petersplatz. Snack stops: Mässmogge candy, spiced Magenbrot and hot chestnuts.
Räbeliechtli is a Swiss autumn tradition: kids carry lanterns carved from turnips and walk together in the evening. This one is run by the ELCH and goes through the Lange Erlen to the square outside Kaffi ELCH.
Big and small are welcome. It suits preschoolers and early schoolers best, and families who booked can stay on afterward for a soup supper.
KinderGleisKreis is a supervised pop-up playground on disused railroad tracks in the Dreispitz area. Kids build it themselves around a railroad theme and their own ideas, with help from the play team. Old freight wagons hold a workshop and a living room, a covered wagon serves as a workbench, and homemade rail trolleys roll along the tracks. Younger kids pull each other in small wagons on a kids' track.
Der Räuber Hotzenplotz, the robber adventure, comes to the stage of the Basler Kindertheater in a version by Jessica Wohlwend. Kids and the adults who bring them watch it together.
It is performed in Swiss German dialect, so it suits kids who hear Swiss German at home or at school. Kids who don't understand dialect will miss most of the dialogue.
A marionette play about a young ghost living in a castle in Scotland, performed by the theater's own ensemble in a Basel German version by Markus Blättler.
The Basler Marionetten Theater has staged puppet plays since 1943 in the Zehntenkeller, a historic cellar beside the Münster. It suits kids who understand Swiss German; a child who speaks only English will find the story hard to follow.
A family workshop inside the Museum der Kulturen's Tie-dye exhibition. Kids and parents first look at the different techniques used to pattern textiles, including shibori, a Japanese dyeing technique.
Then everyone gets creative and dyes socks, folding and tying them so each one comes out with its own pattern. It suits kids who like hands-on making more than looking at display cases.
Gratis uffs Glattyys is Basel's free skating day, when the canton opens both public rinks, Margarethen and Eglisee, to everyone. It's an easy, no-pressure way for a family to spend a whole day on the ice.
At Margarethen, regional ice sports clubs add a program kids can join in. It suits kids who can already stand on skates; total beginners will need a parent's hand.
Andrew Bond is the Swiss children's songwriter whose songs many kids already know by heart. This family concert is built for joining in: songs from his nature album "Machs wie de Dachs" (Do It Like the Badger) take the audience through fields, woods and meadows, singing, playing and dancing along with animals, birds and insects, with some of his best-known autumn songs mixed in. It's sung in Swiss German.
A whole special exhibition on the teddy bear, inside a toy museum that holds one of the world's largest collections of historic teddies. It traces the bear from old legends and Basel's own Bear Dance to the 1907 teddy craze, Winnie-the-Pooh, Paddington and the Haribo Goldbear.
Kids can hug a giant plush bear and play at a teddy first-aid station between the glass cases.
Kipling's story of Mowgli, the boy raised in the jungle, and his animal friends, in a new stage version Kamil Krejci wrote and directs for the Fauteuil-Märchenbühne. He plays it for laughs and for suspense, with original music by Alexius Tschallener and choreographed scenes.
The theater's own ensemble of eight actors performs it in the Fauteuil hall on Spalenberg, a two-minute walk from Marktplatz in the Old Town.
Need a plan for the kids before the week is out? This list gathers the family events coming up over the next few days: theater shows, hands-on workshops, fairs and exhibitions. It updates itself as plans come and go, with the soonest at the top. Check each listing for the language and age range before you book, since plenty of shows are in German.
Basel's Herbstmesse, "d Mäss" to locals, has run every autumn since 1471 and is the biggest funfair in Switzerland. Rides, game booths and food stalls fill squares on both sides of the Rhine: old-time carousels and a Ferris wheel beside the Münster, faster rides in Kleinbasel, and a pottery and craft market under the plane trees on Petersplatz. Snack stops: Mässmogge candy, spiced Magenbrot and hot chestnuts.
Räbeliechtli is a Swiss autumn tradition: kids carry lanterns carved from turnips and walk together in the evening. This one is run by the ELCH and goes through the Lange Erlen to the square outside Kaffi ELCH.
Big and small are welcome. It suits preschoolers and early schoolers best, and families who booked can stay on afterward for a soup supper.
KinderGleisKreis is a supervised pop-up playground on disused railroad tracks in the Dreispitz area. Kids build it themselves around a railroad theme and their own ideas, with help from the play team. Old freight wagons hold a workshop and a living room, a covered wagon serves as a workbench, and homemade rail trolleys roll along the tracks. Younger kids pull each other in small wagons on a kids' track.
Der Räuber Hotzenplotz, the robber adventure, comes to the stage of the Basler Kindertheater in a version by Jessica Wohlwend. Kids and the adults who bring them watch it together.
It is performed in Swiss German dialect, so it suits kids who hear Swiss German at home or at school. Kids who don't understand dialect will miss most of the dialogue.
A marionette play about a young ghost living in a castle in Scotland, performed by the theater's own ensemble in a Basel German version by Markus Blättler.
The Basler Marionetten Theater has staged puppet plays since 1943 in the Zehntenkeller, a historic cellar beside the Münster. It suits kids who understand Swiss German; a child who speaks only English will find the story hard to follow.
A family workshop inside the Museum der Kulturen's Tie-dye exhibition. Kids and parents first look at the different techniques used to pattern textiles, including shibori, a Japanese dyeing technique.
Then everyone gets creative and dyes socks, folding and tying them so each one comes out with its own pattern. It suits kids who like hands-on making more than looking at display cases.
Gratis uffs Glattyys is Basel's free skating day, when the canton opens both public rinks, Margarethen and Eglisee, to everyone. It's an easy, no-pressure way for a family to spend a whole day on the ice.
At Margarethen, regional ice sports clubs add a program kids can join in. It suits kids who can already stand on skates; total beginners will need a parent's hand.
Andrew Bond is the Swiss children's songwriter whose songs many kids already know by heart. This family concert is built for joining in: songs from his nature album "Machs wie de Dachs" (Do It Like the Badger) take the audience through fields, woods and meadows, singing, playing and dancing along with animals, birds and insects, with some of his best-known autumn songs mixed in. It's sung in Swiss German.
A whole special exhibition on the teddy bear, inside a toy museum that holds one of the world's largest collections of historic teddies. It traces the bear from old legends and Basel's own Bear Dance to the 1907 teddy craze, Winnie-the-Pooh, Paddington and the Haribo Goldbear.
Kids can hug a giant plush bear and play at a teddy first-aid station between the glass cases.
Kipling's story of Mowgli, the boy raised in the jungle, and his animal friends, in a new stage version Kamil Krejci wrote and directs for the Fauteuil-Märchenbühne. He plays it for laughs and for suspense, with original music by Alexius Tschallener and choreographed scenes.
The theater's own ensemble of eight actors performs it in the Fauteuil hall on Spalenberg, a two-minute walk from Marktplatz in the Old Town.
