Four to seven is the age when a puppet show holds them start to finish and a city farm turns into a whole afternoon. This list pulls together the shows, workshops, farms, playgrounds and hands-on museums pitched at that age, so you can skip the ones built for toddlers or for older kids.
Theater Marotte turns the much-loved picture book into a puppet show. A little mouse crosses a big forest full of dangers and scares off everyone who wants to eat her by threatening them with the terrible Gruffalo, a monster she made up. Or did she?
It is told in German, so it suits kids who follow spoken German or already know the story well.
A German-language musical comedy about Albertina, a big-hearted schoolgirl who heads to the junkyard to visit her friends Henriette the hen and Marvin the mole. When she learns her mom wants no tree this year, she wishes one up in the wishing tub, and it comes true. This is no ordinary tree, and chaos follows.
Best for kids who follow German well enough to enjoy the jokes.
Two trolls, Frieda and Mey, are deep in their winter sleep when Knut wakes them: Christmas is at the door. But nobody is standing there. Who is Christmas? Is it big, small, dangerous?
This cheerful puppet show follows the pair as they puzzle it out and get ready in their own way. It is performed in German, so it suits kids who can follow simple spoken German.
A fairy-tale puppet play loosely based on Janosch. A poor man owns an apple tree that never blooms and never bears fruit. He wishes, honestly and over and over, for one single apple, and then something happens.
Susi Claus adapted the story and plays it herself, directed by Daniel Wagner. It is told in German, so it suits young kids who can follow a spoken story in German.
Mira Lobe's picture book comes to the stage. A colorful creature is happy until a tree frog asks, "Who are you?" It sets off to ask the other animals and finds bits of itself in each, but no match. The set and costumes are all paper, and musician Marcus Thomas builds the soundtrack live with a chord zither and loop station, close enough for kids to watch how each sound is made.
A puppet show about Mischka, a teddy bear who is tired of being a toy and runs away. On his travels he finds adventures and new friends, then a reindeer asks him to help deliver Christmas presents.
At the last house the sack is empty, and Mischka has to figure out what to do for the boy asleep inside. A quiet story about caring for someone else.
Da Sein is a gentle musical story based on Kathrin Schärer's picture book. A hedgehog keeps getting parcels, and with every box the hedgehog and a rat open, the two discover a new feeling: being together, being sad, being excited.
Charango, recorder, accordion and more turn small everyday moments into big drama. It suits preschoolers and young kids ready to sit through a show about feelings.
Two performers feel, listen and describe their way into the world under our feet: roots, crawling things, water and sound. With materials, puppets and live sound, they follow traces into what can't be seen and invite kids to imagine it.
It's Schaubude's first show made by blind and sighted artists together, with audio description built into the performance, so blind and sighted children follow the same story.
A puppet show based on Chris Naylor-Ballesteros's picture book The Suitcase. A bird, a fox and a rabbit meet in the woods to build things, until a strange animal turns up dragging a suitcase. Curious and suspicious, they break it open while it sleeps.
A gentle, serious story about being a stranger and finding a place, performed in German by Theater Couturier.
A donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster are each thrown out for being too old or too slow, so they team up and set off for Bremen. Rike Schuberty plays the Grimm tale on her own, with puppets and music by Berlin musician Masha Qrella.
They never reach Bremen, but they find friends and a new start along the way. It suits kids who already know the story.
A puppet musical based on Eric Carle's story. A caterpillar with green fuzzy hair hatches on a meadow, eats too many sweets and gets sick, and the owl and the forest animals nurse it back to health before it spins a cocoon and wakes up as a butterfly.
Thomas Mierau plays every part with colored shadow puppets, and the show is full of songs about growing up and eating well.
A color-shadow puppet version of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, played to the original music. Kids watch the duck waddle into the pond, the cat dance a blues and Peter and the little bird outwit the wolf, then find out what happens to the duck inside the wolf.
Puppeteer Thomas Mierau built the puppets and the stage, and plays and narrates the show himself. A gentle first taste of classical music.
A puppet version of the Grimm tale: a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster, chased off by their owners, team up and set out to become town musicians in Bremen. Played by Sebastian Günther, it is staged as a musical road movie full of blues.
It suits kids who follow spoken German or already know the story, since the words and songs carry it.
Kackebart is a farm boy who wants to be a knight. He heads to King Pipifax's tournament, gets laughed at by the other knights, then gets his chance when a dragon kidnaps the princess.
Kindertheater Purzelbaum plays it as a silly, potty-humor fairy tale. It suits kids who find a poop beard hilarious; families who'd rather skip toilet jokes should pick another show.
One actress tells the Grimm tale of the miller's daughter, three rooms of straw and a little man who wants her first child, switching between every role in front of the kids. Children call out ideas that she works into the story, and at many points they step on stage to play along. It is told in German.
Old toys lie in an attic until the sound of a piano wakes them up. That's the setup for this story of Mischka the bear and Masha the doll, told with poetry and humor by actress Claudia Maria Franck while pianist Elena Bregman plays music by Dmitri Shostakovich.
It suits young kids curious about classical music and families happy with a short show told in German.
Three musicians, Emma Grünfeld, Marceese and Robert Metcalf, turn a kids' concert into a sound experiment. Alongside sing-along songs, they bring mysterious gadgets that distort, change and flip sounds upside down.
Kids click their tongues, tap and experiment, finding out what odd noises a mouth can make and how a simple "plop" grows into a whole rhythm. It suits curious kids who like to join in.
A funny children's play starring the NEINhorn. It has fallen out with the KönigsDOCHter, and nobody remembers why. When the NAhUND starts playing teacher too, the NEINhorn has had enough and sets off. After a long walk it lands in a dark jungle with the SchLANGEWEILE, who hangs from a branch and finds everything deadly boring.
The jokes are German wordplay, so it suits kids who follow spoken German.
A fox leaps through fresh snow and plays with the flakes, while a Wicht keeps warm indoors with steaming tea. Then a snowstorm blows in and the fox is gone. Mirjam Hesse of Theater Miamou builds the story from figures and materials, in a calm, clear visual style.
The show is told in German Sign Language and spoken German, made for deaf and hearing kids to watch together.
The Flying Fairytale Orchestra is planning the perfect Christmas party and invites all the kids. But what makes Christmas perfect: a decorated tree, presents, a roast goose?
Together with the kids, the cast goes looking and finds songs, customs and poems from other countries and cultures. By the end, the children help put the perfect Christmas show on stage. A German-language show by Morphtheater, best for kids who follow German.
A storytelling tent in Neukölln where traditional fairy tales from countries like India, Turkey, Japan and Ghana are told in their original language. Kids sit on floor cushions while the storyteller shows large illustrations painted by artists from that country, so the pictures, gestures and faces carry the plot whatever language a child speaks.
Afterward, the storyteller and the audience retell the story together. Running since 2006.
Ranik and Raja are two young wolves and best friends, but Ranik knows little about how to be a good friend. When a forest fairy spirits Raja away, Ranik has to learn what true friendship means to break the spell, facing adventures and tests along the way, with a quick-witted raccoon who might help.
Actors in full costume play it out. It's the Silflay troupe's own production, performed in German.
Paul Maar's Sams, a cheeky creature who grants wishes, picks shy Mr. Taschenbier as its dad and turns his orderly life upside down at home, at the office and in a department store.
ATZE's staging adds live songs: actors play music on office supplies, sing a cappella and dance through the store scene. It is performed in German, so it suits kids who follow the language or already know the books.
A musical adaptation of David McKee's picture book about two characters, one red and one blue, who live on either side of a high mountain. They cannot agree on whether evening is when the day ends or when the night begins, and the argument gets heated before it reaches a surprisingly cheerful end.
It suits preschoolers and young school kids, especially siblings who know the "you started it" fight well.
Every winter the children's library at the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek puts a real Mongolian yurt in its atrium garden, and professional storytellers sit inside it to tell fairy tales and stories from around the world.
Kids sit close and listen to stories told live, not read from a book. It suits preschoolers who can sit still for a story; toddlers under 3 are not admitted.
Rapauke is the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin's concert series for preschoolers. In this one, four orchestra musicians (oboe and English horn, clarinet, violin, double bass) and the Rapauke character build the show around heads and legs, hats and shoes, and how we get around.
Kids don't sit still: they stamp, hop and spin, finding out how movement and music fit together. The hosting is in German.
Children from the State and Cathedral Choir Berlin and a girls' choir of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin act out the legend of St. Martin, the soldier who shared his cloak, set to German songs from the 1500s.
The play is led in German and suits young kids who enjoy a story told in song. It ends with a lantern procession, so the evening finishes outdoors.
A lantern evening at the neighborhood library in Prenzlauer Berg. Kids start by making their own colorful paper lantern with Nadine, who brings all the materials.
Then Rumpelmärchen, a Berlin fairy-tale theater ensemble, tell the story of a phoenix reborn from its ashes and turn it into a real fire show out in the courtyard. A good pick for kids who like crafts and a bit of drama.
A colored shadow-puppet version of Andersen's Thumbelina, performed by puppeteer Thomas Mierau. Thumbelina is born in a flower and travels past a toad, cheerful fish, a dancing butterfly and a rich mole who wants her in his palace, until a swallow carries her to a land of flowers. Gentle and poetic, with songs. Performed in German.
Kids and grown-ups build a pop-up box together, filled with pictures of the people, pets, toys or places they love most. Everything is made at the table from craft materials, and the finished treasure box goes home with you. It is open drop-in making, so families work at their own pace.
The great magician Ala Labama turns walking sticks into flowers and bananas into carrots, and makes things float. Then his assistant Fridolin misses his cue, the big rabbit transformation goes wrong, and the show tips into chaos. Coq au Vin mixes magic, acrobatics and slapstick, and the actors play off the kids in the audience.
FEZ-Berlin, a large children's and family center in the Wuhlheide park, turns its rooms and stages into a puppet theater festival for the 30th time. Professional puppet and object theater companies play fairy tales, picture-book stories like The Gruffalo and The Rainbow Fish, and pieces for the very youngest. Around the shows, a side program lets kids make things themselves and explore the world of theater a bit further.
Christmas is coming, but nothing goes to plan for Pettersson and Findus: no tree, no festive meal, no firewood, and then Pettersson sprains his foot. A Christmas elf called Kirsi has an idea that could change everything.
Theater des Lachens plays it as a warm, funny story about friendship and helping each other out. It is performed in German, so it suits kids who follow spoken German.
Two angels crash-land on Earth and try to win back favor from up above by wowing the audience with acrobatics, clowning and clever ideas. Jealousy gets in the way, and the comedy ends on a simple point: help each other.
Coq Au Vin mixes circus and theater, and kids get pulled into the action rather than left sitting still. No religious content, despite the angels. Parents get their share of jokes too.
Staatsballett Berlin opens its rehearsal studios at the Deutsche Oper to families for a hands-on morning. Dance teachers explain how ballet works, then kids and their grown-ups try some steps themselves.
At the end, everyone watches the company's professional dancers up close during their daily morning class. A good fit for kids who like to move or are curious about what happens behind the stage.
The Three Little Pigs, told with colored shadow puppets. Puppeteer Thomas Mierau moves warm-lit flat figures across a glowing screen, in the style of Turkish Karagöz shadow theater. The pigs build houses of straw, wood and stone, the wolf huffs and puffs, gives up and slinks away, and everyone ends with a song and dance. A gentle, slow-paced show that suits preschoolers meeting live theater for the first time.
Figurentheater Grashüpfer is a small puppet theater in the middle of Treptower Park, open since 1997. Professional touring companies from Berlin and across Germany fill the program: hand puppets on a peep-box stage, marionettes, shadow puppets, object theater and shows kids can join in.
Beyond the plays, the theater runs family craft afternoons, fairy-tale evenings and kids' birthday parties.
Puppentheater Berlin has been staging figure theater since 1984 in a small hall by the Luisenkirche, with about 70 seats for afternoon kids' shows. The repertoire mixes hand puppets, marionettes, shadow play and masks, from fairy tales like Hänsel und Gretel to Karneval der Tiere. Almost every show has live music on piano, violin or cello. Shows for the youngest invite kids to sing along; evening shows are for adults.
Viktoriapark climbs the Kreuzberg, the highest hill in the inner city, with Schinkel's cast-iron National Monument at the top. After a snowfall, families sled down its several slopes. The gradient is moderate enough for small kids, and the main run is wide.
Between runs, there's a wooden climbing playground and an enclosure with goats, rabbits and guinea pigs.
BAUBAU is a play space inside the Gropius Bau, designed by the artist Kerstin Brätsch, where more is allowed than forbidden. Painted walls, abstract structures and heaps of loose parts (cardboard, fabric, rope, kitchenware) become whatever kids decide.
Trained playworkers keep it safe while children build, take things apart, run around or rest. There are no workshops or set tasks, so it suits kids who like open-ended play more than a guided program.
Der schaurige Schusch is a puppet play set on the lonely Dogglspitz mountain, where a grumpy marmot, a shy chicken, a party-loving rabbit and their neighbors are sure the newcomer moving in will be gruesome. None of them has met him yet.
It's a story about prejudice and curiosity, played by one performer with puppets and music. It suits kids who can follow a story told in German.
Berliner Puppentheater brings its puppet show Der Grolltroll (The Grumpy Troll) to the Bibliothek im Märkischen Viertel. Kids watch a grumpy troll's story played out with puppets.
It suits toddlers and preschoolers, and makes an easy first taste of theater in a familiar library setting.
A lantern parade through the dark park, led by St. Martin on horseback. Kids without a lantern can make one on site, hear the story of St. Martin in a warm yurt, and bake bread on a stick over the campfire. Hot drinks and food from the grill keep the November evening easy.
A play festival about living together. Kids puzzle, build, craft, make music and run around, while partner KATE e.V. turns diversity, children's rights and a fair future into games they can join.
This year brings a giant diversity collage, robots sent on a nature mission and a chance to design their own idea for a fairer world. A stage show and a stamp rally carry the day.
Pappelapapp is a material theater show by Amai-Figurentheater Berlin, played entirely without words. It starts with plain cardboard boxes and, with a little imagination, turns them into paper tigers, fire-breathing dragons, small cardboard people and a cardboard home.
It is made for the youngest theatergoers. There is no dialogue to follow, so it needs no German, and kids can simply watch one ordinary thing become another.
Honigkuchenpferde are Germany's first pop band made for parents and kids to enjoy together. Their songs are about friendship, diversity and courage, and they are made for singing, dancing and joining in. The band also speaks up for children's rights, so the party comes with a message. Expect a cheerful hour of joining in rather than a quiet sit-down show.
Ich & Herr Meyer are two bald musicians who have spent ten years making songs for kids and their parents. They sing and rap in German about everyday family life: small injustices between siblings, the freedom of a stay with Grandma and Grandpa, AI, and a first crush.
Some songs take on climate and sustainability too. It suits kids who like pop and hip-hop more than nursery songs.
Sinneszauber is FEZ-Berlin's Advent program for families. A giant Christmas tree lights up the foyer, and around it kids and parents make, tinker, play and craft small gifts together.
It is hands-on rather than a show to watch, so it suits kids who like making things. A warm indoor plan for when it is cold and dark outside.
Milchsalon puts on a run of family concerts through autumn and the run-up to Christmas. Corinna Bilke and her Skeleton Band open with Grusical, spooky songs and funny interludes for Halloween, and she returns with jazzy winter songs from her album Wunschuniversum.
Unter meinem Bett brings singer-songwriters from the compilation series to one stage, and Pauken & Planeten meet Nevio Passaro for a German-Italian Christmas show.
The Grimm tale of the tailor and his seven flies, told as a concert that falls apart on purpose. A narrator and four musicians start a polite recital, then a stranger claiming to be the real tailor walks in and the show turns into a play. Bass flutes become giants and a bass clarinet becomes the wild boar.
It suits kids who like a story with a twist and live instruments up close.
Two clown chefs set out to bake an apple cake, and things keep going wrong. They stir the dough with acrobatic tricks and dance routines.
It mixes clowning, dance, theater and acrobatics, and the clowns play close to the audience. A good pick for kids who enjoy clowns and like being part of the show.
Theater Miamou's puppet version of the Hans Christian Andersen tale. Kay and Gerda play together every day until a splinter lodges in Kay's eye, he turns cold and follows the Snow Queen to her icy palace in the far north.
Gerda refuses to give up and sets out to find him. It is a story about friendship, with a few dark moments that suit school-age kids better than toddlers.
Schaubude Berlin is a puppet and object theater where puppets, objects and the performers who move them share the stage, often joined by dance, music or visual art. The program changes every week: daytime shows for children, evening shows for teens and adults. Some kids' shows are wordless, others are in German, so check each listing. Every fall the theater runs the international Theater der Dinge festival.
An indoor LEGO play center at Potsdamer Platz with more than 5 million bricks under one roof. Kids ride the Dragon Ride through a LEGO castle, climb around the Dino Explorer and NINJAGO City Adventure play zones, watch a 4D film and spot Berlin landmarks rebuilt in the LEGO Miniland.
Toddlers get their own DUPLO Village, and there is a large LEGO Store on site.
MACHmit! is a hands-on children's museum inside the former Eliaskirche, a deconsecrated Protestant church in Prenzlauer Berg. Kids find their own route up a 7-meter climbing shelf, make things at the craft workbenches, and explore a changing art exhibition across two floors.
Traces of the church remain, including the tower clock, altar space and organ, alongside a historic print shop and an old soap store.
A neighborhood lantern walk run by the Heinrich-Böll-Bibliothek, a Pankow public library. Families meet at the library, then kids carry their lit lanterns through the Mühlenkiez streets with music along the way.
It's a local library parade, not a staged show, so it suits kids who can manage an evening walk in the dark.
A hands-on craft workshop at MACHmit! Museum für Kinder where kids make a portrait of themselves and their gang. It sits alongside KUNSTKNALL, the museum's exhibition of ceramics, photos, paintings and textiles by women artists from Berlin and beyond. Kids work at the museum's craft tables, so it suits anyone who likes making things with friends or family.
A St. Martin's Day evening on a working farm in Dahlem. It opens with a short service where the story of St. Martin is told and families sing Martin and lantern songs with the parish brass ensemble.
Then everyone walks their lanterns across the estate, and the evening ends with food and drinks in the farmyard.
A one-way loop of about two kilometers through Tierpark Berlin after dark, lined with light installations set to music. Kids walk through glowing tunnels and past lit-up trees, and there is an ice rink to skate on. Food stands along the route serve mulled wine, hot drinks and snacks. Best for children who can manage a long evening walk in the cold.
A Christmas market in the courtyards of a 19th-century brewery, now the Kulturbrauerei arts complex. Kids ride a small chain carousel, balance on a rope-ladder game and take aim at a miniature knight's castle with crossbows. Santa has his own throne and a mailbox for wish letters. Swedish fires and a coat-heater art piece keep everyone warm.
The Advent Market fills the grounds of Domäne Dahlem, a working estate around a 16th-century manor house. Kids paint Christmas tree baubles and make decorations to take home, ride a tractor and watch a small fire show by Pyrofessor Logo Lard. Handmade gifts, organic mulled wine and kale from the estate's own fields fill the stalls, with brass music from midday.
NO GLOW is a circus show performed by the kids and teens who train at CABUWAZI, Berlin's youth circus. A girl stays behind in the big top after everyone leaves, finds out what the circus does at night, and asks who she is.
Acrobatics and juggling mix with theater and dance. It's the group's year-end show, so expect proud young performers and a crowd of families cheering them on.
D!E GÄNG is a kids' band that plays hip-hop, dancehall and ska, the music plenty of parents grew up on. Singer Ben Pavlidis (of Ohrbooten) started writing the songs with his daughter Chaja as a family project, and two albums later Chaja and Luna, no longer small kids themselves, front the band on stage.
Expect a loud, bouncy concert where the whole family is meant to get up and dance.
A Sunday-afternoon club for kids at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. A disco ball, balloons and a rotating cast of DJs turn several of the building's halls into a dance floor where children run, dance and make friends.
Some dates add a special: the October edition is a Ballroom session with House of St. Laurent, with a costume workshop and a runway walk for every kid who wants one.
A narrow-gauge railway that winds through Volkspark Wuhlheide, linking stations at the FEZ, the Badesee lake, the Parkbühne open-air stage and the train depot. Diesel locos pull the regular trains, with a steam engine on some afternoons.
Much of the crew is local kids and teens, trained from fifth grade as conductors, crossing keepers and station chiefs. Toddlers who love trains get a long ride; older kids watch peers at work.
Berlin's first children's farm, started in 1981 by neighbors who cleared a rubble lot beside the Wall. Kids can meet sheep, goats, ponies, donkeys, rabbits, ducks, geese and chickens, and see how animal feed, herbs and vegetables are grown in the gardens.
There is also a nature trail, a community house built from clay, and open pasture for running around.
Domäne Dahlem is a working organic farm and open-air museum on an old manor estate. It breeds endangered livestock: Red Höhenvieh cattle, German Saddleback pigs, Pomeranian sheep, longhaired goats, Konik and Exmoor ponies, and rare hens and ducks.
Kids can walk the fields and orchards and visit the Culinarium museum about food and farming. A farm shop and country inn sit by the courtyard.
A hands-on children's museum in a former factory on Osloer Strasse in Wedding. The current exhibition, TALENTOPIA, is about finding what each kid is good at: building cardboard-tube cities with a construction crane, solving analog programming puzzles in a control center, painting at an art materials bar, playing word games, and making music from bottles and dishwasher parts.
There is no maze, despite the name.
Prokofiev's musical fairy tale about Peter, an orphan boy who leaves the garden gate open, and the adventure that follows with his grandfather, a hunter, a cat, a duck, a bird and a wolf. Six musicians play it live while a narrator tells the story in German.
It is the flagship family concert of the Kammerorchester Unter den Linden, and suits kids who can follow spoken German.
A guided walk through the museum's DINOSAURS! special exhibition, made for families. Kids meet dinosaurs from three geological eras: Tristan Otto, one of the best-preserved T. rex skeletons in the world, the 13-meter Giraffatitan and the Archaeopteryx, the world's most famous fossil.
The guide speaks German, so it suits kids who can follow along in German best.
A group of fans is on a backstage tour before a big concert when the band gets locked in its dressing room. The fans know the songs, and some can play, but nobody wants to stand in the spotlight.
The collective hannsjana uses humor and plenty of live music to look at shyness, stage fright and self-confidence. It suits quiet kids, and the loud ones around them.
A musical fairy tale by Thomas Sutter. The little harmonica feels too small and too plain for the big concert hall, until it meets its relatives the accordion, the jaw harp and the Chinese sheng, and finds its own sound.
Soloists Wu Wei, Sören Birke and Mikael Yakut play all four instruments and show how they differ, and why they are one family: each sounds through a free reed.
A new musical play from Theater an der Parkaue (Chaos der Gefühle) about what love feels like. A question mark goes looking for answers and meets a cloud floating around in love, a hyper hormone, a candy-loving strawberry and Frustration.
It is funny, full of songs written for the show, and lands on self-love and the courage to ask questions. Suits kids starting to notice crushes.
Storytellers Nicola Knappe and Maria Carmela Marinelli follow a block of stone, cut from a mountain near Berlin, that became the figures in and around the Humboldt Forum, like Hercules and Jupiter. They weave its adventures together with myths from antiquity, told with humor in German and Italian side by side.
It suits kids who can follow a spoken story in at least one of the two languages.
Bubales is a Jewish puppet theater, and this is its show for Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. Shlomo is given a mysterious wonder lamp from Istanbul, and three funny spirits jump out to tell of a miracle of light in the Temple in Jerusalem.
With Jewish humor, a candle band and a hyperactive dreidel, it tells the holiday's customs and its old story.
A lively, funny children's version of Mozart's Magic Flute. Andreas Peer Kähler wrote the script, plays the piano and steps in as Mozart himself, guiding kids through the story. Ensemble Papamino, with singers from the Deutsche Oper Berlin chorus, sings and acts it.
It suits kids who follow German and are curious about opera.
Kindercafé Spielzimmer is a parents' café with an indoor playground near Helmholtzplatz in Prenzlauer Berg. The main play area has a slide, a netted climbing frame, a tunnel, a ball pit and a punching ball.
Crawlers and kids under 3 get a separate corner with a small ball pit and big building blocks, with benches for parents. The café serves waffles, cakes, quiche and coffee.
Minicity is a small play café on Hauptstraße in Friedenau, built around role play: kid-sized houses including a mini market and a fire station, plus a ball pit and an indoor play structure. The kitchen serves snacks and homemade meals while parents sit nearby.
A changing room, nursing corner and high chairs make it workable for babies. Street shoes stay off, so bring grip socks.
Under the motto "Pumpkin goes to Hollywood", more than 100,000 pumpkins dress up giant figures of Mickey Mouse, Harry Potter, Marilyn Monroe and Yoda. Kids hunt through 500 varieties from around the world, from a 9-gram mini to a bottle gourd over a meter long, and pose at a pumpkin pyramid. It all sits on the farm's playground grounds.
Winterquartier Berlin is a Christmas market at the Napoleon Komplex in Friedrichshain, with market huts, an ice rink and curling. Kids can skate, have a go at curling and catch the Christmas show for children in the cultural program.
It's a come-and-go outing. The market, rink and curling need no German; only the kids' show is spoken.
Christmas Garden Berlin turns the Botanical Garden in Dahlem into an evening walking trail lit by millions of lights, with light installations set to music. This winter is its 10th season, on a newly redesigned path.
Kids walk the loop at their own pace, with dining options along the way. It suits kids happy to be on their feet outdoors on a winter evening.
A white tent city on one of Berlin's most historic squares, lit by thousands of Christmas lights. Kids can wander past glass blowers and candle makers in the heated crafts tent, watch musicians, acrobats and fire performers on the stage, and warm up over Kaiserschmarren, sweet pancake strips. It gets busy, so it suits kids who enjoy a lively evening crowd.
Over 200 nonprofit organizations, associations, and clubs offer handmade items, wooden toys, candles, honey, jams, and crafted gifts across Richardplatz. Food vendors serve mulled wine, waffles, bratwurst, and international vegetarian and vegan specialties. Only charitable organizations participate; commercial vendors are excluded.
Potsdam's Dutch Quarter turns into a little Amsterdam for a spring weekend. Street bands march past brick houses and tulip beds, while Dutch craftspeople and flower sellers fill the lanes in traditional dress. It is a loose wander more than a program, best for kids who like music, crowds and watching things being made by hand.
A reconstruction of a village from around 1200, built on the excavated site of a real 12th-century settlement. Across grounds the size of ten soccer fields, kids walk through thatched houses, storehouses, workshops, gardens and fields, and meet rare farm breeds such as Skudden sheep and the Düppel pasture pig.
On season weekends, volunteers in medieval dress cook, carve wood, work wool and demonstrate blacksmithing and pottery.
A former railway yard where woodland has grown over the tracks since the last trains ran in 1952. Kids can spot a 1940 steam locomotive, one of Germany's oldest turntables and the 50-meter water tower.
A raised steel walkway carries the 2.7 km loop through the nature reserve, past steel sculptures by the artist group ODIOUS. Graffiti artists paint the wall along the shaded Tälchenweg.
Zollpackhof is a Bavarian beer garden and restaurant on the Spree, run with Munich's Augustiner brewery. Long tables sit under old chestnut trees, one of them more than 150 years old, facing the tour boats and the Chancellery across the river.
Groups under 20 can walk in and sit down. It suits a shady family lunch near Hauptbahnhof more than a day built around the kids.
Berlin's oldest public park was laid out in the 1840s on the edge of Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg. At the west entrance, the 1913 Märchenbrunnen fountain has over 100 stone figures from German fairy tales. Two hills built from wartime bunkers and rubble, Mont Klamott and Kleiner Bunkerberg, look out over the city center. There are playgrounds, sports grounds, a swan pond with a beer garden, and a barbecue area.
Park am Gleisdreieck opened in 2013 on former railway land, and U-Bahn trains still cross it on raised viaducts. Its 30 hectares hold several playgrounds, including a water playground with climbing frames and a 5,000 m² nature play area with a clay landscape and water pump. Older kids head for the 1,300 m² skate park, table tennis and beach volleyball courts.
A children's pool run by Berliner Bäder in Monbijoupark, a short walk from the Spree. It has two pools: a paddling pool 20 to 35 cm deep, and a 25-meter non-swimmers' pool up to 1.3 meters deep.
A lawn for lying out, a playground and a snack kiosk sit around the water. It suits families with small kids; strong swimmers will outgrow it fast.
Billed as Germany's largest music theater for children and families, with about 100,000 visitors a year. Shows are sung and spoken in German, mixing live music with stories from picture books, fairy tales and classics like Emil und die Detektive.
There are three stages: a 480-seat main hall, a 150-seat studio, and a 60-seat tent stage upstairs built as a first theater outing for the youngest.
Boulderklub Kreuzberg is a bouldering gym with 1,300 square meters of floor: short walls over thick mats, no ropes or harnesses.
Kids climb in their own zone around a climbing ship, marked in yellow on the mats and kept apart from the adult walls, where grown-ups jump and fall from height. A parent stays beside them the whole time, so it is not a drop-off.
A country-house-style café and traditional beer garden under tall trees on the shore of the Neuer See, a lake inside the Tiergarten. The beer garden serves stone-oven pizza, homemade pretzels and Leberkäse, plus house-made lemonades with a third of the usual sugar.
A sandbox gives kids room to dig while adults eat, and rowboats rent from the dock for a paddle around the lake.
Kinderbauernhof Pinke-Panke is a volunteer-run children's farm and supervised adventure playground on the edge of Bürgerpark. Around 70 animals live here, including donkeys, sheep, goats, mini pigs, geese, rabbits and hens.
Staff help kids with the afternoon feeding, and there are workshops for wood, soapstone, wool and bike repairs, plus a building playground, a vegetable garden and a campfire. Expect a scrappy, hands-on farm rather than a tidy petting zoo.
Jugendfarm Moritzhof is a children's farm on the former Wall strip at the north end of Mauerpark, in Prenzlauer Berg. Kids help feed and care for goats, sheep, chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs, tend the garden beds and cook with what they harvest.
Staff also teach old crafts: felting, spinning, pottery, basket weaving and blacksmithing. The kids help decide which animals they look after and which projects come next.
Bambooland is a jungle-themed indoor playground spread over more than 2,000 square meters inside the small Siemensstadtpark shopping center. Kids work through a big climbing maze, bounce on trampolines and race bobby cars, while the youngest get a separate toddler area. Adults are welcome on every play structure too.
Upstairs, a bistro with more than 400 seats serves fries, nuggets, pizza, salads and coffee.
The Prinzenbad is a big public pool between the Landwehrkanal and Prinzenstraße station, with two 50-meter pools for lap swimmers. Kids head for the large non-swimmer pool with its slide and water mushroom, the shallow paddling pool, and a playground with a splash area.
Wide lawns leave room for a picnic, and the snack bar is a local institution.
Britzer Garten is a landscaped park built around a lake, with rolling lawns, themed gardens and big seasonal flower shows of tulips and dahlias.
The adventure playground at the Tauernallee entrance has a 10-meter slide tower, a climbing net and ground-level trampolines, and both main playgrounds have a water play area. Sheep and goats graze in pastures around the park, and the Britzer Mühle windmill stands on the grounds.
The Rixdorfer Höhe is a hill built after World War II from about 700,000 cubic meters of rubble, rising 22 meters above the surrounding Hasenheide park. When snow falls, most families sled the short, gentle run down in the valley. Bolder kids take the winding run of about 100 meters that spirals down from the top. The park also has playgrounds, an animal enclosure and an outdoor cinema.
The Insulaner is a 78-meter hill built from World War II rubble, now wooded and crossed by footpaths. After a snowfall its west side holds one of the city's longest sledding runs, about 220 meters, with a smaller beginner slope at the bottom for younger kids.
The Wilhelm-Foerster observatory sits on the summit, the Planetarium am Insulaner at its foot, and there is a mini golf course on the hill.
A jungle-themed play hall in Weißensee built around Tommy the tiger. Kids race down the tiger slide and roller slide, play the interactive Jumplings jumping games, scoot around a jungle track and burrow in the ball pit.
Older kids get a multi-court for soccer and basketball, air hockey and an arcade, and toddlers have their own play area. Outside there's a climbing spider and, in summer, a water slide.
Dockx is a 1,000-square-meter indoor playground at the Tempelhofer Hafen, right on the water. Kids climb a multi-level frame with new rope nets, race on a kart track, take the wave slide, and run the maze to the ball cannons. A separate, sheltered toddler area has small slides, soft play pieces and ball pits.
Parents get a café, a bar and sofas with a view of the play area.
A 1,500-square-meter indoor play hall. Kids ride a children's train and a chain carousel, climb a soft mountain and a giant inflatable crocodile, and race down double-wave and tube slides in the adventure play structure.
There's also a ball pit, a climbing wall, bouncy castles, face painting and a separate toddler area, plus a cafeteria.
The museum is built around its dinosaur hall, where kids crane up at Giraffatitan, the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world. Tristan Otto, an exceptionally well-preserved T. rex, and the Berlin Archaeopteryx, an early bird fossil, are on show too.
Other galleries cover minerals, the solar system, evolution and taxidermy animals, plus the Wet Collection: about a million specimens in jars of alcohol.
A Christmas market running through Spandau's old town, with stalls selling roasted almonds, bratwurst and mulled wine. Kids can meet Santa Claus and pick up cotton candy. Families can try the two ice stock lanes on Reformationsplatz.
A Christmas market in front of Charlottenburg Palace, with craft stalls, food stands and street musicians among fir trees and lit decorations. Once it gets dark, a light-mapping show plays across the palace facade.
Kids ride the carousels and watch the palace light up, while parents browse handmade gifts and grab mulled wine or gingerbread. It suits younger kids who like lights and rides.
Germany's only nationwide performing arts festival for young audiences, held every two years since 1991. Ten productions from across the country include a toddler piece about a baobab tree, a monster show, a dance work and teen dramas. Some are made for the youngest viewers, others for 12 and up.
FEZ-Berlin is a non-profit children's, youth and family center in the Wuhlheide woods. Inside are the Alice children's museum with hands-on exhibitions, the Astrid-Lindgren-Bühne children's theater, orbitall (a space center modeled on the ISS), and an indoor pool with a teaching pool and diving towers.
Outside, the park has a giant rocket playground, a dragon playground, a wooden climbing playground, an eco garden, and boats and pedal cars to rent.
The children's and teens' library inside the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek holds about 130,000 books and other media, the largest collection of its kind in Germany.
It has three parts: a children's library and a teen library for reading for fun, plus a learning center with nonfiction and study help. The kids' wing sits in the glass-walled annex by the garden, where it has been since 1957.
Zenner is a beer garden on the bank of the Spree inside Treptower Park, serving guests since 1822. Its 1,500 outdoor seats sit under old linden trees or out in the sun. An organic ice cream counter in the tower house arcades scoops 24 flavors from Rosa Canina, and a sandbox beside its terrace keeps younger kids digging while adults eat.
This beer garden has stood inside Viktoriapark since 1977, with tables shaded by trees and parasols, a big sun terrace, and a charcoal grill turning out sausages, skewers, fish and homemade salads.
Parents get coffee or a cold drink while kids roam the park paths, with a playground a short walk away. Evenings bring a bar crowd and indoor dancing, so it suits families best by day.
Aquarium Berlin fills three floors of the historic building at the Zoo. The ground floor holds the fish: blacktip reef sharks, a coral reef, seahorses, octopuses and drifting jellyfish.
The first floor is reptiles, with snakes, iguanas, a chameleon and the glass-walled Tropical Hall, where a wooden bridge crosses the crocodile river. The small top floor has glowing scorpions, poison frogs and leafcutter ants farming fungus gardens.
A three-deck play ship on the Spree bank, nicknamed the Black Pearl. Kids climb and balance their way between decks, ride a 5-meter spiral tube slide, cook in the galley play kitchen and play table tennis on deck.
Ramps reach part of the ship, and pieces like a marble run, speaking tubes and a memory wall are built so kids with and without disabilities can play together.
Alte Fasanerie is a former pheasantry turned open farmyard on the rural northern edge of the city, run by the Elisabethstift youth charity. Kids can say hello to goats, alpacas, chickens, pheasants and horses, walk round the pond and the herb and flower garden, and browse the Bücherkuh, a courtyard box of kids' books to borrow. It suits a slow, quiet afternoon more than a big day out.
A 30-meter dome built in 1987, with a 307-seat hall where fulldome projection fills the whole ceiling with stars, planets and science films. Children's shows run alongside science programs, and a separate cinema screens kids' films.
The foyer holds a free hands-on exhibition: touchscreen planets, a moon relief to run your hands over, and an immersive view from the International Space Station.
A children's farm inside Görlitzer Park, run since 1981 by a neighborhood association as a supervised youth center. Kids meet goats, donkeys, ponies, rabbits, geese and chickens, roam the yard, and toddlers get their own corner with a sandpit, play equipment and a water playground in summer.
The clay-built community house hosts clubs during the week and opens to everyone on Sundays for a family café with waffles and hot chocolate.
A large technology museum with a locomotive shed full of historic trains, a shipping hall where kids hoist sails and steer a boat into harbor, and an aviation wing with the "Candy Bomber" plane up on the roof terrace.
The Science Center Spectrum, on the same ticket, has more than 150 hands-on experiments. Outside, the museum park has a playground and picnic areas.
A Christmas funfair on Landsberger Allee with 26 rides, from a 45-meter Ferris wheel with enclosed gondolas to the 85-meter Lion Tower drop and the new Crazy Roulette. Twelve are family and kids' rides, including a mini roller coaster, carousels and a fire-fighter fun house. Younger kids will be happiest there and on the Ferris wheel; the big thrill rides suit older kids and teens.
Tur Tur Theater's modern take on the musical classic. Dorothy lands in the land beyond the rainbow and sets off to find the Wizard of Oz, picking up a scarecrow who wants more brains, a tin man who lost his heart and a lion afraid of everything.
Sophie Ammann and Alexander Altomirianos play it as a story about friendship, made for laughing, crying and thinking.
Vier zurück brings back One, Two, Three and Four, after the GRIPS shows "Vier sind hier" and "Vier bei dir". Three players and a musician invite kids into a world under a huge table, where many things seem bigger than you are.
Made for the very youngest, it's a funny, musical piece about the special moments of growing up, told with play, sounds and songs.
A hands-on family workshop from the Museum für Islamische Kunst. Families work together on their own vest: a mesh fabric becomes the canvas, decorated with colorful thread, beads and child-safe needles, using patterns from the museum's collection or straight from imagination. Kids pick up simple knotting and embroidery stitches along the way, and the finished vest goes home with them. Best for kids patient enough to thread a needle.
Grüne Woche is a huge indoor food and farming fair across the Messe Berlin halls. Around 1,600 exhibitors offer tastings of regional and international specialties, from fruit and vegetables to fish, meat, wine and beer. Kids can try hands-on activities on farming and food, and there is a family room for breaks. It is closer to a trade fair than a kids' festival, so it suits curious school-age children best.
The playground sits in Weinbergspark, a hillside park on the site of old vineyards. The toddler area has a climbing tower and slide that wheelchairs can reach, plus a nest swing, a carousel and a spinning disc on firm, step-free surfacing.
Older kids get a rubber-surfaced ball cage, ping-pong tables and a wooden deck to hang out on. The rest of the ground is sand, so a bucket and spade earn their place.
Volkspark Rehberge, in Wedding, covers 115 hectares of meadows and woodland, laid out as a landscape park in the 1920s. There are several playgrounds, a wild boar enclosure on the western side, a chain of three small ponds (no swimming), big sports grounds and kilometers of paths where kids learn to ride a bike. In winter, the long sledding hill draws families from the surrounding neighborhoods.
A large open-air flea market on the edge of Mauerpark, with roughly 400 to 450 stalls of secondhand clothes, furniture, records, lamps, jewelry, handmade goods and used toys. A food court in the middle has seating, so lunch fits between rounds of browsing.
Kids with a bit of pocket money can hunt for toys and old trinkets. It draws big crowds of locals and tourists, so keep young kids close.
A public pool complex run by Berliner Bäder. The indoor hall has a 50-meter pool with 1-meter and 3-meter diving boards and a shallow non-swimmers' pool with a kids' slide.
In summer the outdoor side opens with two 50-meter pools, a paddling pool, another slide, a big lawn and a playground. In winter an inflatable dome covers the outdoor pools for extra swimming space.
Stadtbad Neukölln is a public indoor pool more than a hundred years old, with two halls lined by 7-meter columns, arcades and mosaics. The big hall holds a 25-meter pool and the small hall a 19-meter pool, and both have a shallow non-swimmer area. Depth runs from 65cm to 2.4 meters.
It suits kids who can swim and want room, and younger ones happy in the shallow end.
A large park of themed gardens from around the world: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Balinese, Oriental, Italian Renaissance, English and Jewish gardens, plus a hedge maze and a labyrinth to run through.
A cable car glides up to 35 meters above the Wuhletal valley to the Kienberg hill. The playgrounds follow Erich Kästner's book "The 35th of May", with a climbing whale, a water forest and giant wooden ants.
Eisstadion Neukölln is the district's open-air artificial ice rink, at the edge of the Werner-Seelenbinder-Sportpark by Tempelhofer Feld. The public rink is about 65 by 39 meters, next to a separate competition rink used by hockey and figure skating clubs.
A rental shop on site rents skates in all sizes, plus double-blade gliders for kids up to 1 meter tall. Beginners can join the local skating schools that teach here.
Tierpark Berlin spreads across 160 hectares of parkland around the 18th-century Friedrichsfelde manor house, making it Europe's largest animal park. Kids can watch tigers in the renovated Alfred Brehm House, spot red pandas and snow leopards on a cloud-forest trail, and see giraffes and zebras on an African savanna.
Between animals there's a petting zoo with goats and ponies, a seaside-themed water play area, and the Fabelwald woodland playground.
Germany's oldest zoo, opened in 1844, keeps around 20,000 animals and more species than any other zoo in the world. Kids can watch Germany's only giant pandas, plus elephants and pygmy hippos, and pet goats at the petting zoo.
Many animals live in indoor houses, so it works on a cold day too. The aquarium by the Elefantentor gate needs a combined ticket.
Four to seven is the age when a puppet show holds them start to finish and a city farm turns into a whole afternoon. This list pulls together the shows, workshops, farms, playgrounds and hands-on museums pitched at that age, so you can skip the ones built for toddlers or for older kids.
Theater Marotte turns the much-loved picture book into a puppet show. A little mouse crosses a big forest full of dangers and scares off everyone who wants to eat her by threatening them with the terrible Gruffalo, a monster she made up. Or did she?
It is told in German, so it suits kids who follow spoken German or already know the story well.
A German-language musical comedy about Albertina, a big-hearted schoolgirl who heads to the junkyard to visit her friends Henriette the hen and Marvin the mole. When she learns her mom wants no tree this year, she wishes one up in the wishing tub, and it comes true. This is no ordinary tree, and chaos follows.
Best for kids who follow German well enough to enjoy the jokes.
Two trolls, Frieda and Mey, are deep in their winter sleep when Knut wakes them: Christmas is at the door. But nobody is standing there. Who is Christmas? Is it big, small, dangerous?
This cheerful puppet show follows the pair as they puzzle it out and get ready in their own way. It is performed in German, so it suits kids who can follow simple spoken German.
A fairy-tale puppet play loosely based on Janosch. A poor man owns an apple tree that never blooms and never bears fruit. He wishes, honestly and over and over, for one single apple, and then something happens.
Susi Claus adapted the story and plays it herself, directed by Daniel Wagner. It is told in German, so it suits young kids who can follow a spoken story in German.
Mira Lobe's picture book comes to the stage. A colorful creature is happy until a tree frog asks, "Who are you?" It sets off to ask the other animals and finds bits of itself in each, but no match. The set and costumes are all paper, and musician Marcus Thomas builds the soundtrack live with a chord zither and loop station, close enough for kids to watch how each sound is made.
A puppet show about Mischka, a teddy bear who is tired of being a toy and runs away. On his travels he finds adventures and new friends, then a reindeer asks him to help deliver Christmas presents.
At the last house the sack is empty, and Mischka has to figure out what to do for the boy asleep inside. A quiet story about caring for someone else.
Da Sein is a gentle musical story based on Kathrin Schärer's picture book. A hedgehog keeps getting parcels, and with every box the hedgehog and a rat open, the two discover a new feeling: being together, being sad, being excited.
Charango, recorder, accordion and more turn small everyday moments into big drama. It suits preschoolers and young kids ready to sit through a show about feelings.
Two performers feel, listen and describe their way into the world under our feet: roots, crawling things, water and sound. With materials, puppets and live sound, they follow traces into what can't be seen and invite kids to imagine it.
It's Schaubude's first show made by blind and sighted artists together, with audio description built into the performance, so blind and sighted children follow the same story.
A puppet show based on Chris Naylor-Ballesteros's picture book The Suitcase. A bird, a fox and a rabbit meet in the woods to build things, until a strange animal turns up dragging a suitcase. Curious and suspicious, they break it open while it sleeps.
A gentle, serious story about being a stranger and finding a place, performed in German by Theater Couturier.
A donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster are each thrown out for being too old or too slow, so they team up and set off for Bremen. Rike Schuberty plays the Grimm tale on her own, with puppets and music by Berlin musician Masha Qrella.
They never reach Bremen, but they find friends and a new start along the way. It suits kids who already know the story.
A puppet musical based on Eric Carle's story. A caterpillar with green fuzzy hair hatches on a meadow, eats too many sweets and gets sick, and the owl and the forest animals nurse it back to health before it spins a cocoon and wakes up as a butterfly.
Thomas Mierau plays every part with colored shadow puppets, and the show is full of songs about growing up and eating well.
A color-shadow puppet version of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, played to the original music. Kids watch the duck waddle into the pond, the cat dance a blues and Peter and the little bird outwit the wolf, then find out what happens to the duck inside the wolf.
Puppeteer Thomas Mierau built the puppets and the stage, and plays and narrates the show himself. A gentle first taste of classical music.
A puppet version of the Grimm tale: a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster, chased off by their owners, team up and set out to become town musicians in Bremen. Played by Sebastian Günther, it is staged as a musical road movie full of blues.
It suits kids who follow spoken German or already know the story, since the words and songs carry it.
Kackebart is a farm boy who wants to be a knight. He heads to King Pipifax's tournament, gets laughed at by the other knights, then gets his chance when a dragon kidnaps the princess.
Kindertheater Purzelbaum plays it as a silly, potty-humor fairy tale. It suits kids who find a poop beard hilarious; families who'd rather skip toilet jokes should pick another show.
One actress tells the Grimm tale of the miller's daughter, three rooms of straw and a little man who wants her first child, switching between every role in front of the kids. Children call out ideas that she works into the story, and at many points they step on stage to play along. It is told in German.
Old toys lie in an attic until the sound of a piano wakes them up. That's the setup for this story of Mischka the bear and Masha the doll, told with poetry and humor by actress Claudia Maria Franck while pianist Elena Bregman plays music by Dmitri Shostakovich.
It suits young kids curious about classical music and families happy with a short show told in German.
Three musicians, Emma Grünfeld, Marceese and Robert Metcalf, turn a kids' concert into a sound experiment. Alongside sing-along songs, they bring mysterious gadgets that distort, change and flip sounds upside down.
Kids click their tongues, tap and experiment, finding out what odd noises a mouth can make and how a simple "plop" grows into a whole rhythm. It suits curious kids who like to join in.
A funny children's play starring the NEINhorn. It has fallen out with the KönigsDOCHter, and nobody remembers why. When the NAhUND starts playing teacher too, the NEINhorn has had enough and sets off. After a long walk it lands in a dark jungle with the SchLANGEWEILE, who hangs from a branch and finds everything deadly boring.
The jokes are German wordplay, so it suits kids who follow spoken German.
A fox leaps through fresh snow and plays with the flakes, while a Wicht keeps warm indoors with steaming tea. Then a snowstorm blows in and the fox is gone. Mirjam Hesse of Theater Miamou builds the story from figures and materials, in a calm, clear visual style.
The show is told in German Sign Language and spoken German, made for deaf and hearing kids to watch together.
The Flying Fairytale Orchestra is planning the perfect Christmas party and invites all the kids. But what makes Christmas perfect: a decorated tree, presents, a roast goose?
Together with the kids, the cast goes looking and finds songs, customs and poems from other countries and cultures. By the end, the children help put the perfect Christmas show on stage. A German-language show by Morphtheater, best for kids who follow German.
A storytelling tent in Neukölln where traditional fairy tales from countries like India, Turkey, Japan and Ghana are told in their original language. Kids sit on floor cushions while the storyteller shows large illustrations painted by artists from that country, so the pictures, gestures and faces carry the plot whatever language a child speaks.
Afterward, the storyteller and the audience retell the story together. Running since 2006.
Ranik and Raja are two young wolves and best friends, but Ranik knows little about how to be a good friend. When a forest fairy spirits Raja away, Ranik has to learn what true friendship means to break the spell, facing adventures and tests along the way, with a quick-witted raccoon who might help.
Actors in full costume play it out. It's the Silflay troupe's own production, performed in German.
Paul Maar's Sams, a cheeky creature who grants wishes, picks shy Mr. Taschenbier as its dad and turns his orderly life upside down at home, at the office and in a department store.
ATZE's staging adds live songs: actors play music on office supplies, sing a cappella and dance through the store scene. It is performed in German, so it suits kids who follow the language or already know the books.
A musical adaptation of David McKee's picture book about two characters, one red and one blue, who live on either side of a high mountain. They cannot agree on whether evening is when the day ends or when the night begins, and the argument gets heated before it reaches a surprisingly cheerful end.
It suits preschoolers and young school kids, especially siblings who know the "you started it" fight well.
Every winter the children's library at the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek puts a real Mongolian yurt in its atrium garden, and professional storytellers sit inside it to tell fairy tales and stories from around the world.
Kids sit close and listen to stories told live, not read from a book. It suits preschoolers who can sit still for a story; toddlers under 3 are not admitted.
Rapauke is the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin's concert series for preschoolers. In this one, four orchestra musicians (oboe and English horn, clarinet, violin, double bass) and the Rapauke character build the show around heads and legs, hats and shoes, and how we get around.
Kids don't sit still: they stamp, hop and spin, finding out how movement and music fit together. The hosting is in German.
Children from the State and Cathedral Choir Berlin and a girls' choir of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin act out the legend of St. Martin, the soldier who shared his cloak, set to German songs from the 1500s.
The play is led in German and suits young kids who enjoy a story told in song. It ends with a lantern procession, so the evening finishes outdoors.
A lantern evening at the neighborhood library in Prenzlauer Berg. Kids start by making their own colorful paper lantern with Nadine, who brings all the materials.
Then Rumpelmärchen, a Berlin fairy-tale theater ensemble, tell the story of a phoenix reborn from its ashes and turn it into a real fire show out in the courtyard. A good pick for kids who like crafts and a bit of drama.
A colored shadow-puppet version of Andersen's Thumbelina, performed by puppeteer Thomas Mierau. Thumbelina is born in a flower and travels past a toad, cheerful fish, a dancing butterfly and a rich mole who wants her in his palace, until a swallow carries her to a land of flowers. Gentle and poetic, with songs. Performed in German.
Kids and grown-ups build a pop-up box together, filled with pictures of the people, pets, toys or places they love most. Everything is made at the table from craft materials, and the finished treasure box goes home with you. It is open drop-in making, so families work at their own pace.
The great magician Ala Labama turns walking sticks into flowers and bananas into carrots, and makes things float. Then his assistant Fridolin misses his cue, the big rabbit transformation goes wrong, and the show tips into chaos. Coq au Vin mixes magic, acrobatics and slapstick, and the actors play off the kids in the audience.
FEZ-Berlin, a large children's and family center in the Wuhlheide park, turns its rooms and stages into a puppet theater festival for the 30th time. Professional puppet and object theater companies play fairy tales, picture-book stories like The Gruffalo and The Rainbow Fish, and pieces for the very youngest. Around the shows, a side program lets kids make things themselves and explore the world of theater a bit further.
Christmas is coming, but nothing goes to plan for Pettersson and Findus: no tree, no festive meal, no firewood, and then Pettersson sprains his foot. A Christmas elf called Kirsi has an idea that could change everything.
Theater des Lachens plays it as a warm, funny story about friendship and helping each other out. It is performed in German, so it suits kids who follow spoken German.
Two angels crash-land on Earth and try to win back favor from up above by wowing the audience with acrobatics, clowning and clever ideas. Jealousy gets in the way, and the comedy ends on a simple point: help each other.
Coq Au Vin mixes circus and theater, and kids get pulled into the action rather than left sitting still. No religious content, despite the angels. Parents get their share of jokes too.
Staatsballett Berlin opens its rehearsal studios at the Deutsche Oper to families for a hands-on morning. Dance teachers explain how ballet works, then kids and their grown-ups try some steps themselves.
At the end, everyone watches the company's professional dancers up close during their daily morning class. A good fit for kids who like to move or are curious about what happens behind the stage.
The Three Little Pigs, told with colored shadow puppets. Puppeteer Thomas Mierau moves warm-lit flat figures across a glowing screen, in the style of Turkish Karagöz shadow theater. The pigs build houses of straw, wood and stone, the wolf huffs and puffs, gives up and slinks away, and everyone ends with a song and dance. A gentle, slow-paced show that suits preschoolers meeting live theater for the first time.
Figurentheater Grashüpfer is a small puppet theater in the middle of Treptower Park, open since 1997. Professional touring companies from Berlin and across Germany fill the program: hand puppets on a peep-box stage, marionettes, shadow puppets, object theater and shows kids can join in.
Beyond the plays, the theater runs family craft afternoons, fairy-tale evenings and kids' birthday parties.
Puppentheater Berlin has been staging figure theater since 1984 in a small hall by the Luisenkirche, with about 70 seats for afternoon kids' shows. The repertoire mixes hand puppets, marionettes, shadow play and masks, from fairy tales like Hänsel und Gretel to Karneval der Tiere. Almost every show has live music on piano, violin or cello. Shows for the youngest invite kids to sing along; evening shows are for adults.
Viktoriapark climbs the Kreuzberg, the highest hill in the inner city, with Schinkel's cast-iron National Monument at the top. After a snowfall, families sled down its several slopes. The gradient is moderate enough for small kids, and the main run is wide.
Between runs, there's a wooden climbing playground and an enclosure with goats, rabbits and guinea pigs.
BAUBAU is a play space inside the Gropius Bau, designed by the artist Kerstin Brätsch, where more is allowed than forbidden. Painted walls, abstract structures and heaps of loose parts (cardboard, fabric, rope, kitchenware) become whatever kids decide.
Trained playworkers keep it safe while children build, take things apart, run around or rest. There are no workshops or set tasks, so it suits kids who like open-ended play more than a guided program.
Der schaurige Schusch is a puppet play set on the lonely Dogglspitz mountain, where a grumpy marmot, a shy chicken, a party-loving rabbit and their neighbors are sure the newcomer moving in will be gruesome. None of them has met him yet.
It's a story about prejudice and curiosity, played by one performer with puppets and music. It suits kids who can follow a story told in German.
Berliner Puppentheater brings its puppet show Der Grolltroll (The Grumpy Troll) to the Bibliothek im Märkischen Viertel. Kids watch a grumpy troll's story played out with puppets.
It suits toddlers and preschoolers, and makes an easy first taste of theater in a familiar library setting.
A lantern parade through the dark park, led by St. Martin on horseback. Kids without a lantern can make one on site, hear the story of St. Martin in a warm yurt, and bake bread on a stick over the campfire. Hot drinks and food from the grill keep the November evening easy.
A play festival about living together. Kids puzzle, build, craft, make music and run around, while partner KATE e.V. turns diversity, children's rights and a fair future into games they can join.
This year brings a giant diversity collage, robots sent on a nature mission and a chance to design their own idea for a fairer world. A stage show and a stamp rally carry the day.
Pappelapapp is a material theater show by Amai-Figurentheater Berlin, played entirely without words. It starts with plain cardboard boxes and, with a little imagination, turns them into paper tigers, fire-breathing dragons, small cardboard people and a cardboard home.
It is made for the youngest theatergoers. There is no dialogue to follow, so it needs no German, and kids can simply watch one ordinary thing become another.
Honigkuchenpferde are Germany's first pop band made for parents and kids to enjoy together. Their songs are about friendship, diversity and courage, and they are made for singing, dancing and joining in. The band also speaks up for children's rights, so the party comes with a message. Expect a cheerful hour of joining in rather than a quiet sit-down show.
Ich & Herr Meyer are two bald musicians who have spent ten years making songs for kids and their parents. They sing and rap in German about everyday family life: small injustices between siblings, the freedom of a stay with Grandma and Grandpa, AI, and a first crush.
Some songs take on climate and sustainability too. It suits kids who like pop and hip-hop more than nursery songs.
Sinneszauber is FEZ-Berlin's Advent program for families. A giant Christmas tree lights up the foyer, and around it kids and parents make, tinker, play and craft small gifts together.
It is hands-on rather than a show to watch, so it suits kids who like making things. A warm indoor plan for when it is cold and dark outside.
Milchsalon puts on a run of family concerts through autumn and the run-up to Christmas. Corinna Bilke and her Skeleton Band open with Grusical, spooky songs and funny interludes for Halloween, and she returns with jazzy winter songs from her album Wunschuniversum.
Unter meinem Bett brings singer-songwriters from the compilation series to one stage, and Pauken & Planeten meet Nevio Passaro for a German-Italian Christmas show.
The Grimm tale of the tailor and his seven flies, told as a concert that falls apart on purpose. A narrator and four musicians start a polite recital, then a stranger claiming to be the real tailor walks in and the show turns into a play. Bass flutes become giants and a bass clarinet becomes the wild boar.
It suits kids who like a story with a twist and live instruments up close.
Two clown chefs set out to bake an apple cake, and things keep going wrong. They stir the dough with acrobatic tricks and dance routines.
It mixes clowning, dance, theater and acrobatics, and the clowns play close to the audience. A good pick for kids who enjoy clowns and like being part of the show.
Theater Miamou's puppet version of the Hans Christian Andersen tale. Kay and Gerda play together every day until a splinter lodges in Kay's eye, he turns cold and follows the Snow Queen to her icy palace in the far north.
Gerda refuses to give up and sets out to find him. It is a story about friendship, with a few dark moments that suit school-age kids better than toddlers.
Schaubude Berlin is a puppet and object theater where puppets, objects and the performers who move them share the stage, often joined by dance, music or visual art. The program changes every week: daytime shows for children, evening shows for teens and adults. Some kids' shows are wordless, others are in German, so check each listing. Every fall the theater runs the international Theater der Dinge festival.
An indoor LEGO play center at Potsdamer Platz with more than 5 million bricks under one roof. Kids ride the Dragon Ride through a LEGO castle, climb around the Dino Explorer and NINJAGO City Adventure play zones, watch a 4D film and spot Berlin landmarks rebuilt in the LEGO Miniland.
Toddlers get their own DUPLO Village, and there is a large LEGO Store on site.
MACHmit! is a hands-on children's museum inside the former Eliaskirche, a deconsecrated Protestant church in Prenzlauer Berg. Kids find their own route up a 7-meter climbing shelf, make things at the craft workbenches, and explore a changing art exhibition across two floors.
Traces of the church remain, including the tower clock, altar space and organ, alongside a historic print shop and an old soap store.
A neighborhood lantern walk run by the Heinrich-Böll-Bibliothek, a Pankow public library. Families meet at the library, then kids carry their lit lanterns through the Mühlenkiez streets with music along the way.
It's a local library parade, not a staged show, so it suits kids who can manage an evening walk in the dark.
A hands-on craft workshop at MACHmit! Museum für Kinder where kids make a portrait of themselves and their gang. It sits alongside KUNSTKNALL, the museum's exhibition of ceramics, photos, paintings and textiles by women artists from Berlin and beyond. Kids work at the museum's craft tables, so it suits anyone who likes making things with friends or family.
A St. Martin's Day evening on a working farm in Dahlem. It opens with a short service where the story of St. Martin is told and families sing Martin and lantern songs with the parish brass ensemble.
Then everyone walks their lanterns across the estate, and the evening ends with food and drinks in the farmyard.
A one-way loop of about two kilometers through Tierpark Berlin after dark, lined with light installations set to music. Kids walk through glowing tunnels and past lit-up trees, and there is an ice rink to skate on. Food stands along the route serve mulled wine, hot drinks and snacks. Best for children who can manage a long evening walk in the cold.
A Christmas market in the courtyards of a 19th-century brewery, now the Kulturbrauerei arts complex. Kids ride a small chain carousel, balance on a rope-ladder game and take aim at a miniature knight's castle with crossbows. Santa has his own throne and a mailbox for wish letters. Swedish fires and a coat-heater art piece keep everyone warm.
The Advent Market fills the grounds of Domäne Dahlem, a working estate around a 16th-century manor house. Kids paint Christmas tree baubles and make decorations to take home, ride a tractor and watch a small fire show by Pyrofessor Logo Lard. Handmade gifts, organic mulled wine and kale from the estate's own fields fill the stalls, with brass music from midday.
NO GLOW is a circus show performed by the kids and teens who train at CABUWAZI, Berlin's youth circus. A girl stays behind in the big top after everyone leaves, finds out what the circus does at night, and asks who she is.
Acrobatics and juggling mix with theater and dance. It's the group's year-end show, so expect proud young performers and a crowd of families cheering them on.
D!E GÄNG is a kids' band that plays hip-hop, dancehall and ska, the music plenty of parents grew up on. Singer Ben Pavlidis (of Ohrbooten) started writing the songs with his daughter Chaja as a family project, and two albums later Chaja and Luna, no longer small kids themselves, front the band on stage.
Expect a loud, bouncy concert where the whole family is meant to get up and dance.
A Sunday-afternoon club for kids at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. A disco ball, balloons and a rotating cast of DJs turn several of the building's halls into a dance floor where children run, dance and make friends.
Some dates add a special: the October edition is a Ballroom session with House of St. Laurent, with a costume workshop and a runway walk for every kid who wants one.
A narrow-gauge railway that winds through Volkspark Wuhlheide, linking stations at the FEZ, the Badesee lake, the Parkbühne open-air stage and the train depot. Diesel locos pull the regular trains, with a steam engine on some afternoons.
Much of the crew is local kids and teens, trained from fifth grade as conductors, crossing keepers and station chiefs. Toddlers who love trains get a long ride; older kids watch peers at work.
Berlin's first children's farm, started in 1981 by neighbors who cleared a rubble lot beside the Wall. Kids can meet sheep, goats, ponies, donkeys, rabbits, ducks, geese and chickens, and see how animal feed, herbs and vegetables are grown in the gardens.
There is also a nature trail, a community house built from clay, and open pasture for running around.
Domäne Dahlem is a working organic farm and open-air museum on an old manor estate. It breeds endangered livestock: Red Höhenvieh cattle, German Saddleback pigs, Pomeranian sheep, longhaired goats, Konik and Exmoor ponies, and rare hens and ducks.
Kids can walk the fields and orchards and visit the Culinarium museum about food and farming. A farm shop and country inn sit by the courtyard.
A hands-on children's museum in a former factory on Osloer Strasse in Wedding. The current exhibition, TALENTOPIA, is about finding what each kid is good at: building cardboard-tube cities with a construction crane, solving analog programming puzzles in a control center, painting at an art materials bar, playing word games, and making music from bottles and dishwasher parts.
There is no maze, despite the name.
Prokofiev's musical fairy tale about Peter, an orphan boy who leaves the garden gate open, and the adventure that follows with his grandfather, a hunter, a cat, a duck, a bird and a wolf. Six musicians play it live while a narrator tells the story in German.
It is the flagship family concert of the Kammerorchester Unter den Linden, and suits kids who can follow spoken German.
A guided walk through the museum's DINOSAURS! special exhibition, made for families. Kids meet dinosaurs from three geological eras: Tristan Otto, one of the best-preserved T. rex skeletons in the world, the 13-meter Giraffatitan and the Archaeopteryx, the world's most famous fossil.
The guide speaks German, so it suits kids who can follow along in German best.
A group of fans is on a backstage tour before a big concert when the band gets locked in its dressing room. The fans know the songs, and some can play, but nobody wants to stand in the spotlight.
The collective hannsjana uses humor and plenty of live music to look at shyness, stage fright and self-confidence. It suits quiet kids, and the loud ones around them.
A musical fairy tale by Thomas Sutter. The little harmonica feels too small and too plain for the big concert hall, until it meets its relatives the accordion, the jaw harp and the Chinese sheng, and finds its own sound.
Soloists Wu Wei, Sören Birke and Mikael Yakut play all four instruments and show how they differ, and why they are one family: each sounds through a free reed.
A new musical play from Theater an der Parkaue (Chaos der Gefühle) about what love feels like. A question mark goes looking for answers and meets a cloud floating around in love, a hyper hormone, a candy-loving strawberry and Frustration.
It is funny, full of songs written for the show, and lands on self-love and the courage to ask questions. Suits kids starting to notice crushes.
Storytellers Nicola Knappe and Maria Carmela Marinelli follow a block of stone, cut from a mountain near Berlin, that became the figures in and around the Humboldt Forum, like Hercules and Jupiter. They weave its adventures together with myths from antiquity, told with humor in German and Italian side by side.
It suits kids who can follow a spoken story in at least one of the two languages.
Bubales is a Jewish puppet theater, and this is its show for Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. Shlomo is given a mysterious wonder lamp from Istanbul, and three funny spirits jump out to tell of a miracle of light in the Temple in Jerusalem.
With Jewish humor, a candle band and a hyperactive dreidel, it tells the holiday's customs and its old story.
A lively, funny children's version of Mozart's Magic Flute. Andreas Peer Kähler wrote the script, plays the piano and steps in as Mozart himself, guiding kids through the story. Ensemble Papamino, with singers from the Deutsche Oper Berlin chorus, sings and acts it.
It suits kids who follow German and are curious about opera.
Kindercafé Spielzimmer is a parents' café with an indoor playground near Helmholtzplatz in Prenzlauer Berg. The main play area has a slide, a netted climbing frame, a tunnel, a ball pit and a punching ball.
Crawlers and kids under 3 get a separate corner with a small ball pit and big building blocks, with benches for parents. The café serves waffles, cakes, quiche and coffee.
Minicity is a small play café on Hauptstraße in Friedenau, built around role play: kid-sized houses including a mini market and a fire station, plus a ball pit and an indoor play structure. The kitchen serves snacks and homemade meals while parents sit nearby.
A changing room, nursing corner and high chairs make it workable for babies. Street shoes stay off, so bring grip socks.
Under the motto "Pumpkin goes to Hollywood", more than 100,000 pumpkins dress up giant figures of Mickey Mouse, Harry Potter, Marilyn Monroe and Yoda. Kids hunt through 500 varieties from around the world, from a 9-gram mini to a bottle gourd over a meter long, and pose at a pumpkin pyramid. It all sits on the farm's playground grounds.
Winterquartier Berlin is a Christmas market at the Napoleon Komplex in Friedrichshain, with market huts, an ice rink and curling. Kids can skate, have a go at curling and catch the Christmas show for children in the cultural program.
It's a come-and-go outing. The market, rink and curling need no German; only the kids' show is spoken.
Christmas Garden Berlin turns the Botanical Garden in Dahlem into an evening walking trail lit by millions of lights, with light installations set to music. This winter is its 10th season, on a newly redesigned path.
Kids walk the loop at their own pace, with dining options along the way. It suits kids happy to be on their feet outdoors on a winter evening.
A white tent city on one of Berlin's most historic squares, lit by thousands of Christmas lights. Kids can wander past glass blowers and candle makers in the heated crafts tent, watch musicians, acrobats and fire performers on the stage, and warm up over Kaiserschmarren, sweet pancake strips. It gets busy, so it suits kids who enjoy a lively evening crowd.
Over 200 nonprofit organizations, associations, and clubs offer handmade items, wooden toys, candles, honey, jams, and crafted gifts across Richardplatz. Food vendors serve mulled wine, waffles, bratwurst, and international vegetarian and vegan specialties. Only charitable organizations participate; commercial vendors are excluded.
Potsdam's Dutch Quarter turns into a little Amsterdam for a spring weekend. Street bands march past brick houses and tulip beds, while Dutch craftspeople and flower sellers fill the lanes in traditional dress. It is a loose wander more than a program, best for kids who like music, crowds and watching things being made by hand.
A reconstruction of a village from around 1200, built on the excavated site of a real 12th-century settlement. Across grounds the size of ten soccer fields, kids walk through thatched houses, storehouses, workshops, gardens and fields, and meet rare farm breeds such as Skudden sheep and the Düppel pasture pig.
On season weekends, volunteers in medieval dress cook, carve wood, work wool and demonstrate blacksmithing and pottery.
A former railway yard where woodland has grown over the tracks since the last trains ran in 1952. Kids can spot a 1940 steam locomotive, one of Germany's oldest turntables and the 50-meter water tower.
A raised steel walkway carries the 2.7 km loop through the nature reserve, past steel sculptures by the artist group ODIOUS. Graffiti artists paint the wall along the shaded Tälchenweg.
Zollpackhof is a Bavarian beer garden and restaurant on the Spree, run with Munich's Augustiner brewery. Long tables sit under old chestnut trees, one of them more than 150 years old, facing the tour boats and the Chancellery across the river.
Groups under 20 can walk in and sit down. It suits a shady family lunch near Hauptbahnhof more than a day built around the kids.
Berlin's oldest public park was laid out in the 1840s on the edge of Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg. At the west entrance, the 1913 Märchenbrunnen fountain has over 100 stone figures from German fairy tales. Two hills built from wartime bunkers and rubble, Mont Klamott and Kleiner Bunkerberg, look out over the city center. There are playgrounds, sports grounds, a swan pond with a beer garden, and a barbecue area.
Park am Gleisdreieck opened in 2013 on former railway land, and U-Bahn trains still cross it on raised viaducts. Its 30 hectares hold several playgrounds, including a water playground with climbing frames and a 5,000 m² nature play area with a clay landscape and water pump. Older kids head for the 1,300 m² skate park, table tennis and beach volleyball courts.
A children's pool run by Berliner Bäder in Monbijoupark, a short walk from the Spree. It has two pools: a paddling pool 20 to 35 cm deep, and a 25-meter non-swimmers' pool up to 1.3 meters deep.
A lawn for lying out, a playground and a snack kiosk sit around the water. It suits families with small kids; strong swimmers will outgrow it fast.
Billed as Germany's largest music theater for children and families, with about 100,000 visitors a year. Shows are sung and spoken in German, mixing live music with stories from picture books, fairy tales and classics like Emil und die Detektive.
There are three stages: a 480-seat main hall, a 150-seat studio, and a 60-seat tent stage upstairs built as a first theater outing for the youngest.
Boulderklub Kreuzberg is a bouldering gym with 1,300 square meters of floor: short walls over thick mats, no ropes or harnesses.
Kids climb in their own zone around a climbing ship, marked in yellow on the mats and kept apart from the adult walls, where grown-ups jump and fall from height. A parent stays beside them the whole time, so it is not a drop-off.
A country-house-style café and traditional beer garden under tall trees on the shore of the Neuer See, a lake inside the Tiergarten. The beer garden serves stone-oven pizza, homemade pretzels and Leberkäse, plus house-made lemonades with a third of the usual sugar.
A sandbox gives kids room to dig while adults eat, and rowboats rent from the dock for a paddle around the lake.
Kinderbauernhof Pinke-Panke is a volunteer-run children's farm and supervised adventure playground on the edge of Bürgerpark. Around 70 animals live here, including donkeys, sheep, goats, mini pigs, geese, rabbits and hens.
Staff help kids with the afternoon feeding, and there are workshops for wood, soapstone, wool and bike repairs, plus a building playground, a vegetable garden and a campfire. Expect a scrappy, hands-on farm rather than a tidy petting zoo.
Jugendfarm Moritzhof is a children's farm on the former Wall strip at the north end of Mauerpark, in Prenzlauer Berg. Kids help feed and care for goats, sheep, chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs, tend the garden beds and cook with what they harvest.
Staff also teach old crafts: felting, spinning, pottery, basket weaving and blacksmithing. The kids help decide which animals they look after and which projects come next.
Bambooland is a jungle-themed indoor playground spread over more than 2,000 square meters inside the small Siemensstadtpark shopping center. Kids work through a big climbing maze, bounce on trampolines and race bobby cars, while the youngest get a separate toddler area. Adults are welcome on every play structure too.
Upstairs, a bistro with more than 400 seats serves fries, nuggets, pizza, salads and coffee.
The Prinzenbad is a big public pool between the Landwehrkanal and Prinzenstraße station, with two 50-meter pools for lap swimmers. Kids head for the large non-swimmer pool with its slide and water mushroom, the shallow paddling pool, and a playground with a splash area.
Wide lawns leave room for a picnic, and the snack bar is a local institution.
Britzer Garten is a landscaped park built around a lake, with rolling lawns, themed gardens and big seasonal flower shows of tulips and dahlias.
The adventure playground at the Tauernallee entrance has a 10-meter slide tower, a climbing net and ground-level trampolines, and both main playgrounds have a water play area. Sheep and goats graze in pastures around the park, and the Britzer Mühle windmill stands on the grounds.
The Rixdorfer Höhe is a hill built after World War II from about 700,000 cubic meters of rubble, rising 22 meters above the surrounding Hasenheide park. When snow falls, most families sled the short, gentle run down in the valley. Bolder kids take the winding run of about 100 meters that spirals down from the top. The park also has playgrounds, an animal enclosure and an outdoor cinema.
The Insulaner is a 78-meter hill built from World War II rubble, now wooded and crossed by footpaths. After a snowfall its west side holds one of the city's longest sledding runs, about 220 meters, with a smaller beginner slope at the bottom for younger kids.
The Wilhelm-Foerster observatory sits on the summit, the Planetarium am Insulaner at its foot, and there is a mini golf course on the hill.
A jungle-themed play hall in Weißensee built around Tommy the tiger. Kids race down the tiger slide and roller slide, play the interactive Jumplings jumping games, scoot around a jungle track and burrow in the ball pit.
Older kids get a multi-court for soccer and basketball, air hockey and an arcade, and toddlers have their own play area. Outside there's a climbing spider and, in summer, a water slide.
Dockx is a 1,000-square-meter indoor playground at the Tempelhofer Hafen, right on the water. Kids climb a multi-level frame with new rope nets, race on a kart track, take the wave slide, and run the maze to the ball cannons. A separate, sheltered toddler area has small slides, soft play pieces and ball pits.
Parents get a café, a bar and sofas with a view of the play area.
A 1,500-square-meter indoor play hall. Kids ride a children's train and a chain carousel, climb a soft mountain and a giant inflatable crocodile, and race down double-wave and tube slides in the adventure play structure.
There's also a ball pit, a climbing wall, bouncy castles, face painting and a separate toddler area, plus a cafeteria.
The museum is built around its dinosaur hall, where kids crane up at Giraffatitan, the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world. Tristan Otto, an exceptionally well-preserved T. rex, and the Berlin Archaeopteryx, an early bird fossil, are on show too.
Other galleries cover minerals, the solar system, evolution and taxidermy animals, plus the Wet Collection: about a million specimens in jars of alcohol.
A Christmas market running through Spandau's old town, with stalls selling roasted almonds, bratwurst and mulled wine. Kids can meet Santa Claus and pick up cotton candy. Families can try the two ice stock lanes on Reformationsplatz.
A Christmas market in front of Charlottenburg Palace, with craft stalls, food stands and street musicians among fir trees and lit decorations. Once it gets dark, a light-mapping show plays across the palace facade.
Kids ride the carousels and watch the palace light up, while parents browse handmade gifts and grab mulled wine or gingerbread. It suits younger kids who like lights and rides.
Germany's only nationwide performing arts festival for young audiences, held every two years since 1991. Ten productions from across the country include a toddler piece about a baobab tree, a monster show, a dance work and teen dramas. Some are made for the youngest viewers, others for 12 and up.
FEZ-Berlin is a non-profit children's, youth and family center in the Wuhlheide woods. Inside are the Alice children's museum with hands-on exhibitions, the Astrid-Lindgren-Bühne children's theater, orbitall (a space center modeled on the ISS), and an indoor pool with a teaching pool and diving towers.
Outside, the park has a giant rocket playground, a dragon playground, a wooden climbing playground, an eco garden, and boats and pedal cars to rent.
The children's and teens' library inside the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek holds about 130,000 books and other media, the largest collection of its kind in Germany.
It has three parts: a children's library and a teen library for reading for fun, plus a learning center with nonfiction and study help. The kids' wing sits in the glass-walled annex by the garden, where it has been since 1957.
Zenner is a beer garden on the bank of the Spree inside Treptower Park, serving guests since 1822. Its 1,500 outdoor seats sit under old linden trees or out in the sun. An organic ice cream counter in the tower house arcades scoops 24 flavors from Rosa Canina, and a sandbox beside its terrace keeps younger kids digging while adults eat.
This beer garden has stood inside Viktoriapark since 1977, with tables shaded by trees and parasols, a big sun terrace, and a charcoal grill turning out sausages, skewers, fish and homemade salads.
Parents get coffee or a cold drink while kids roam the park paths, with a playground a short walk away. Evenings bring a bar crowd and indoor dancing, so it suits families best by day.
Aquarium Berlin fills three floors of the historic building at the Zoo. The ground floor holds the fish: blacktip reef sharks, a coral reef, seahorses, octopuses and drifting jellyfish.
The first floor is reptiles, with snakes, iguanas, a chameleon and the glass-walled Tropical Hall, where a wooden bridge crosses the crocodile river. The small top floor has glowing scorpions, poison frogs and leafcutter ants farming fungus gardens.
A three-deck play ship on the Spree bank, nicknamed the Black Pearl. Kids climb and balance their way between decks, ride a 5-meter spiral tube slide, cook in the galley play kitchen and play table tennis on deck.
Ramps reach part of the ship, and pieces like a marble run, speaking tubes and a memory wall are built so kids with and without disabilities can play together.
Alte Fasanerie is a former pheasantry turned open farmyard on the rural northern edge of the city, run by the Elisabethstift youth charity. Kids can say hello to goats, alpacas, chickens, pheasants and horses, walk round the pond and the herb and flower garden, and browse the Bücherkuh, a courtyard box of kids' books to borrow. It suits a slow, quiet afternoon more than a big day out.
A 30-meter dome built in 1987, with a 307-seat hall where fulldome projection fills the whole ceiling with stars, planets and science films. Children's shows run alongside science programs, and a separate cinema screens kids' films.
The foyer holds a free hands-on exhibition: touchscreen planets, a moon relief to run your hands over, and an immersive view from the International Space Station.
A children's farm inside Görlitzer Park, run since 1981 by a neighborhood association as a supervised youth center. Kids meet goats, donkeys, ponies, rabbits, geese and chickens, roam the yard, and toddlers get their own corner with a sandpit, play equipment and a water playground in summer.
The clay-built community house hosts clubs during the week and opens to everyone on Sundays for a family café with waffles and hot chocolate.
A large technology museum with a locomotive shed full of historic trains, a shipping hall where kids hoist sails and steer a boat into harbor, and an aviation wing with the "Candy Bomber" plane up on the roof terrace.
The Science Center Spectrum, on the same ticket, has more than 150 hands-on experiments. Outside, the museum park has a playground and picnic areas.
A Christmas funfair on Landsberger Allee with 26 rides, from a 45-meter Ferris wheel with enclosed gondolas to the 85-meter Lion Tower drop and the new Crazy Roulette. Twelve are family and kids' rides, including a mini roller coaster, carousels and a fire-fighter fun house. Younger kids will be happiest there and on the Ferris wheel; the big thrill rides suit older kids and teens.
Tur Tur Theater's modern take on the musical classic. Dorothy lands in the land beyond the rainbow and sets off to find the Wizard of Oz, picking up a scarecrow who wants more brains, a tin man who lost his heart and a lion afraid of everything.
Sophie Ammann and Alexander Altomirianos play it as a story about friendship, made for laughing, crying and thinking.
Vier zurück brings back One, Two, Three and Four, after the GRIPS shows "Vier sind hier" and "Vier bei dir". Three players and a musician invite kids into a world under a huge table, where many things seem bigger than you are.
Made for the very youngest, it's a funny, musical piece about the special moments of growing up, told with play, sounds and songs.
A hands-on family workshop from the Museum für Islamische Kunst. Families work together on their own vest: a mesh fabric becomes the canvas, decorated with colorful thread, beads and child-safe needles, using patterns from the museum's collection or straight from imagination. Kids pick up simple knotting and embroidery stitches along the way, and the finished vest goes home with them. Best for kids patient enough to thread a needle.
Grüne Woche is a huge indoor food and farming fair across the Messe Berlin halls. Around 1,600 exhibitors offer tastings of regional and international specialties, from fruit and vegetables to fish, meat, wine and beer. Kids can try hands-on activities on farming and food, and there is a family room for breaks. It is closer to a trade fair than a kids' festival, so it suits curious school-age children best.
The playground sits in Weinbergspark, a hillside park on the site of old vineyards. The toddler area has a climbing tower and slide that wheelchairs can reach, plus a nest swing, a carousel and a spinning disc on firm, step-free surfacing.
Older kids get a rubber-surfaced ball cage, ping-pong tables and a wooden deck to hang out on. The rest of the ground is sand, so a bucket and spade earn their place.
Volkspark Rehberge, in Wedding, covers 115 hectares of meadows and woodland, laid out as a landscape park in the 1920s. There are several playgrounds, a wild boar enclosure on the western side, a chain of three small ponds (no swimming), big sports grounds and kilometers of paths where kids learn to ride a bike. In winter, the long sledding hill draws families from the surrounding neighborhoods.
A large open-air flea market on the edge of Mauerpark, with roughly 400 to 450 stalls of secondhand clothes, furniture, records, lamps, jewelry, handmade goods and used toys. A food court in the middle has seating, so lunch fits between rounds of browsing.
Kids with a bit of pocket money can hunt for toys and old trinkets. It draws big crowds of locals and tourists, so keep young kids close.
A public pool complex run by Berliner Bäder. The indoor hall has a 50-meter pool with 1-meter and 3-meter diving boards and a shallow non-swimmers' pool with a kids' slide.
In summer the outdoor side opens with two 50-meter pools, a paddling pool, another slide, a big lawn and a playground. In winter an inflatable dome covers the outdoor pools for extra swimming space.
Stadtbad Neukölln is a public indoor pool more than a hundred years old, with two halls lined by 7-meter columns, arcades and mosaics. The big hall holds a 25-meter pool and the small hall a 19-meter pool, and both have a shallow non-swimmer area. Depth runs from 65cm to 2.4 meters.
It suits kids who can swim and want room, and younger ones happy in the shallow end.
A large park of themed gardens from around the world: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Balinese, Oriental, Italian Renaissance, English and Jewish gardens, plus a hedge maze and a labyrinth to run through.
A cable car glides up to 35 meters above the Wuhletal valley to the Kienberg hill. The playgrounds follow Erich Kästner's book "The 35th of May", with a climbing whale, a water forest and giant wooden ants.
Eisstadion Neukölln is the district's open-air artificial ice rink, at the edge of the Werner-Seelenbinder-Sportpark by Tempelhofer Feld. The public rink is about 65 by 39 meters, next to a separate competition rink used by hockey and figure skating clubs.
A rental shop on site rents skates in all sizes, plus double-blade gliders for kids up to 1 meter tall. Beginners can join the local skating schools that teach here.
Tierpark Berlin spreads across 160 hectares of parkland around the 18th-century Friedrichsfelde manor house, making it Europe's largest animal park. Kids can watch tigers in the renovated Alfred Brehm House, spot red pandas and snow leopards on a cloud-forest trail, and see giraffes and zebras on an African savanna.
Between animals there's a petting zoo with goats and ponies, a seaside-themed water play area, and the Fabelwald woodland playground.
Germany's oldest zoo, opened in 1844, keeps around 20,000 animals and more species than any other zoo in the world. Kids can watch Germany's only giant pandas, plus elephants and pygmy hippos, and pet goats at the petting zoo.
Many animals live in indoor houses, so it works on a cold day too. The aquarium by the Elefantentor gate needs a combined ticket.
