16 places and programs for kids in and around Battery Park City, Manhattan (7 free): museums, nature, STEM. Includes The Skyscraper Museum and Brookfield Place & Winter Garden.
A small Battery Park City museum about tall buildings, with models, photos and exhibits on how skyscrapers are designed and built. Great for kids fascinated by the city skyline and construction.
A waterfront shopping and dining complex whose glass-roofed Winter Garden atrium hosts free art installations and seasonal events. Annual displays such as Canstruction, with sculptures built from food cans, are a hit with kids.
Asphalt Green's Battery Park City campus hosts its AGUA Swim Academy, with song-and-game classes for babies and toddlers, preschool lessons for ages 3–5, and Foundations and Core levels for kids 5–16. A free parent-and-child Water Explorers program is also offered.
A round 1811 sandstone fort in Battery Park that once defended the harbor and later served as an immigration station and aquarium. Today kids can explore its walls and small exhibits, and it's where Statue of Liberty ferry tickets are sold.
A waterfront museum in Battery Park City exploring Jewish life and history, including the Holocaust, with a rooftop Garden of Stones. Exhibits are best for older children and teens, and public programs include family events.
A large nature-themed playground at The Battery with five ecology zones, including a bluff, marsh and dunes, designed to flood and recover. Kids climb, slide, dig and splash in a landscape inspired by the harbor's ecosystems.
A ferry ride brings families to Liberty Island to walk around Lady Liberty and explore a museum with her original torch. Kids can pick up a free Junior Ranger booklet, and pedestal or crown tickets let older kids climb higher.
Asphalt Green's downtown flagship next to Rockefeller Park offers youth sports classes along with fitness studios and pools. Kids in Battery Park City and Tribeca can join sports and swim programs close to home.
The children's area stocks board books through middle-grade novels, and librarians lead free story times plus seasonal activities like Summer Reading. Steps from the Hudson River esplanade and playgrounds, it is an easy add-on to a park day downtown.
British Swim School holds lessons at this Battery Park City pool, starting with babies as young as 3 months. Kids move from water acclimation to survival skills like floating and rolling over, then on to stroke development; adaptive classes are offered too.
Teens spend a week cooking in a professional Manhattan kitchen, choosing either a pastry/baking or a savory track. The camp runs as a day program or as sleepaway with housing in Brooklyn Heights, and welcomes all skill levels.
The restored immigration station where millions of newcomers first arrived, now a museum where kids can walk through the Great Hall and search passenger records for family names. Included with the Statue of Liberty ferry ticket.
Kids attend a weekly after-school math class grouped by grade and level, following a rigorous curriculum that emphasizes logical reasoning and problem solving over rote drills. Homework is assigned between sessions, and older students can join competition-math and test-prep tracks.
An educational farm inside The Battery at Manhattan's southern tip where school groups and families learn how vegetables, herbs and grains grow in the city.
Kids build math and reading skills through short, leveled worksheet assignments done a little each day, coming into the center a couple of times a week for instructor check-ins. Students move ahead as soon as they master each level, so advanced kids can work well beyond their grade.
This large waterfront playground in Battery Park City's Rockefeller Park has climbing structures, swings and play features steps from the Hudson. Big lawns next door are perfect for picnics after playtime.
LittleGotham lists 16 places and programs for kids in Battery Park City, Manhattan. The largest groups are 5 museums, 2 parks and nature spots, 2 STEM programs.
Yes. 7 of 16 are free to attend, including The Skyscraper Museum, Brookfield Place & Winter Garden, Battery Playscape.
11 listings are indoors, such as The Skyscraper Museum, Brookfield Place & Winter Garden, Asphalt Green Battery Park City – AGUA Swim Academy.