Third Floor

Birth – 4 years

We’ve designed every aspect of PlayWorks™ to help families prepare children to enter school ready to learn, grow and thrive. By combining play and learning, PlayWorks creates a fun and rewarding experience for children.

As children explore PlayWorks and participate in free, daily, drop-in Art Lab programs, they build their physical, social, math, art, science, literacy, and problem-solving abilities—as well as the self-confidence, independence and awareness necessary for them to become life-long learners.

For adults, PlayWorks provides an opportunity to observe each child’s unique learning style and appreciate how play creates a strong foundation for later learning. This innovative 4,000 square foot environment includes Alphie—a giant talking dragon who “eats” letters, a deli, a fire truck, an MTA bus, sand area, massive six-foot mural painting wall, soft space for crawlers, and more!

Get more resources to support your child’s language development with CMOM’s All the Way to K and Beyond!

Find fun tips and activities to support your child’s brain development at vroom.org.

Second Floor

2 – 6 years

Join Diego on a series of high stakes animal rescue missions. Learn facts about animals and their habitats by helping Diego rescue animals in trouble. Explore a cave, a beach and the rainforest, or rub animal footprints, even build a Spectacled Bear’s nest!

Get ready for a fabulous fiesta at Dora’s house! Drive Tico’s car, build the walls of Rainbow Bridge or jump across the lake to arrive at Dora’s house to play drums and pretend to cook Latin American foods.

By helping Dora and her friends get to the fiesta, your child will learn problem-solving skills, develop math and language abilities, and gain a greater appreciation and awareness of Latin American culture. ¡Vámonos! Let’s go!

Sponsored by Nickelodeon.

First Floor

3 – 10 years

Inside Art: Create, Climb, Collaborate is the third edition of CMOM’s acclaimed exhibition series designed to provide meaningful engagement with contemporary art and artists. The exhibition is inspired by creative placemaking, which uses the arts to shape a location and promote social change. The pieces selected for this show encourage community, collaboration, and immersive exploration of new ideas.

Inside Art: Create, Climb, Collaborate continues our tradition of providing families access to beautiful, complex, and challenging art, as well as access to working artists and opportunities for artmaking.

The exhibition features:

Immersive art installations and sculptures by: Aya Rodriguez-Izumi; Isidro Blasco; Damien Davis; Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez; Borinquen Gallo; and Yeju & Chat.

A multi-story structure, originally designed by BARarchitekten architects, features art by: Ebony Bolt; Francisco Donoso; Tijay Mohammed; and Armita Raafat.

Ongoing artmaking programs with CMOM educators and visiting artists.

An Artist-in-Residence Collaborative Installation program where selected artists develop works-in-progress for Museum visitors to contribute

Come celebrate art as a vehicle for building healthy communities and explore ideas of home and identity at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan.

Funding for Inside Art and programs is provided by the Ford Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Lower Level

Birth – 6 years

Superpowered Metropolis: Early Learning City™ is a hands-on, interactive, and colorfully, immersive exhibition where you are the heroes! Step into a playful, comic book version of New York City where a lively team of pigeons, Zip, Zap, and Zoom, serve as your guides to superpowered fun and learning.

The 1,500 square-foot exhibit invites children from birth to 6 and their grown-ups to feel like heroes, building their superpowered early learning brain skills together. These skills, known as executive functions, include self-control, working memory, and mental flexibility. Children practice these learning “superpowers” with Zip, Zap, and Zoom, who guide families on a series of NYC adventures exploring the subways, parks, music, travel, treehouses, and more.

• Climb to the top of a magical two-story Treehouse Headquarters equipped with a map, telescope, periscope, and slide to plan your adventures
• Navigate colorful tunnels, tracks, and waterways at a multi-level Supercharged NYC Train Table
• Create original city sounds with one-of-a-kind instruments in the Musical Subway Car
• Chase the floating scarves at the Whimsical Wind Blowing Fountain
• Get a call from Zip, Zap, and Zoom at the Superpowered Phone Booth and head out on a Metropolis mission
• Enter Baby Central Station, a mini learning hub inspired by Grand Central Station and specially designed for birth to 2 year-olds with climb-on trains, a starry sky, and sensory stations
• Play three digital Brain Building Games designed by NYU’s CREATE Lab
• Explore the sounds and smells of NYC while driving in the Pigeon Mobile

The exhibit is designed to help children develop, enhance, and practice their executive function skills, which are critical for the early development of both cognitive and social capacities. Executive functions are essential for social-emotional well-being and academic success. Every child is born with the ability to strengthen these skills, and it is the daily interactions with adults that help the skills develop. The exhibit shares tips, games, and activities for the adults and children to play together at the Museum, at home, and around the city.

Stepping into the comic-book-inspired NYC world, families meet the team of Superpowered Pigeons™ that embody the learning superpowers:

• ZIP, Self-Control Champion – A calm coach who encourages ‘power pauses’ before acting, thinking things through, resisting distractions, following directions, and taking turns.
• ZAP, Working Memory Master – A witty thinker who juggles information in mind and is always at the ready, remembering instructions and skillfully organizing and sorting information.
• ZOOM, Mental Flexibility Guru – A curious inventor who sees things from multiple perspectives, switches gears easily, and solves problems creatively.

Support for Superpowered Metropolis: Early Learning City™ is provided by the Bezos Family Foundation and its early learning program Vroom which provides science-based tips and tools to inspire families to turn everyday moments into Brain Building Moments®.

Sussman Environmental Center

All ages

Seasonal Outdoor Exhibit in the Sussman Environmental Center

Open: 10:45am – 4:30pm |  Weather permitting

Dynamic H₂O is the Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s splashy seasonal outdoor exhibit where children learn about New York City’s amazing water system and the importance of water to us all. With hands-on interactives and colorful graph­ics, the exhibit invites children to explore how New York City gets its water and the role water plays in our local environment.

Dynamic H20 features, the installation features a 22-foot-long interactive water table with waterfalls, spinners, spouts and shoots for hands-on fun and discovery. The experi­ence begins with children learning about the water cycle up in the clouds. Small floating droplets allow children to follow the currents as they progress downstream, flowing past an area where children can pretend to fish, then connecting pipes and directing water over a bridge, before arriving at the area where they can construct a city at the water’s edge!

Funding provided by Carolyn Tisch Blodgett and Will Blodgett and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

Third Floor

2 and up

The best photo spot at CMOM! To commemorate the centennial of women’s suffrage, the installation explores what voting is and why it matters, how people effect change by working together, and the role of the president of the United States. Underlying the installation messaging is the importance of thoughtful decision-making and open-minded listening, reiterating that voting and community movements are ways we work together for the greater good.

Area 1 – Your Vote Counts

Visitors “vote” for one of three options by placing a ballot in one of three voting cases. Topics change, and examples include: clean water for all, more parks and pools, free food at schools.

Area 2 – If I Were President

Children pretend play in the Oval Office, taking calls, making decisions, and signing important documents.

Area 3 – Moving Forward Together- Suffragists

Visitors explore a wall-mounted finger maze to see which suffragist they are most like, and learn more about the suffrage movement.

Area 4 – Share Your Voice!

Visitors can create their own posters, sashes, ballots, and more! By exploring methods used by women to attain the right to vote over a century ago, we see that these same skills and tactics are still relevant today when we want to make our voices heard. Art materials and CMOM educators are available to engage visitors.