11 Things to Do With Your Kids in New York City to Prevent a Holiday Meltdown

Winter can be an ugly time in New York City when you’ve got kids. The first substantial snow turns into a patchwork of grey and yellow within hours. The play space where you take refuge from the claustrophobia of your apartment is a petri dish for the one bacterial strain you’ve somehow managed to avoid so far. Holidays (aka work days without childcare for parents) can be an additional challenge: a different schedule for your standby diversions, reduced transport options, and playmates out of town. The gear—oh, the gear!—required to stay warm or at least stave of frostbite. But don’t let it defeat you! New York is also a magical place to spend the holiday season, beyond the Nutcracker and the lights at Rockefeller Center. For my fellow city stalwarts, a guide to some more offbeat holiday entertainment.

Skate Around Town Sure there’s ice skating at Wollman Rink and Prospect Park, but this year, if you’re brave enough to embark upon the not insubstantial task of getting yourself to JFK, you can skate along a runway next to the newly refurbished TWA hotel and its 1958 Lockheed Constellation “Connie” airplane, in which, conveniently for adults, there’s a cocktail lounge. If you want to keep your skate a little closer to home, Brookfield Place has set up a 7,350 square-foot outdoor rink. (From November 29 to December 24 Santa will be stationed in another corner of the mall.) For the Brooklyn “mall” rinkside experience, head to Industry City, where an outdoor rink is set up from November 30 through December.

Get Cracking It’s hard to top New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker, but if you’ve seen Clara get spooked by those particular mouse soldiers one too many times, try one of the alternate versions going on around the city. Dances Patrelle’s The Yorkville Nutcracker (December 13-15), is set amid New York City landmarks, from Gracie Mansion to the New York Botanical Garden’s Crystal Palace. Or, stick around Brookfield place: There’s a free one-hour version staged on three different occasions (December 6, 7, and 8).

Plays for the Pint Sized It might seem like a lot to ask a kid under the age of 6 to sit through anything other than Frozen II this winter, but if you think you’ve got a chance, take the probably once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Patrick Stewart perform A Christmas Carol (December 11 and December 13) at Theater 511 in a performance that will benefit City Harvest and Ars Nova. Stewart created the one-man show, in which he embodies Ebeneezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Fezziwig, and all the other characters, too. Performed a handful of times in the ‘90s, Sir Patrick has not performed the show in New York since 2001.

Isaac Mizrahi, an icon of a different sort, will lead the Guggenheim’s Peter & the Wolf performances (December 7-8 and 13-15) as part of the museum's Works & Process series, narrating and directing a 30-minute version Sergei Prokofiev's children's classic. (He also did the costumes!) For a slightly more preschool children’s theater experience, there’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show Experience at the South Street Seaport Museum, an interactive puppet show dramatization of the beloved Eric Carle book (November 29 - December 29, 2019) with three daily showings.

Modern Museum Of course there’s no shortage of museums in New York City, but Sloomoo, the new slime "museum," might be your kids’ new favorite, especially if all this culture is not going down as easily as a peppermint-spiked hot chocolate. Described as “part art installation, part STEM program,” it’s an interactive playground that will only be open in New York for six months.

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Originally Appeared on Vogue