Children’s Book Museum, Den Haag
With my bigs off camping and Grandma in town we were looking for a bit of a low-key afternoon with our little littles. We are lucky to live biking distance and public transportation distance from two large cities – Rotterdam and Den Haag. There is so much to do in both these cities for kids that we are always trying new things. The middle little loves to ride public transportation so we hopped on a tram and headed into Den Haag.
The Children’s Book Museum has mostly afternoon hours on weekdays. Afternoons are usually hard for us with naps and afternoon school pickup. We decided to chance it though and arrive at noon for its Wednesday opening.
The Children’s Book Museum (Kinderboeken Museum) is located just across the street from the Den Haag Central train station. (Exit the train station using the door opposite Starbucks.) It is well marked and located inside the National Library building. Head upstairs to pay your admission or show your Museumkaart.
The layout of the museum is wonky. The children’s exhibits are on the top and bottom floors, with bathrooms and paintings of authors on the middle entrance floor. The museum is primarily in Dutch.
The kids sections are fabulous though. Each popular Dutch storybook has been turned into a play area.
Upstairs the play areas are linked by tunnels you can crawl through. Our middle little and his best friend had a ball playing in all the areas, each one focused on a separate book. And while we weren’t familiar with all the books, the areas were still fun.
They weaved their way through the corn maze laughing hysterically. (Can you see my middle little in there?)
They worked on colors and patterns with these elephants. The goal was to complete the pattern by hanging the tiles on pegs, on the reverse side you matched colors but a pull of the elephant’s tail causes all the tiles to fall back into the bin!
The new alphabet area has a book character chair to match letters on a plate. The kids worked on matching the chairs to the plates.
Downstairs, there are tall stairs of books to climb. The highlight though is the Kikker room. Kikker is a frog who is quite popular here in the Netherlands. He has many adventures. The boys were able to help him re-roof his house, explore the scary woods and sail his boat across the sea.
There is also a small craft room on the bottom floor. The craft the day we were there was Kikker puppets. the kids had a great time coloring, cutting (with help) and assembling their puppets.
The book museum also has wonderful seasonal events. You can check their events page to see what is going on during your visit. This is the perfect stop to add some kid-friendly fun to your Den Haag visit.