‘Create Your Year: Hello, 2015!’

New years require new calendars. Children can create their own to hang in this family art project at Wave Hill, the public garden in the Bronx. They will use the surrounding landscape — and their dreams of the year ahead — as inspiration to make designs for a lunar calendar, based on the phases of the moon.

New Year’s Day Fitness Fair

Getting in shape is one of those New Year’s resolutions that tend to fall by the wayside. The JCC in Manhattan will help families maintain their commitment with this daylong fair at its Marti Ann Meyerson Center for Health and Wellness. Activities will include yoga, zumba and healthy cooking demonstrations, as well as programs specifically for young visitors, including a play space with soft mats for ages 4 and younger.

‘Hansel and Gretel’

Children may not think that Hansel and Gretel have much to sing about in their dark adventure, but young audiences will find out otherwise at this family-friendly production from the Metropolitan Opera, returning for another run of holiday performances. Presented in Richard Jones’s English adaptation, with Englebert Humperdinck’s score, the opera, for ages 5 and older, runs about 2 hours 10 minutes and stars Robert Brubaker as the gluttonous witch.

‘Oran Etkin’s Timbalooloo’

Timba what? Timbalooloo is a method of teaching music fundamentals to children, developed by the clarinetist Oran Etkin. Incorporating games, stories and rhythms from many cultures, it will be on display at this concert, at the Jewish Museum, which will be open on Christmas Day with a full schedule of activities, including a drop-in family art workshop. Mr. Etkin, who will demonstrate musical connections between Africa and Israel, will also offer pieces from his 2010 children’s album, “Wake Up, Clarinet!” Certainly no listeners will nod off.

Father Goose

If you’re a little tired of “Jingle Bells” and “Deck the Halls,” this concert will help you discover other ways to make musically merry. Father Goose, a.k.a. Rankin Dan, a favorite in Caribbean music and one of the Friends in Dan Zanes and Friends, will perform holiday variations drawing on hip-hop, reggae and calypso.

Hot Peas ‘N Butter

This serving is the kind that will please musical appetites. A band often seen on Nickelodeon and Noggin, Hot Peas ‘N Butter offers a blend of Latin tunes, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, jazz, folk and rock, all intended to get children 3 to 8 on their feet and dancing. In this concert at the Jewish Museum, the group will feature multicultural songs in honor of Hanukkah, like the Ladino tune “Ocho Kandelikas.”

‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ 50th-Anniversary Celebration With Live Music

What could be better than singing along with Schroeder on a toy piano? How about singing along with the Rob Schwimmer Trio? That ensemble and the Church of the Heavenly Rest’s Children’s Choir will both provide live accompaniment when the Metropolitan Museum of Art screens the film classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” now 50 years old. After the movie, in which Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang learn the true meaning of the holidays, the Met will hold a seasonal singalong, led by Mr. Schwimmer and Mark Stewart. Children under 4 are not permitted, but everyone else is welcome at this movie-and-music celebration.

‘The Wind in the Willows’

Don’t ever let toads drive cars. That’s one lesson you can derive from Kenneth Grahame’s children’s book “The Wind in the Willows,” but there are plenty more in this gentle tale of the adventures of the toad and his friends the mole, the badger and the river rat. The Pied Piper Children’s Theater of NYC is presenting Phil Greenland’s new musical adaptation of the story, which features children ages 5 through 12 in the cast and adolescents ages 12 through 18 in the crew.

Hanukkah Family Day

Sculpture, painting, song and dance: However you might want to celebrate Hanukkah, the Jewish Museum will offer the creative means at this annual festival. A giant drop-in art workshop will present opportunities to turn found objects — spools, wood blocks, metal — into holiday sculptures; make light-inspired abstract paintings; and contribute to a huge communal menorah collage. From 1 to 3 p.m., the storyteller Jeff Hopkins will use live drawing to illuminate Hanukkah tales, and, at 2:30 p.m., Shirlala, a.k.a. Shira Kline, will perform a concert that brings the entire Hanukkah story to life. Brief gallery tours at 1:30 and 3 p.m., focused on the Hanukkah lamp collection, will round out the day.

Push Physical Theater

When you encounter a troupe with a name like this, you wonder what its members are pushing against. The apparent answer: theatrical boundaries and one another. Appearing at Symphony Space as part of the Just Kidding series, they aim to bring stories to life with acrobatics, illusions and bodily feats that are tough to execute but fun to watch.

‘All Aboard! Historical Train Weekend’

Children will be working on the railroad, not all the livelong day but for a few hours, in this program at the DiMenna Children’s History Museum of the New-York Historical Society. But the work will be fun: From 1 to 3 p.m., visitors ages 3 to 6 are invited to decorate a car for the Transcontinental Railroad, drawing inspiration from all the toy trains on display in the museum’s exhibition “Holiday Express: Toys and Trains From the Jerni Collection.” They can also go on a scavenger hunt through the collection and meet the friendly Conductor Abe, who will relate railroad stories.

Best Friends Animal Society’s Super Adoption Event

What could be a better holiday present than one that provides unconditional love? Best Friends Animal Society, an animal welfare organization, sponsors this event, which will offer more than 800 dogs, cats and rabbits that need good homes. (Adoption fees start as low as $25.) The festivities will also include music, food, a pet gift fair and a two-hour visit each day from Santa Claus (though no reindeer are up for adoption).

‘A Christmas Carol, Oy! Hanukkah, Merry Kwanzaa’

No one could accuse Vit Horejs of being noninclusive or unecumenical, not with a show with this title. The founder of the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater, he has used Dickens’s tale as his framework, incorporating more than 30 puppets, two singers and a lot of multicultural references. Along with Scrooge, the show, which closes this weekend, features Hanukkah songs and caroling in Swahili.

‘Seven in One Blow, or the Brave Little Kid’

In the Grimm fairy tale “The Brave Little Tailor,” the title character dispatches seven flies with one swat but allows the gullible public to believe that he has really whacked seven enemies. In its annual holiday production for ages 4 and older, written and directed by Randy Sharp, Axis Theater has adapted the story to feature a clever New York boy. He triumphs over adversity, thanks to his wits and a lot of help from theatergoers, who are asked to shout lines and even sing.

Winter Fest

Baseball season may be over, but there’s still fun to be had at Citi Field. This first Winter Fest will bring Santa Claus and team mascots to the turf, along with cookie decorating, caroling, craft projects and face painting. There will even be baseballs: a variety of balls decorated and autographed by sports and cultural figures will be on display, to be auctioned off to benefit Toys for Tots.

‘A Pocket Nutcracker’

So what’s a “pocket” production? It’s smaller and shorter, yes, but certainly not diminished. Presented by WindSync, a wind quintet whose members perform from memory and in costume, this presentation offers a whole new interactive and abridged version of the “Nutcracker” story, along with other holiday music.

Reading Into History Book Club: ‘Crow,’ by Barbara Wright

The title of this novel has many connotations. Set at the turn of the 20th century, “Crow” is part of the Reading Into History monthly book club at the DiMenna Children’s Museum of the New-York Historical Society, which invites children 9 and older to read a work of historical fiction and share their thoughts online. At each event, they discuss the book in person and view related museum artifacts. This Sunday Barbara Wright herself will attend to discuss her novel, whose young African-American hero, Moses Thomas, is caught up in the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, in which white businessmen and former Confederate soldiers overthrew a lawfully elected — and mostly black — city government.

Cirque Zíva

The title may seem French, but the show is unmistakably Asian: This two-hour production heralds the return of the Golden Dragon Acrobats, from Hebei Province, China, to the New Victory Theater, where they first wowed young audiences in 2005. And don’t expect ordinary handsprings and somersaults. This troupe’s members specialize in the extreme, like balancing on one hand on a stack of chairs or doing ballet moves while perched on another person’s shoulders. They’ll offer a lion dance, too.

Blessing of the Animals

You don’t have to be religious to enjoy this spectacle. All families are invited to take their pets — dogs, cats and other creatures — to Christ Church for a special nod from members of the clergy. The ceremony is ecumenical, with the church’s senior minister, Stephen Bauman, and Central Synagogue’s senior rabbi, Peter J. Rubinstein, officiating. New pet toys will be accepted as donations for New York City Animal Care and Control.

‘Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical’

The Grinch may be second only to Scrooge as a literary symbol of those who would deny the holiday spirit. And like Scrooge, he spends a lot of time being converted onstage. He’s come back to New York for a brief run of this musical by Mel Marvin and Timothy Mason, who have adapted Dr. Seuss’s classic tale of the Grinch’s attempt to deprive the good citizens of Whoville of their Christmas. In this version, Max, the Grinch’s beleaguered dog, narrates.

Sundays in SoHo: William Wegman

You wouldn’t expect a design store to welcome a dog, but the one visiting the MoMA Design Store in SoHo on Sunday won’t knock over tables or precious crafts. He is Topper, one of William Wegman’s Weimaraners, and he will make a special appearance with Mr. Wegman as part of Sundays in SoHo, the store’s new series of family events. Mr. Wegman will read from his latest children’s book, “Flo & Wendell Explore” (Dial), which stars the title characters — Weimaraners, of course, rendered in a combination of photography and painting — in a camping adventure close to home.