‘Blocks’

You can build a lot with blocks: buildings, bridges, roads and even relationships in this show from Teater Tre, a troupe from Sweden visiting the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Part of the academy’s BAMkids series, the production features three lively buffoons in workmen’s overalls who experiment onstage with huge, colorful blocks. Intended for ages 3 through 7, their comic adventure is intended to bring big laughs and little lessons.

Spirituality for Kids Family Fun Day

It’s not often that you can spend a few hours having a good time and come out a better person. That’s the intent of this celebration, presented by Spirituality for Kids International, a nonprofit offering a program to teach children values like tolerance and charity and instill in them a sense of purpose. The setting will be a life-size arcade game with booths and stations that reinforce the program’s principles. In addition to activities like rock climbing, meditation, martial arts and children’s yoga, the event will offer art projects, entertainment and a talent show.

‘New Beginnings’: Lunar New Year Festival

It may be the Year of the Ram (or the Year of the Sheep or the Goat, depending on whom you consult), but it will come roaring in like a lion in this festive celebration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Highlights will include a performance by the Chinese Center on Long Island Lion Troupe; a show by “Sesame Street” puppeteers; a martial arts demonstration; art activities; and gallery stations where children can investigate the Chinese tea ceremony, Chinese sculpture and Korean sound.

‘The Light Princess’

Sandra Bullock found a way to get herself back to earth in “Gravity,” but what’s this poor princess to do? Based on a Scottish fairy tale from the 1800s, this musical by Lila Rose Kaplan and Mike Pettry centers on a royal heroine who’s forced to float everywhere because of a witch’s curse. In the show, being performed at the New Victory Theater by the actors of the A.R.T. Institute at Harvard, she has to discover a solution by her 16th birthday or remain suspended forever.

Bunny Hop

This event will benefit children as well as entertain them. Presented by the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Gucci, it will raise funds for the center’s pediatric initiatives. Activities will include crafts, a live-animal show, a petting zoo, balloon art, a D.J., magic and three acts from the Big Apple Circus.

‘Masked Marvels’

Halloween isn’t the only holiday you’ll see children frolicking in costume. The festival Purim, which celebrates how the Jewish people were saved by the brave actions of the biblical Queen Esther, involves much joyful masquerading. To help children get ready for the holiday, which begins at sundown on Wednesday, the Jewish Museum is offering this workshop, in which they can use fabric, wire, papers and other colorful materials to make masks, drawing inspiration from objects in the galleries.

Game On! A Day of Sports for Girls

Female athletes have been fighting for a level playing field for years, and this free event will celebrate their efforts as part of National Girls and Women in Sports Day. Collegiate athletes will offer instruction in games like volleyball and soccer, and children — boys are welcome, too — will hear some encouraging success stories. The activities will include fitness classes for parents and water sports for all, so those interested should take along swimsuits, bathing caps and towels.

‘Blaaast’ Into the New Year With Museum of Chinese in America

Is that how a sheep would say it? It’s the Year of the Sheep (or the Ram or the Goat; it’s a matter of interpretation). But however you view it, the museum will celebrate it with many activities, including a lion dance, performances by the Red Silk Dancers, zodiac-theme art activities, craft demonstrations and storytelling.

Step Into: Purim

Dancing or leaping into Purim might be more like it, considering the boisterousness of this Jewish holiday. Hannah Senesh Community Day School will celebrate the occasion with this festival, which will offer crafts, face painting, a production of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by the troupe Play Me a Story and a performance by Timbalooloo, the clarinetist Oran Etkin’s preschool music program.

‘Hot Feet’

Warm toes sound pretty good at this time of year. And even if there’s no heat outside, the Paper Bag Players will generate plenty in this show for ages 3 to 8, a celebration of the troupe’s 56th anniversary. Known for their signature props and sets made out of brown paper and cardboard, the players will present highlights of their past productions, song-and-dance skits like “Move Over,” a narrative that makes rush hour on the subway something to laugh about, and “Happy Day,” which involves a chicken on the loose.

‘The Red Balloon”

Birds and butterflies may soar in the country, but on urban streets, a balloon is its own kind of beacon. '‘Le Ballon Rouge,’' or '‘The Red Balloon,’' Albert Lamorisse’s classic, nearly wordless film from 1956, stars Pascal Lamorisse (the director’s son, then 6) as he follows the object of the title through the Belleville section of Paris. The Museum of the Moving Image is screening the film at 1 p.m. through Saturday. A related workshop, “The Red Balloon Animation Adventure,” daily through Sunday at 2:15 p.m. and recommended for ages 6 and older, allows participants to use their own neighborhoods in a way that evokes the film. The children will create backdrops inspired by areas of New York and make animated sequences to fill the scenes.

Sesame Street Live: ‘Make a New Friend’

Everyone is welcome on Sesame Street, and in this new musical stage production, that sunny neighborhood is opening its doors to a visitor from afar: Chamki, a friend of Grover’s from India. The only problem is that she’s so busy sharing good times with all the local residents, including Abby Cadabby and Cookie Monster, that Grover is afraid he won’t be able to show his pal the town. Little audience members, of course, can help, as they join in some multicultural fun.

‘Kid M.D.’

It’s never too early to prepare for medical school, especially when you can have fun doing it. In this new program from Discovery Times Square, geared to children 8 and older, aspiring physicians will be given lab coats and stethoscopes before participating in workshops within the “Body Worlds: Pulse” exhibition. Sloka Iyengar, a neuroscientist, will lead the activities, which will explore the sensory system, the brain, the heart, the lungs and the bones. The investigation ends with a mini-graduation.

Lunar New Year at the Prospect Park Zoo

Some refer to it as the Year of the Sheep, and others as the Year of the Goat, but the nice thing about the Prospect Park Zoo is that you can welcome the occasion with both animals. This celebration will include some woolly meetings with the zoo’s Cotswold and Jacob’s four-horned sheep; a puppet show from Chinese Theater Works; a lunar zodiac scavenger hunt for animals throughout the grounds; and crafts and calligraphy demonstrations.

Vered and the Babes

This trio — Vered Ronen, Rob Jost and Matt Hilgenberg — play some percussion children can understand: pots and pans. Of course, they’ll also perform on more conventional instruments, like French horn and trumpet, at this concert at the Jewish Museum. Known for a style reminiscent of doo-wop, they’ll offer tunes from their hit album, “Good Morning My Love.” The show, for ages up to 7, will include lullaby material for parents.

Moon Over Manhattan!: Celebrate Lunar New Year

Happy Year of the Goat (also, in some quarters, the Year of the Sheep or the Ram)! Celebrating its arrival isn’t just a Chinese phenomenon; cultures all over Asia celebrate the lunar new year, and Asia Society and Museum will investigate different traditions throughout this festival. The activities will include a lion dance, Korean drumming, a kung fu demonstration, Himalayan incense making, and workshops to create puppets, ceramic charms and lanterns.

‘Steal Away: The Living History of Harriet Tubman’

The New Perspectives Theater Company’s World Voices Program is reviving this fascinating and poignant play by Rick Balian, aimed at ages 4 through 12. In about an hour, using puppets and live actors, it covers Tubman’s girlhood as a slave; her relationship with her father, who taught her to use the night sky as a map; the head injury inflicted by a cruel master, which left her prone to narcolepsy; and her rise as a leader of the Underground Railroad. After the production, children will learn two spirituals that contained coded messages for fleeing slaves.

Celebrate Lunar New Year

Some call it the Year of the Ram, some call it the Year of the Sheep, and some call it the Year of the Goat, but everyone agrees that it’s the Lunar New Year, arriving officially on Feb. 19. The New-York Historical Society will celebrate it this week with family activities on selected days. They include story time on Sunday at 11:30 a.m., with a reading of Dawn Casey’s book “The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac,” for ages 4 through 7; Chinese dance performances at noon and 2 p.m. and a 3 p.m. Chinese paper-cutting demonstration on Monday, for all ages; a reading of William Low’s picture book “Chinatown” and a workshop in making dragon finger puppets, for ages 3 through 5, on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m.; and Chinese-themed performances by students of the National Dance Institute on Thursday at 2 p.m.

Engineering Week

What can you create out of gumdrops and toothpicks? Or out of paper, wooden blocks and paper clips? Go find out at the New York Hall of Science this week, when the museum celebrates engineering. On Monday, Civil Engineering Day, the American Society of Civil Engineers Metropolitan section will lead projects with household materials that reveal the important principles behind buildings and bridges. Activities the rest of the week will center on engineering for space, with screenings of episodes of the animated preschool television series “Space Racers” (Tuesday); nanoengineering, with demonstrations involving nano crystals (Wednesday); wearable engineering, including high-tech clothes and accessories (Thursday); and motor machine engineering, in which visitors can make their own inventions (next Friday).

‘The Bully’

Vital Theater Company is reviving this ever-topical musical, by John Gregor and David L. Williams, which refreshingly avoids the trap of bullying its own audiences with heavy moralizing. Instead, the many pitfalls of the typical middle school relationship of victimizer and victim are revealed through wit, humor and a killer of a sly twist.

Kids ‘N Comedy: ‘Young Love’

The class clown gets applause, not detention, at this monthly series, in which tween and teenage comics perform stand-up. Here, in honor of Valentine’s Day, they offer a show focusing on young love and all its attendant foibles and embarrassments. The material is recommended for children 9 and older, but there’s no need to worry about appropriateness (profanity is banned) or knock-knock jokes (this crew is sophisticated).

‘The Greatest Pirate Story (N)ever Told!’

How do you describe a show whose script changes with every performance? A few reliable statements: Smooching, sword fighting and water spraying will occur. “Aaarr!” will be heard often. And, most important, it will provide more laughs than there are bones in Davy Jones’s locker. So it goes in this partly improvised hourlong family musical, created by Christopher Leidenfrost, in which a pirate crew is cursed by a sea witch and has to perform a Broadway-style spectacle to get its treasure. Revived for just this weekend, the show enlists young audience members to help write the scenes, in the style of the game Mad Libs.

‘The Pinkertonian Mystery’

Young detectives should get their notebooks and magnifying glasses ready. The DiMenna Children’s History Museum at the New-York Historical Society is asking them and their families to help solve a Victorian-era crime. Live In Theater, known for its interactive murder mysteries, will present the case, a premiere production that unfolds throughout the museum galleries. Young visitors will portray members of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, out to capture a crook called El Diablo in 1875.

‘Love Is in the Air and Water’

Valentine’s Day is for couples, and this event will celebrate a particularly devoted pair: William and Coral, who follow each other through icy waters. (It’s not such a huge sacrifice, though — they’re harbor seals.) The New York Aquarium will honor them and other animal pairs in this hourlong children’s program, which will explain various species and their conservation. Young guests will also make Valentine cards with oceanic themes.

New York Night Train Soul Clap and Family Dance Off

Vinyl records? What are they? Children can not only look at and listen to them, but spin them, too, in this event featuring the soul dance party D.J. Jonathan Toubin. Presented by Rock and Roll Playhouse, this celebration will feature vintage 1950s and ’60s 45s, perfect for family dancing. Mr. Toubin will teach how to D.J. and execute some great moves, and after the dancing, Charlotte Holst Douglas will lead young guests in a guitar strap art workshop.

‘The Gazillion Bubble Show: The Next Generation’

Children love bubbles, and this interactive show promises not just a gazillion but also some of the largest ever blown, along with light effects and lasers. The stars are the members of the Yang family: Fan and Ana Yang and their son Deni and others, who rotate as M.C.s for the production. Audience members may even find themselves in bubbles of their own.

‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’

If the children of the Pevensie family could travel to the magical land of Narnia through something as simple as a wardrobe, why shouldn’t two hard-working actors be able to play them and all the characters found there? That’s what Abigail Taylor-Sansom and her husband, Rockford Sansom, are attempting in the Off Broadway Family Theater’s first production, le Clanché du Rand’s adaptation of C. S. Lewis’s classic novel. (The run is open-ended.)

‘Can Do Duck: The Musical’

You’ve heard about the little engine that could — now comes the little duck. Arielle Sosland, writer and director of this musical, based it on “The Can Do Duck” series of children’s books by her father, Morton Sosland, a child psychiatrist. The hourlong show, for ages 3 through 11, focuses on a duck family and a human family as they learn to face challenges with self-confidence and optimism.

David Weinstone and the Music for Aardvarks Band

Music for aardvarks is also music for children, as Mr. Weinstone, a former punk rocker, will demonstrate in two concerts at the Jewish Museum. His group specializes in tunes for city children, as you can tell from titles like “Subway,” “Taxi” and “Staten Island Ferry.” The band, which prides itself on audience participation, will also perform songs from its most recent album, “All I Want!”

‘Viva N.Y.I.C.F.F.!’

Those initials stand for the New York International Children’s Film Festival. And the Museum of the Moving Image is saying “viva” not just because it’s a great festival, but also because this program features some of the festival’s best films that are either from, or about, Spain and Latin America. Recommended for children 9 and older, all the shorts in this 75-minute collection, culled from five years’ worth of festival selections, are in Spanish with English subtitles. A couple of intriguing titles: “Inflatable Grandma” (Spain) and “Journey to Mars” (Argentina).

Jazz at Lincoln Center Family Concert: Who is Billie Holiday?

A generation raised on Beyoncé will discover the powerful allure of an earlier musical idol in this concert, which heralds Jazz at Lincoln Center’s forthcoming Billie Holiday Festival. The vocalist Charenee Wade will sing the signature works of Holiday, whose centennial is this year, and the pianist Aaron Diehl will function as music director. Meant for school-age children, the event will include discussion and preconcert art and music workshops.

‘The Music in You’: A Third Street Anniversary Celebration With Laurie Berkner

Little ones may hear a lot of lullabies in the East Village on Saturday morning, but that doesn’t mean they’ll fall asleep: A Laurie Berkner concert is likely to be way too exciting. One of the most popular performers for preschool music fans, Ms. Berkner will be celebrating the 120th anniversary of the Third Street Music School Settlement in this fund-raising concert.

‘Sing Back, Brooklyn! With Lloyd H. Miller’

The Bronx, Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island are invited to sing back, too, in this free family program at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Lloyd H. Miller, a proud son of Brooklyn and leader of the band the Deedle Deedle Dees, known for its tunes celebrating science and history, hosts this event — with singalongs, stories and skits — the first Saturday of every month. February’s theme is black history, with music associated with the society’s exhibition “Brooklyn Abolitionists/In Pursuit of Freedom.”

Special Day for Special Kids

This special day comes courtesy of the New York Transit Museum, which will offer two hours of free programs specifically for children with disabilities, starting at 10 a.m., when their families will have exclusive use of the museum until it opens to the general public at 11. The plans include an art workshop to make a transit-themed snow globe, presented with Extreme Kids & Crew, an organization offering activities and support for special-needs families. The museum will also offer live music, refreshments and lots of opportunities to investigate vintage subway cars and exhibits.

‘Charlotte’s Web’

Love, death, sacrifice — weighty subjects for a children’s novel, but E.B. White expounded on them brilliantly in his 1952 tale of Wilbur, that extraordinary pig, and Charlotte, the even more extraordinary gray spider who saved him from the slaughterhouse. Theatreworks/USA has brought the enduring story of their friendship to the stage in this hourlong musical.

‘The African Drum’

Shadow Box Theater’s multimedia presentation of traditional African tales features characters that include a talking leopard, a wise loon and a turtle that is just as resourceful as the hero of “The Tortoise and the Hare.” All are shadow puppets, manipulated behind a lighted screen so that the colorful animals appear to be frolicking in the grasslands. With story and music by Sandra Robbins, the production focuses on Kijana, a little girl who relates the narratives and has her own brush with danger.

‘The African Drum’

Shadow Box Theater’s multimedia presentation of traditional African tales features characters that include a talking leopard, a wise loon and a turtle that is just as resourceful as the hero of “The Tortoise and the Hare.” All are shadow puppets, manipulated behind a lighted screen so that the colorful animals appear to be frolicking in the grasslands. With story and music by Sandra Robbins, the production focuses on Kijana, a little girl who relates the narratives and has her own brush with danger.

‘The African Drum’

Shadow Box Theater’s multimedia presentation of traditional African tales features characters that include a talking leopard, a wise loon and a turtle that is just as resourceful as the hero of “The Tortoise and the Hare.” All are shadow puppets, manipulated behind a lighted screen so that the colorful animals appear to be frolicking in the grasslands. With story and music by Sandra Robbins, the production focuses on Kijana, a little girl who relates the narratives and has her own brush with danger.

‘Under the Tangle’

Adolescence can certainly be a complicated thicket, and in this dance-theater piece from the troupe Treehouse Shakers, it is literally so. The company, whose “Hatched” was for babies and preschoolers, presents this production for ages 8 through 13. Conceived and directed by Emily Bunning, it focuses on an orphaned girl trying to find her way through a wooded labyrinth filled with curious creatures and characters.