Children may be hard to please but you’re sure to find something to occupy them in Seattle. Seattle is the largest city in the Pacific Northwest and offers outdoor beach and park activities, sports and creative play opportunities. Summers in Seattle are usually warm, clear and sunny but winters can be wet. Here you’ve got the option of indoor activities for when some of Seattle’s annual 37 inches of rain heads your way.
Parks
Get out while it’s sunny for fun and games in a Seattle park. Green Lake Park has a 3-mile path around the lake for strollers, bikes and skaters. In summer kids can swim in the water. Warren G. Magnuson Park is Seattle’s second-largest park and offers sports fields and natural areas for walking, kite flying, family ball games and boating. Calm the kids down at the Japanese Garden at the Washington Park Arboretum. Children will love the koi fish and the turtles, as well as the waterfalls and pathways in this flower-filled park.
Creative Museums
Indoors needn’t be boring or sedentary. Take the kids to one of Seattle’s kid-centric museums for interactive play, creative learning and a twist on regular school subjects. The Kids Discovery Museum offers an electric car and construction zone for budding engineers, a Motion Madness science hall and an outdoor playground. The Children's Museum Seattle has 11 interactive exhibits for touching and feeling, including a mountain adventure area, Ghana village and Discovery Bay, a watery space designed for toddlers.
Playgrounds
Seattle is blessed with some great playgrounds for the kids, offering connected play structures, seesaws, swings, toys and rope climbs. Forest Park in Everett even has a dinosaur to ride on. Woodlands Park features a wooden play fort with turrets to climb and a toddler area with trains and trucks. Rotary Community Park has a number of quirky structures including a spinning boat, spinning rings and a rope area while Ebey Waterfront Park provides maritime-themed play equipment.
Climbing
Climbing offers kids a sense of achievement as well as a full workout. Seattle is home to the first indoor rock climbing gym in the U.S., Vertical World, which offers kids’ and adults’ classes and equipment. The REI rock gym is a 65-foot indoor structure and also offers kids’ climbing classes. Stone Gardens Rock Gym caters for families with a range of facilities. Frances Anderson Center playground, Pine Lake Park, Sunset Park and Saint Edward State Park all have small climbing walls within their play structures.
Beaches
In the summer, or a bright spring day, take a trip to the beach. Alki Beach Park is a stretch of coast on Elliott Bay that takes you from Alki Point to Duwamish Head. Kids enjoy playing in the sand and watching the boats but for a more structured activity, fly a kite or run and blade the 2.5-mile beachfront trail. Golden Gardens Park is located in Ballard on Puget Sound and has wetland, coastline and forest trails to enjoy.
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