On this page, I’m going to show you the best virtual tours of museums for Kids.
It’s not too early to start them young to appreciate art and history.
Most of the kids museums are interactive and have fun activities and experiments that you and your kids may want to try.
Some museums also have apps that allow you to do virtual tours using virtual reality and VR apps and some have apps that inspire your kids’ creativity.
Let’s get started!
Boston’s Children Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
Children between about 3 and 9 will get the most out of this Children’s Museum.
Boston’s Children Museum includes a Japanese House 360-degrees virtual tour. Here, kids and adults can view what it’s like inside a Japanese Traditional Home.
Visit their Facebook page to learn more. Right now, they’re supporting Music superstar Dolly Parton & her foundation, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library via her new weekly bedtime story series “Goodnight with Dolly.” This will run for ten weeks and a sample of which can be seen below.
Chicago Children’s Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
While Chicago Children’s Museum doesn’t provide an area tour, what important is it gives online or virtual museum experience via their numerous activities that explore kids’ creativity. Click on the Virtual tour link to check the activities. Aside from the activities, you can get updates on future activities via their Facebook page.
Children’s Museum of Houston
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
Children’s Museum of Houston provides numerous and scheduled daily activities that will keep your kids preoccupied and educated for hours. Their schedule can be found below.
Their Videos are very educational and ensures that your kids are able to understand the lessons. A sample of their daily virtual learning video can be found below.
Virtual events can be seen in their website. This shows topics for the future months.
Children’s Museum of South Dakota
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
Children’s Museum of South Dakota has developed webinars and blogs aimed for kids to do home activities and learning.
Activities include Creating Marble Art With Shaving Cream, How to Make and Use a Nature Journal, Learn How to Make a Monoprint, how to make cloud dough, puffy paint, fizzy bubbles, indoor forts, recycled paper, etc.
Kohl Children’s Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
Kohl Children’s Museum – The Place Where Awesome Lives. This kid’s museum offers lots of virtual activities online that you and your kids can do at home.
Minnesota Children’s Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The Minnesota Children’s Museum is a non-profit community organization located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, US. The Museum mission statement is “providing children with a fun, hands-on and stimulating environment to explore and discover”. Instead of virtual tours, you can do virtual activities with your kids. Some activities explore science and art.
Monterey Bay Aquarium
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
Monterey Bay Aquarium provides viewers with the best live cam views of their resident animals. If you want to view more animals and zoo live webcams, please see our article about virtual zoo cams and tours.
Museo Del Prado
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
This museum, as well as its virtual tour on Youtube, are all in Spanish. You may, however, check out artworks on their website.
Check out their Youtube videos, however, note that these are also in Spanish.
NASA Glenn Research Center
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
Glenn Research Center is one of ten major NASA field centers, whose primary mission is to develop science and technology for use in aeronautics and space. They have 360-degrees virtual tours on their site. This is perfect for kids with an interest in aeronautics and science.
Pretend City Children’s Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
Pretend City is a non-profit children’s museum of Orange County. We build better brains through educational programming and interactive exhibits. It features a small, interconnected ‘city’ designed to “build better brains” through purposeful play, hands-on learning experiences. You can see smaller versions of fire stations, groceries, houses and what’s inside, etc.
For virtual tours, you can see what’s in store for you and your children so when you visit the place, you’ll know exactly what to expect and where to go.
They offer virtual museum activities and story-telling sessions online.
Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre has three rooms that explore both his life and his writing process. Children are encouraged to think about ideas, words and how stories are created. Interactive exhibits such as the dressing up box, comparing how tall you are compared to favourite characters are fun. Explore the place via 360-degrees Google Map Street View.
Similar to other virtual children’s museums, they offer story-telling or storytime for kids.
Smithsonian National Air And Space Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum maintains the world’s largest and most significant collection of aviation and space artifacts, encompassing all aspects of human flight, as well as related works of art and archival materials. It has a Google Arts and Culture page where you can view the items inside.
Their Youtube channel offers walking tours and other videos.
Smithsonian National Museum Of Natural History
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The Acropolis Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The Acropolis Museum is an archaeological site-specific museum, housing more than 3.000 famous artifacts from the Athenian Acropolis. Kids and adults will enjoy these wonderful artworks via a virtual tour of the museum. The Acropolis Museum has a Google Arts & Culture page.
The British Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The British Museum has about eight million objects in its collection. Kids can enjoy a tour of both inside and outside the museum using the link in the Google Arts & Culture Page.
The virtual tour in the British Museum is also amazing. It divides the items by type such as Arts & Design, Living & Dying, Power & Identity, Religion & Belief, and Trade & Conflict,, as well as arranging the items by Location (Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania) , and by timeline.
The Children’s Museum Of Indianapolis
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
With 472900-square feet, more than 120000 artifacts, and over 1 million visitors each year, we are the largest children’s museum in the world. The museum’s focus is family learning; most exhibits are designed to be interactive, allowing children and families to actively participate.
Most of their virtual tour and activities can be found in their Facebook page.
Even at home, you can participate by watching their Facebook Live.
The Louvre
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The Louvre Museum in Paris is home to Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Law Code of Hammurabi and many others. Viewing these would be very educational for kids.
The Louvre has launched its first-ever virtual reality initiative, offering visitors a seven-minute experience of a work titled Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass. Your kids may want to try out this app using their VR gears.
Louvre Museum in Paris has a 360-degrees Virtual Museum Tour section on its website similar to Google’s Street View.
Revel at what’s outside the Louvre Museum, you can use Google Street View or use 360cities.net, which shows breathtaking 360-degrees images like the one below:
The Metropolitan Museum Of Art
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The Met presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy.
This museum has a Google Arts & Culture page which allows online visitors to preview certain artworks.
This Museum has 360-degrees videos on its website. They make use of their Youtube account that allows online visitors to look around rather than follow a predetermined direction.
The National Gallery of Art
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The National Gallery of Art preserves, collects, exhibits, and fosters an understanding of works of art. It has one of the most extensive art collections uploaded on Google Arts & Culture.
The National Gallery of Art has two apps on their website. One app is for viewing artworks while the other is an interactive kid’s app. This is perfect to trigger kids’ creativeness.
The National Museum of Australia
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The National Museum of Australia, in the national capital Canberra, preserves and interprets Australia’s social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation through exhibitions, events, education resources, and collections.
Here are samples of the artworks and activities:
Their Youtube videos also help kids understand how to the artworks better.
The National Museum Of Computing
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) is home to the world’s largest collection of working historic computers. For kids who are interested or plan to study computers, this is. a perfect virtual museum.
The Natural History Museum (London)
Highlights
- Take a virtual tour through the Wizarding World Fantastic Beast: The Wonder Of Nature exhibition
- Let Sir David Attenborough show you around Hintze Hall
- Take a look into the life of a blue whale and seek out the rich history of Hope, the blue whale suspended from the ceiling in Hintze Hall.
- Browse through Wildlife Photographer of the Year images
- Explore a 360° panorama of Antarctica
- Find out what it takes to be a dinosaur hunter
- See the Hintze Hall balcony displays: seabirds, pheasants, rocks and minerals.
- Examine a 3D model of Dippy’s skull
- Browse illustrations from HMS Endeavour
- Browse the Library and Archives digital collections
- Discover highlights from the collections on display including specimens from space, the spirit collection, Charles Darwin and the Treasures gallery.
- Take a virtual tour of the Museum Google Arts & Culture lets you access 300,000 specimens within the Museum’s collections, along with 14 digital exhibitions, virtual tours and an interactive gigapixel photo of Hintze Hall’s gilded canopy.
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The Natural History Museum’s Virtual tour is better than other museums because they use voice commentaries and narration to some of the historical artifacts and items. This makes it more interesting especially for kids.
If you would like to explore on your own via a virtual museum tour, you can also take a 360-degrees virtual museum tour via the Google Street View Feature.
The Strong National Museum of Play
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
The Strong is a highly interactive, collections-based museum devoted to the history and exploration of play. It is one of the largest history museums in the United States and one of the leading museums serving families.
The Strong houses the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of historical materials related to play. Your kids will love to see toys throughout history,
Uffizi Gallery
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
In the past, Uffizi Gallery is only accessible to the Grand Ducal family, servants and only a few select guests where the family started to place the many pieces of their personal private collections, mostly artworks by world-famous artists like Leonardo da Vinci. But now, it’s open to everyone. Virtual tours can be done via Google Street View.
Van Gogh Museum
VIRTUAL TOUR LINKS: Virtual Tour | Website | Facebook
This museum houses Vincent Van Gogh’s best artworks. Some of these artworks can be viewed in Google Art & Culture.
Street View Function gives online visitors a chance to enjoy Vincent van Gogh’s artworks in the comfort of your home.
If you enjoyed these museums for kids, you and your kids may also be interested in doing virtual tours in the best virtual zoos in the world, so come check out our article about it.
