You know the child. They have a shelf of toys that beep, and what they play with is the cardboard box. Or they can name forty dinosaurs and still cannot find their shoes.
Museum shops are good at this kind of present, because the people who stock them spend their days watching what children run toward in the galleries. The whale, the skeleton, the train and the paint table come home in a smaller size.
We picked 15 from 7 museum shops and sorted them by age. The ages are the ones each shop prints on its own product page. Where a shop gives none, we say so and leave the judgment to you.
Soft things, mostly, and all of them marked by their shops as suitable from birth.
An eight-page fabric book of shapes and colors drawn from Frank Lloyd Wright's designs, about 7.5 by 5 inches, that crinkles when grabbed. Published by Galison and listed for ages 0 and up. Architecture appreciation starts with chewing on a corner.
Four soft blocks with bold, high-contrast graphics: a jumbo activity cube, a rattling ball with tags, a smaller cube with handles and a sloped block with a crinkle flap. The shop lists the set for 0 to 24 months and says the fabric is machine washable on a gentle cycle.
A 22-inch plush blue whale, made for the opening of the museum's Gilder Center, with the AMNH logo on its tail. It is made from recycled plush, with stitched eyes and no plastic pellets, and the shop lists it for age 0 and up.
Laika was the Soviet dog who became the first animal to orbit the Earth, aboard Sputnik 2 in 1957. The Science Museum's plush version is 25 cm long, made from recycled polyester with embroidered eyes, hand washable, and listed as suitable from birth. The shop cannot currently ship it to Northern Ireland.
The years of trains, matching games and strong opinions about dots.
Flying Scotsman was built in 1923 and now belongs to the National Railway Museum in York. This wooden version by Bigjigs is 19.5 cm long, with magnetic couplings that the shop says work with most major wooden railway brands. Marked age 3 and up. The price is in pounds.
Fausto Gilberti's picture-book life of Yayoi Kusama, the artist who covered canvases, dresses and whole rooms in dots. It is 48 illustrated pages, 8.5 inches square, from Phaidon, and listed for ages 4 to 7. Expect requests to decorate the furniture afterward.
A memory game of 48 cards showing 24 animals of the Pacific Northwest, among them wolf, eagle, owl and bear, each drawn by an Indigenous artist from the Northwest Coast. The artists and their tribes are named on the packaging. The shop recommends it for ages 5 and up, and adults tend to lose.
A model of the human body with nine removable squishy organs, twelve plastic bone and muscle pieces and a 24-page illustrated anatomy book. For ages 8 and up, says the shop. The intended audience finds it disgusting, which is the selling point.
A starter microscope with 300x magnification that comes with a prepared slide, blank slides, tweezers, a pipette, test tubes, a petri dish and an illustrated manual. The shop lists it for 8 years and up. Pond water is not included and is easy to find. The price is in pounds.
A tube of 350 Plus-Plus pieces, the small interlocking shapes made in Denmark, in seven colors taken from the palette of Frida Kahlo's painting The Frame. Each piece is about three quarters of an inch long. The shop says age 7 and up, and the tube is meant to be kept.
The Art Institute's own small paint set: a wooden easel, a 4 by 4 inch canvas, ten sheets of 4 by 5 inch watercolor paper, twelve watercolors and a brush, all in a zip bag with a handle. Listed for ages 3 to 12, which covers most of this page.
Matisse spent his last years making pictures with scissors and painted paper, which is a method a five-year-old can follow. This kit by Alice Harman has a fold-out guide, four stencil sheets and three die-cut picture pockets, and builds up to a big shared project. For ages five and up.
Warhol first showed his Campbell's soup cans in Los Angeles in 1962, so the LACMA shop is a fitting place to buy one to paint. The kit has an 8 by 10 inch canvas, six acrylics, two brushes, a wooden easel and a color guide. The shop gives no age; acrylics do not wash out of clothes.
Both are tied closely to their museums. Neither page gives a recommended age, so you will have to judge by the child.
Five figures of animals from the Burgess Shale, the 505-million-year-old fossil beds in the Canadian Rockies where the Royal Ontario Museum has collected since 1975: Pikaia, Laggania, Olenoides, Opabinia and Wiwaxia. They run from 6 to 12.5 cm and come with a fact sheet. The price is in Canadian dollars.
Frank Lloyd Wright's spiral museum on Fifth Avenue, which opened in 1959, as a wooden model kit sold by the museum itself. Assembled, it measures about 6 by 4.25 by 3.25 inches. The most expensive thing on this page, and one for a child who already likes to build.
We read the public catalogs of the museum shops. Nobody paid to be on this list, and no brand sent us samples: we have not handled these items ourselves. Sizes and materials come from each shop's own product page, which is also where you buy.
Prices can change and items sell out. When a pick is no longer listed by its shop, it drops off this page.
Age guidance is quoted from the shops and is not ours. Check the product page for warnings about small parts before buying for a younger child.
Want to see everything? Browse all the kids' items and toys from museum shops.