With a bit of planning, kids and culture CAN mix

Locals with children helpfully suggested activities for my 7-year-old niece when she visited.  The word "museum" never popped up.  Adventure playgrounds, local pools, craft workshops, petting zoos and play groups dominated conversation.  Which is all very nice ... but would have all been pretty much exactly what she might be doing back in St. Louis, Missouri.

If we were going to the trouble of introducing the kid to trans-Atlantic travel, we all wanted to make sure she experienced the cultural highlights of her destination.  Thus our sightseeing wasn't that far off of a grown-up itinerary.  Though I quickly picked up these differentiators:

1. 7-year-old attention spans are short - keep things moving and know when to quit
2. Games are the oil that slides the culture down
3. Kids eat little and often - build lots of snack breaks into the day
4. Physical play on something is often better than looking at something - architecture is your friend
5. It's helpful to know where all the toilets are

I'm not sure our sights would work for every 7-year-old, or every local host.  Throwing humility aside, I'll state that neither my niece, nor I, are typical.  A curious kid with a voracious mind, she's already dropping grown up vocabulary words and twisting logic in arguments like the line of lawyers who've contributed to her genes.  Her parents are making sure she's widely-read and exposed to diversity.  (Each day included an "adventure bite", where she had to try something new to earn the right to eat the usual kids' fare for the rest of the day.)   And despite my existence in a mostly child-free world, I am the daughter of an art historian and museum educator who made a career out of making fine art fun for the under 10s.  If you want to get a 7-year-old excited about the V&A, frankly, I'm the woman to have at your side.

Here's a look at some of the things we did, with a focus on youthful enjoyment.

The British Museum

I experienced my proudest moment as an Aunt when this made the kid's Top 3 highlights of her trip.  We have a lot to thank the latest Night at the Museum instalment for; now the place has the glamour of a film set.  You can play a game figuring out what's really here and what's not, since the film version acquired some dubious collections (dinosaurs, Medieval armour) to make the plot go.  Award a point for each thing they realise was made up.  But, really, you don't need tricks here to get kids excited.  Just follow where they wonder and give some context.  Mummies are cool.  How did the Romans make those mosaics out of all those tiny pieces of stone?  There's a lot of gold to gawp at.  The automated German galleon that used to "sail" to the middle of the dining table and fire miniature cannons to start the meal is sure to delight.  And the 7-year-old lost her tooth surrounded by a Celtic treasure hoard, which was a memorable touch.  The museum has organised kids activities and an iPad explorer which we didn't use because I know the collection so well.  But those would be worth checking out.

The Natural History Museum

I groaned to find myself in the snaking queue.  What idiot goes to the Natural History Museum during the school holidays?  Idiots with kids, of course.  With its audio-animatronic dinosaurs, this is the No. 1 museum stop for most little people in London.  While I could have done without the crowds and the cacophony (are they genetically programmed to be that loud?), it does my heart good whenever I see crowds at museums.  Maybe culture and learning will survive another generation.  The NHM understands their audience and have configured the galleries perfectly.  Once you wind, amusement park-style, around the brontosaurus cast in the main hall, you're into the dino gallery and quickly up onto a catwalk that runs its length.  In peak season you'll be in a slowly shuffling queue all the way along, but they've designed it so that lots of dino robots are moving below you as you go.  If you get bored, you can play a game where you award points for spotting different animals in the architecture.  (I've always thought the building itself is the real reason to visit here.)  At the end, you arrive at the full sized robotic T-Rex, lashing his tail, moving his head and growling menacingly.  It's worth the wait.  Then you wind back through the galleries, but most kids will probably be bored by this point and ready to move on.  We'd reached our attention span limit at this point, meaning we didn't get to check out the Earth Sciences galleries complete with some sort of tornado model.  Might need to check that out on my own.  The 7-year-old Missourian can probably just wait 'til October and look outside.

The Victoria and Albert Museum

Here's the secret to the V&A with a child: Hunt for something.  It might be dogs, the colour turquoise, pearls ... just pick something and make it a game, with one point per discovery.  You can use your phones to photograph your finds and relive the memories at home.  Once they're on the hunt, they have to actually look at what's in the galleries, and a bit of culture will rub off.  We chose dragons, which is an easy entry point in the land of St. George.  We weren't even through the medieval galleries before the 7-year-old was beating the adults by a score of 9 to our communal 6.  When the attention wanes, there's a cafe in the courtyard where the adults can settle down with a drink while the kids play around the water features.  Sadly, we ran out of time before I could show her the biggest bed in the world.  Next visit.

The Golden Hinde

I've strolled by this full-sized model of the 16th century ship in which Francis Drake circled the globe scores of times on my way along Southbank, but have never gone on board.  Neither have most people, I'd guess, because despite it being the height of summer hols, we had the place almost to ourselves.  Given Drake's propensity for a bit of Spanish plunder the Hinde can technically be called a pirate ship, much to the delight of the little people scrambling around it.  Because it's a modern replica, there's none of that "no touching" regime the kids hate.  They can sit in the captain's chair, manhandle the cannon balls and spin the ships wheel.  Though, in a nod to health and safety, running, climbing on rigging and going down ladders front-ways are all prohibited.  It's worth paying a bit extra for the tour, where a costumed ship's mate will let the children turn the capstan and instruct them in swabbing and loading a cannon.  Our guide led a particularly colourful re-enactment of the amputation of a leg after a pirate raid gone wrong, three kids holding down the "patient" while she got into the act by writhing and screaming lustily.  Pure childhood gold.

Warwick Castle

I admit, I was distressed when an amusement park company took this place over.  I was afraid they'd trivialise a building of monumental historic value.  But when you have a child in tow, perspective changes.  There are plenty of worthy houses and castles in England, but very few that are arranged specifically to appeal to the little people.  Hats off to Merlin Entertainments, who've managed to make this a child magnet while still retaining architectural and historical integrity.  I'd anticipated the 7-year-old thinking the waxworks were the coolest thing about the place, but all she needed was the prospect of climbing towers and scrambling around the ramparts to find glee.  (Her parents, consigned to follow her around what their FitBits told them was the equivalent of 20+ stories of stairs, were less enthusiastic.)  She was also delighted by a fairy tale show about saving a princess they currently have running in one of the towers.  My husband and I, meanwhile, were enthralled by the best birds of prey show we've ever seen, complete with American bald eagles and Andean condors swooping perilously close to your head.  The condor is the world's largest bird of prey, and seeing it in flight ... especially when coming straight at you ... gives you a sense of majesty and controlled terror that's hard to beat.  From an adult perspective, we thought this was worth the price of admission.

Trafalgar Square

Another thing I didn't notice until I had a pint-sized companion:  Landseer's lions are kid magnets.  The four noble, gigantic beasts sit at the foot of Nelson's column and I usually just point them out to people as the three dimensional proof that their Victorian artist was the best ever at representing animals.  (Only Van Dyck did dogs better.)  But it turns out that climbing onto the back of one is every child's fantasy, and the civic authorities don't seem to mind.  Children swarmed around the base of that column like ants on a dropped ice cream.  We, meanwhile, were able to procure drinks from the Tesco Metro across the street and sit on the benches at the square's edge, enjoying an alternative happy hour. 

We didn't subject the kid to a pure stream of culture.  Our local maize maze and petting zoo at Manydown turns out to be a fabulous day out.  She loved my neighbourhood's various playgrounds, and went on a play date to a local indoor play area with a friend's children.  But I like to think that, as she grows up, it's the cultural stuff that will sink in.  Only time will tell.