Taking children on city trips can be strenuous for all parties involved, but weary parents will be happy to know that Berlin has many exciting destinations that will keep both the adults and offspring happy. Join Berlin In Your Pocket on a short tour of Berlin’s best childrens’ attractions.

ALEXA Kindercity
Berlin’s new Kindercity (Children’s city) inside the ALEXA shopping centre on Alexanderplatz is a great place for children between 2 and 12 to explore, discover and experience science. Germany’s first Edutainment centre for children connects science and entertainment in a unique way, offering hours of fun and interaction for children and their parents.
ALEXA’s 6000 square metre Kindercity is a place where the children are in charge – they can operate steering wheels, create their own television programme and determine what news makes it into the paper. There’s a children’s cinema, a restaurant and a knowledge shop.
While the young explorers enthusiastically measure the electric patterns of their brains or pass their driving exam, they playfully learn about the correlations between various branches of sciences.
With special paths for differing age groups, both small and large children are catered to. The youngest children have a path with lots of things to see, touch and move. They can train their sense of smell and play with perception and action. Older children learn how the human spine works, what to eat for a healthy lifestyle, how telephones work and how television studios operate.  The Spirits of Sports section allows them to play a game of virtual football, measure their best time on the automatic sprint track and to manoeuvre a wheelchair.
By no means are the parents excluded from the fun – discovering science is a fun family event here and they’re welcome to help explore. The only place parents are left behind is during the regular workshop sessions, where children become productive and creative, fixing a Skoda car and making a small car to take home in a real workshop or baking bread. In the Dino factory children become palaeontologists, digging up dinosaur skeletons and learning more about these ancient animals. The smell of chocolate indicates the location of the chocolate atelier, where children learn about the origin and the various uses of cocoa beans and make their own chocolate bars. The workshops, coordinated by expert ‘edutainers’, always offer new and exciting activities stimulating the children’s curiosity and fantasy.
Discovery makes hungry, and the Gourmelino family restaurant serving healthy and varied food. The Knowledgeshop offers many hard-to-find things to play and learn with. Finally, the CineKidz family cinema shows the latest children’s films. The entire Kindercity including the cinema can be rented for special events from birthday parties to press conferences.
The Kindercity is open 10:00-18:00 on Sunday to Thursday, and 10:00-19:00 on Friday and Saturday. Tickets are €7,40 for children and €9,90 for adults, 25% reduction during the last hour. Workshops cost €8.60 per child, cinema tickets are €5. www.kindercity.de

Jolos Kinderwelt
The youngest of travellers, from 12 months old, will love playing at the Jolos Kinderwelt (Jolo’s Childrens’ World), inside the former Schultheiis beer brewery. There’s a railway track, scooters, bouncy castle, carrousel educational computers, slides, a ball bath, net bridges, make-up at weekends and much more. Parents can keep an eye on things from the cafeteria or can join in a game of air hockey or table football.
Am Tempelhofer Berg 7d, U-Bahn Platz der Luftbrucke, tel. 61202796, www.jolo-berlin.de. Open 14:00-19:00, Sat, Sun 11:00-19:00. Admission €3,50, children €6,50 (less for short weekday visits).

Legoland Discovery Centre
Both nostalgic dads/mums and the children will enjoy a few hours of creative fun with the world famous Lego bricks. See how Lego bricks are made, see a 4D film, build and test your own cars for speed and your houses for earthquakes. Finally, visit Miniland where many of Berlin’s architectural highlights are recreated in plastic bricks.
Legoland Discovery Centre, Sony Center Potsdamer Platz, tel. 301 04 00, www.legolanddiscoverycentre.com. Open 10:00-18:00. Admission €14,50/11,50.

Magic Mountain
Have the kids lose some energy on Berlin’s best indoor climbing wall. Have them climb (charmingly called klettern in German) up sheer walls, secured by ropes and under supervision of professionals.
Böttgerstr. 20-26, U/S Gesundbrunnen, tel. 88 71 57 90, www.magicmountain.de. Open 12:00-24:00, Thu 10:00-24:00, Sat, Sun 11:00-22:00. Admission €14/7.

SeaLife Centre
Guests of the Radisson SAS beside the Dom Cathedral in the city centre will have already marvelled at the massive glass AquaDom, the largest free-standing tank in the world, rising up in the hotel lobby. Visitors to the aquariums awaits a pleasant surprise – after seeing over 100 species of marine life in various fresh and salt water tanks, you get to slowly descent through the middle of the AquaDome, surrounded by stunning tropical fish.
Spandauer Str. 3, tel. 99 28 00, www.sealifeeurope.com. Open 10:00-19:00.

SPECTRUM Science Centre
With four floors of exciting science in a building inside the Technikmuseum complex, the SPECTRUM science centre is great for inquisitive children, and their parents. About 250 hands-on experiments relating to the world around us can be done here, with children learning why the sky is blue, what happens if you stand between parallel mirrors, and how to play a laser guitar. Small children are shown how they can lift up their parents and a slowly swaying Foucault Pendulum proves that the earth really does turn.
Möckernstraße 26, KB, U-Bahn Gleisdreieck, tel. 90 25 42 75, www.dtmb.de/spectrum. Open Tue-Fri 09:00-17:30, Sat, Sun 10:00-18:00, Mon closed. Admission (including the Technical Museum) €4,50/2,50.

Zoo Aquarium
The kids will have their faces glued to the glass for hours at Berlin Zoo’s independent aquarium complex. Here, tiny to massive fish, reptiles and amphibians can be viewed at close quarters in landscape basins and tanks. Highlights for most children are the blacktip reef sharks and the crocodiles, though the Solomon Island skinks, the jellyfish, corals and the rare lizard-like tuatara also deserve attention. The kids will love you forever if their visit if it coincides with the feeding times of the sharks, rays and other large fish (every second Mon at 15:00) or the crocodiles (Mon and Thu from 13:30).
Budapester Str. 32, S-Bahn Zoologischer Garten, tel. 25 40 10, www.aquarium-berlin.de. Open 09:00-16:00. Admission (aquarium only) €12/6.