The city's story told with a carriage from the old Overhead Railway to climb into and Little Liverpool, a dedicated hands-on gallery for under-6s that most museums would charge for. Free, on the Pier Head, with ferries passing the windows.
Little Liverpool runs as timed sessions of about half an hour. Half the free tickets can be booked online and half are held back for the welcome desk on the day, so claim a slot on arrival and do the big galleries in between. The window seats at the top are the city's best free view.
It earns its place on the waterfront walk: free, pram-friendly, and the big windows framing the Three Graces are half the museum's point. The Overhead Railway carriage downstairs is the exhibit that lands hardest with under-tens, partly because you can climb aboard it, and partly because the film beside it shows the city from a line that no longer exists.
Families posting about it this month keep saying the same two things: they came in for an hour because it was free, and stayed the morning. Little Liverpool, the under-sixes gallery, is the reason. Treat its timed tickets like gold on wet days.
What it costs: Free entry, donations welcome. Special exhibitions and events may charge. Little Liverpool is free by timed ticket, apart from its 45-minute special sessions at £2 a child.
Two free Baby Week sessions at the Museum of Liverpool for babies 12 months and under: moving play on 17 November, messy taste-safe play on 18 November. Tickets go live four weeks before. Bring old clothes.
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Five floors, free, and it covers three things small children reliably love: giant dinosaurs, an aquarium and a space gallery. The best wet-weather day within half an hour.
A Tudor hall with woodland walks, a maze and a natural play area in the grounds. Free if you have National Trust membership, and the indoor house is a good rain fallback.
Closed. The Maritime Museum and the International Slavery Museum next door are shut for essential maintenance ahead of a major redevelopment that National Museums Liverpool says is subject to funding, and no reopening date is published. The Albert Dock around them is still worth the walk, and the city's other national museums are free and open.
The famous ferry across the Mersey run as a 50-minute sightseeing loop with commentary, and the honest truth is kids love the boat more than any museum. Hop off at Seacombe for Eureka! next door.
South Liverpool's favourite park: lake, playground, ancient trees and the Storybarn, The Reader's hands-on storytelling space in the old coach house. The neolithic Calder Stones are older than Stonehenge, which is a good fact to deploy.
A rare-breeds conservation farm inside the 500-acre Croxteth estate, with a miniature railway, play areas and free country park all round it. The farm entry is cheap and the pigs are enormous.
One email a week: what is on this weekend within a sensible drive, and the places worth booking before they go.