Mother's Day in Chicago With a Toddler

Lincoln Park Zoo

A free, 49-acre zoo in the middle of Lincoln Park that is the easiest yes on this list: no tickets, no timed entry, and you can turn around and go home after twenty minutes without feeling you wasted money. The Pritzker Family Children's Zoo and the Farm-in-the-Zoo are the stops built for small children, with beavers and otters at toddler eye level and animals a two-year-old can actually name. Paths are wide and stroller-friendly and there is food on site. The catch is parking: the lot runs $35 to $45 a day, so this is a bus, train or walk-in outing if you can manage it.

Lincoln Park Conservatory

A free Victorian glasshouse a few minutes' walk from Lincoln Park Zoo, with four display houses of palms, ferns and orchids plus a Show House that runs the annual spring flower show. For Mother's Day it is the flowers-and-warmth option that costs nothing, and it is indoors, which matters in a Chicago May. It is small enough to see in half an hour, so most families pair it with the zoo rather than making a morning of it. There is no dedicated play area, and a toddler who needs to run will do better outside.

Maggie Daley Park Play Garden

Three acres of purpose-built playground wedged between Millennium Park and the lake, free and open from six in the morning until nine at night. The zones are split by age, and the two aimed at two-to-five-year-olds, The Watering Hole and The Harbor, are fenced off from the big-kid slides and climbing structures, which is the difference between a relaxed hour and an hour of chasing. Enchanted Forest and Wave Lawn are all-ages. It is entirely outdoors with almost no cover, so a cold or wet Mother's Day sends you elsewhere, and downtown parking is its own expense.

Garfield Park Conservatory

One of the largest conservatories in the country, on the West Side and reachable on the Green Line, with two acres under glass and a reimagined Elizabeth Morse Genius Children's Garden built for families. Chicago residents get in at no charge; the $10 figure in this table is the standard adult rate for everyone else. The children's garden needs its own 30-minute reservation on top of general entry, so book both before you go. Parking in the visitors' lot is free, which is rare for anything on this list.

Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum

A small nature museum in Lincoln Park whose main draw for little kids is the Judy Istock Butterfly Haven, a 2,700-square-foot greenhouse with a thousand free-flying butterflies, plus the Hawver and Lacy Families Nature's PlaySpace built for the youngest visitors. Being small is the point: a two-year-old can see the whole thing without melting down, and the third-of-a-mile Nature Trails outside give you somewhere to go afterwards. Two things to watch: the Butterfly Haven is now a $5 add-on rather than part of basic admission, and the museum closes at 4pm, earlier than most of the big museums here.

Chicago Children's Museum

The Navy Pier museum built from the ground up for small children, where nothing is behind glass and the whole floor is meant to be climbed on. Treehouse Trails and Kids Town are the exhibits families with the youngest visitors gravitate to, and Pritzker Playspace is a room reserved for families with young children, staffed by educators, though it keeps limited hours each day. The price is the sting: everyone one year and older pays, $21 for Illinois residents and $25 otherwise, so a family of three is out $60 or more before parking at Navy Pier. Only babies under one get in free.

Field Museum

The dinosaur museum on Museum Campus, and the reason it works for a two-year-old is the Crown Family PlayLab, a hands-on room designed for children between two and six with a pueblo to crawl through, a discovery studio and dinosaur bones to dig. Children under three are always free, and Illinois residents can visit at no charge on Wednesdays, which is worth knowing even though Mother's Day is a Sunday. The building is enormous and the walk from the parking garages is long, so plan the PlayLab first and treat everything else as a bonus. The PlayLab closes at 3pm, two hours before the museum does.

Griffin Museum of Science and Industry

The Hyde Park science museum, where the toddler-sized attraction is The Idea Factory: a water-and-air play gallery set aside for the museum's youngest guests, plus the model railroad and Yesterday's Main Street, which hold a small child's attention longer than the physics halls do. City of Chicago residents take $9 off the adult ticket, and the museum runs free days for Illinois residents through the year. Note that the headline price only covers general admission: the submarine tour, the Coal Mine and the dome theater all cost extra, and parking is separate again.

Chicago History Museum

The quietest museum on this list, at the south end of Lincoln Park, and the cheapest for a family: every child aged 12 and under gets in free, and Illinois residents are free through age 18. Sensing Chicago is the reason to bring a small child, a hands-on gallery where kids climb into a giant hot dog, hear an L train and feel a nineteenth-century fire, and it is explicitly built with younger visitors in mind. The trade-off is Sunday hours: it does not open until noon, so this is an afternoon plan rather than a morning one.

Kohl Children's Museum of Greater Chicago

A north-suburban children's museum with seventeen hands-on exhibits aimed at children from birth to eight, so unlike the big museums there is no wrong-age section to steer around. Pretend play is the house style: a grocery store, a baby nursery, a pet vet, a play cafe and a train town, plus the seasonal two-acre Habitat Park outdoors when the weather cooperates. Everyone over twelve months pays $20, adults included. The thing to check before driving out is the Sunday schedule: it closes at 1pm on Sundays, half the day the other museums keep.

DuPage Children's Museum

Naperville's three-floor children's museum, built around water, building and motion: the WaterWays tables, ramps and ball runs, an art studio, and Young Explorers, a set of spaces reserved for children under two. It is the furthest west of anything here, about an hour from the lakefront in traffic, so it earns the trip mainly if you are already in the western suburbs. Everyone pays $22, children included, with only babies under one free. Sunday hours run 9am to 5pm, the longest weekend day of any children's museum on this list.

Brookfield Zoo Chicago

The big western-suburb zoo, and the most expensive day on this list once you add a parking pass on top of a $32.95 adult ticket. What you get for it is the Hamill Family Play Zoo, an indoor-outdoor space where small children run a play veterinary hospital, crawl through caves and meet rabbits and toucans, which is a genuinely different experience from walking past enclosures. Children two and under are free, and the zoo stays open until 6pm on weekends from May, later than anywhere else here. Budget a full day and expect a lot of walking.