Things to Do in Nairobi with Kids: Top Family-Friendly Activities You’ll Love

For many, Nairobi is the gateway for a family trip safari vacation to Kenya. You may be tempted to simply land in Nairobi and immediately leave for the famous Kenya game parks, but you may be surprised to discover there are a lot of fun things to do in Nairobi with kids.

We spent 36 hours in Nairobi at the start of our family safari vacation to Kenya and had a lot of fun. To help you decide whether you should visit Kenya’s capital city, here are the things we did in Nairobi with kids.

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4 Things to do in Nairobi with Kids

1. Nairobi National Park

You may be surprised to learn that there is an excellent national park right next to the city of Nairobi. We took our kids on their first ever game drive at Nairobi National Park and it was an incredible success!

Nairobi National Park is home to four of the Big 5, with elephants being the only exclusion. Apparently, elephants would be capable of smashing through the protective city walls, and would risk getting into the suburbs. Probably not a good thing for the elephants…

Our guide picked us up at our nearby hotel at 5:45 AM so we could be at Nairobi National Park before it opened. We’ve learned from our past (pre-kids) safaris that the animal sightings are always best at dawn. Today was no different.

Almost immediately, we saw our very first big African animal – a giraffe! It looked so majestic slowly walking through the acacia trees in the morning mist. Our daughter is a huge animal lover and has wanted to go on a safari for years. Seeing the look on her face as she saw her first giraffe made the whole trip to Kenya worthwhile.  

Our giraffe sighting was quickly followed by a water buffalo – our first Big 5 game sighting! Which was which was quickly followed by three hippos in a nearby lake. If you haven’t heard the sound of hippos in the wild, you must – it’s incredible!

As we turned to leave the hippos, we were surprised to see a hyena on the road in front of us stalking a flock of helmeted guinea fowl. The sight of a hunting hyena in the morning light is enough to give you goosebumps – it’s pure Africa!

As if the hyena wasn’t enough, a silver-backed jackal came running down the road and passed our 4×4 Landcruiser as we stood there, literally in shock of how well our very first family game drive in Kenya was going!

The highlight of our day happened shortly thereafter, when we came upon a group of three lions – a male and two females. They were just sitting in the ditch, just feet away from the road.

There was a massive traffic jam of safari trucks, but our driver eventually got us right next to the lions – such an exciting encounter and one I’m sure our kids will never forget.

Nairobi National Park is great for family game drives as it’s mostly covered with low lying shrubs, making it easy to spot the larger animals. Our son was the first to spot an ostrich in the bushes and our daughter spotted an impala. They were very excited to contribute to the success of our family safari at Nairobi National Park.

Additional animal sightings we had on our very successful family safari at Nairobi National Park include: many northern white rhinos, plenty more giraffes and ostriches, a grey heron, secretary birds, hartebeests, baboons, crocodiles, more hippos, and even two more lionesses.

As you can see, we had a wildly successful family game drive in Nairobi National Park. It made us very excited for the rest of our family safari trip to Kenya!

2. David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Our next stop after our game drive in Nairobi National Park was a visit to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which is right next door to the park. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust rescues orphaned elephants and rhinos and helps raise them in a protected environment before reintroducing them into the wild.

Visitors gather around a roped off area which has a water hole and a mud pit. We were first introduced to a tiny baby rhino who now lives at the wildlife trust. He was so small, it was just about the cutest thing you’ve ever seen. It’s sad he was there under such tragic circumstances.

The baby rhino followed his handler around the perimeter of the fence, allowing us all to get an up-close view of this special little creature.

Once the rhino was gone, a herd of 9 young elephants entered the area. Their handlers fed them milk through huge feeding bottles – again, this was done very close to the fence so everyone had a chance to see a young elephant up close.

After a refreshing drink of milk, the elephants then wandered the area eating the branches scattered about near the fences. It was very exciting to see these magnificent animals up close, although sad it’s under difficult circumstances.

After the first herd of elephants was fed, a second herd came out to repeat the exercise. Altogether we saw over 20 young elephants ranging from very small, to juvenile elephants.

Seeing a captive elephant is never as exciting as seeing one in the wild, but the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is doing important things and it’s good to support their work through visiting. Plus, getting to see young rhinos and elephants is always fun! This is a must-do family wildlife experience in Nairobi!

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust strictly limits visiting hours to 11-12 each day. Advance reservations are mandatory.

3. Giraffe Centre

Our final activity on our full day in Nairobi with kids was the Giraffe Centre. Home to the famous Giraffe Manor, the Giraffe Centre is an activity that all of us can afford (unlike a stay at Giraffe Manor)!

Giraffe Centre is a really fun thing to do in Nairobi with kids – you can feed giraffes! Upon entering everyone needs to thoroughly wash their hands, and then they are given a bowl with a portion of giraffe food in it.

The Giraffe Centre is home to many Rothschild Giraffes – one of the three giraffe species in Kenya. Sadly, Rothschild Giraffes are a conservation concern with a “near threatened” status in the wild. The Giraffe Centre is helping breed and expand the gene pool of these magnificent animals.

Before long we were on the feeding platform and there were two giraffes actively feeding, with many more roaming the forest beyond. What a thrill to be able to feed giraffes!

The giraffes come to you and if you hold up your hand, they will stick out their long, bluish-purple tongues. You then place the food pellet on their wet, prickly tongues. It’s a little gross, but that’s all part of the fun. Our kids loved it!

It didn’t take long before we were out of food, but that’s ok. We loved visiting Giraffe Centre with kids – yet another amazing family wildlife experience in Nairobi!

4. Nairobi National Museum

Our flight into Nairobi landed in the very early hours of the morning, so we immediately went to our hotel and caught a few more hours sleep. We didn’t want to do anything too taxing on our first afternoon in Nairobi with kids, so we arranged a visit to the Nairobi National Museum.

To be honest, the best part about our visit to the Nairobi National Museum was the drive there. We got to see the hustle and bustle of central Nairobi. It was an amazing cultural experience seeing all the street markets, colorful buses, and just the general goings on in a major African city.

The Nairobi National Museum was ok, but it was a bit of a disappointment. Our favorite exhibit was the Hall of Mammals, where we enjoyed looking at stuffed versions of the many amazing African animals we were hoping to see on our upcoming Kenyan safaris.

Another exhibit we found interesting were the evolution room, which has a fascinating display of a human skeleton compared to a chimpanzee. It’s pretty amazing to see how similar they are.

Kenya is home to the cradle of civilization, so their exhibit on early hominoids was very good. I always find these little hominoids to be a little creepy, but fascinating nonetheless.

The rest of the museum was filled with less inspired exhibits, including an exhibit on the central banking system of Kenya.

There were plenty of uniformed Nairobi school kids visiting the museum, so our kids had fun interacting with them, smiling and saying hello. Kenyan people are so friendly!

Where We Stayed in Nairobi with Kids

We stayed at the Fair Acres Boutique Hotel in the trendy suburban district of Karen. The Fair Acres Boutique Hotel has an excellent location for most of our kid-friendly activities in Nairobi, including the Nairobi National Park, the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and Giraffe Centre all being a short drive away.

Our Nairobi hotel was really nice. We really liked having an adjoining Family Room. Celine and I had a queen sized bed, while the kids had a room right next door with a connecting door in-between. Our daughter slept on what might be the widest bed I’ve ever seen – way bigger than a king-sized bed, while our son was on a standard double bed.

We enjoyed a half-board food plan. Breakfast was a buffet with a decent selection of favorites including bacon, sausage, hash browns, toast and your choice of eggs made to order.

Dinner was excellent. We got to order anything from their full dinner menu, which had plenty of options including local cuisine and North American standards like hamburgers.