one day in venice with kids - do I need to book anything ahead or could we do it morning of?

Can you provide a little more information? Are you arriving in Venice in the morning and leaving that same day? What are the ages of your children? Have you been to Venice before?

If you truly have only a few hours and you've never been to Venice before, I would skip lace making and glass blowing. The charm of Venice lies in the wandering of that magical city. You could ride on the canals on either a gondola ride or a vaporetto (like a city bus, but on the water). Do a little looking around to see which suits your style - and your budget.

Depending on what else you've already seen in Italy on this trip, you could pre-book a trip through the Doge's Palace - I would do that before I went to see lace-making. There's also St. Mark's and tons of other churches if that interests you. But make sure you allow yourself time to wander and time to ride through the canals.

thanks so much for your advice - I will look into those. We will have the whole day there (we arrive one day at noon, so actually have that afternoon, then the next full day, and leave the following morning). Kids are ages 13-1.

Since a gondola takes a maximum of 6 passengers, if you want to do a gondola ride you would need two of them - doubling the already VERY high price.

So, just take a vaporetto. These are like local buses, but they run on water instead of land. No advance booking is necessary or possible - just buy a ticket and hop on. And it's the Grand Canal, not the "great canal." But don't overlook the smaller canals, where you can see smaller local boats (you have to walk to get to these).

I agree that Venice is the sight, particularly with kids - they'll be fascinated by seeing just how different it is. Unless they have a special interest, watching lace-making is not particularly interesting. Watching glass-blowing is more interesting, but may not be worth a detour on a short visit like yours (glass-blowing is on Murano, not in Venice proper).

There are places in Venice proper that have glass blowing exhibitions. We went to one as a group that was not on Murano. Try Vecchia Murano glass factory, not far from San Marco. Not sure it's all that exciting for kids but that would depend on their ages and what they like. Very strong sales pitch after demonstration but no purchase is required as far as I remember.