Along with the mild weather comes a fresh crop of outdoor festivals, street fairs and carnivals, big annual favorites like two of our April Go List picks, the Tribeca Family Festival Street Fair and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Cherry Blossom Festival, as well as smaller community happenings.

These spring fests are a great way to entertain your family for just a few bucks—sometimes even for FREE. And the activities are really diverse: Introduce the kids to old-fashioned games, celebrate planet Earth, chow down on homemade treats or watch live performances by kiddie bands, puppet troupes and more. Plus, these events aren't just fun, they foster community by bringing folks together to support a school, playground, cultural institution or common cause.

Festival season doesn't kick off until this weekend but you can start planning right now. Here are 12 awesome events to put in your April calendar.

For many people, the words Midtown West conjure up visions of Times Square with its Broadway theaters, illuminated billboards, crowded chain restaurants, megastores and tourist traps. But go a little further west and you'll find the treasures of Clinton, an amenity-filled residential neighborhood that many actors, artists and families call home. Also known as Hell's Kitchen, the area was once infamous for gangs and poverty but started changing in the 1990s. Tenements were renovated, luxury condos went up, and a slew of new restaurants and bars opened, especially on Ninth Avenue, which plays host to the International Food Festival every May.

While the nabe's gritty past is still evident—it hasn't enjoyed quite the same makeover as nearby Chelsea—it's getting more kid-friendly every year: Local parent group, Hell's Kitchen Babies, is very active; the Matthews-Palmer Playground on West 45th is poised to get a $2 million overhaul; the Midtown West School has become a sought-after public elementary school; and the waterfront, Bryant Park and, yes, even Times Square offer fantastic kid-friendly activities like a life-size T-rex and an indoor Ferris wheel. (Hey, sometimes there's something to be said for tourist spots!)

Throughout April we'll be writing about everything Midtown West (both Times Square and Hell's Kitchen) has to offer, including our favorite places to eat, play, shop and experience with kids. For the purposes of our posts, our geographical boundaries are 34th to Columbus Circle, Sixth Avenue to the Hudson River. We kick off our coverage with a list of the top 40 things for families to do in Midtown West.

Mommy Poppins NYC may have been quieter than usual this week due to school recess and a pesky server outage, but our lives have been busier than ever. Our bloggers have been running all over our awesome city, enjoying all kinds of spring break fun. My daughter and I laughed our heads off at Bello Mania at the New Victory Theater (we even got the famed clown's autograph!), saw Rodgers and Hammerstein's reimagined Cinderella on Broadway and stopped to smell the blooms at Macy's India-themed Flower Show. (We posted a gallery of Flower Show pics on our Facebook page.) Meanwhile Anna and her family explored the Guggenheim's Gutai: Splendid Playground exhibit and enjoyed the first great playground day of spring. We hope you and your kids have been enjoying spring break as much as we have.

Of course we still have many days of fun ahead of us. Sunday is Easter and there are lots of egg hunts throughout NYC as well as Fifth Avenue's fabulous Easter Parade. And then Monday is April Fool's Day and our Boston site came up with 10 hilarious pranks to play on kids. And don't forget to check out our roundup of special spring break activities. There are so many great things going on in NYC right now, you'd need an entire season to try them all.

Here's what else we covered on the NYC site this week: