Upper West Side Kids Neighborhood Guide

Our spring culture coverage continues with a look at the most promising family shows opening this season. Reading the papers, you might think the only great productions for kids are on Broadway. But while Matilda (it's dark!) and Cinderella (it's light!) command the media spotlight and cost big bucks, there are many wonderfully creative children's theater performances off Broadway and beyond.

The selection this spring is particularly intriguing and there are options for all age groups, including a few shows that are perfect for first-time theatergoers. The New Victory has a pair of plotless spectacles, one acrobatic, the other urban dance, and Making Books Sing and TADA! Youth Theater are adapting popular kids' books by Eileen Spinelli and Ezra Jack Keats. Plus the New York Children's Theater Festival returns for its second year on the Upper West Side, and the tenth annual International Toy Theater Festival takes place in Brooklyn. The one thing all of these shows have in common? You can take the kids to see them without dipping into their college fund—most are $20 or under and one is even FREE.

In our melting pot of a city, kids are exposed to lots of different languages, and the summer is a great time for children to try to pick up a new one. Whether your child yearns to master Chinese, French, German, Italian or Spanish, New York City is home to lots of language immersion summer camps. No textbooks at these programs. Instead, kids experience the usual seasonal fun—swimming, sports, arts—in their non-native tongue. The instructors and counselors are all fluent and not only teach kids the language, they expose them to the culture, too. Here are 10 language immersion summer day camps that will have your kids saying hola, bonjour or ciao in no time.

Easter is coming up on Sunday, March 31, 2013 and what's the holiday without an outdoor egg hunt? You don't need a backyard to have one. There are plenty of egg hunts all over NYC, where kids can run through the soft spring grass searching for brightly colored orbs hidden amongst bushes and blooms.

We've got the scoop on the best Easter egg hunts in NYC. Most are outdoors in parks, zoos, gardens and farms, but a few are indoors at museums and other tot spots. Plus a lot of these fetes come with extra seasonal fun, like face painting, family concerts and spring crafts. Arrive early! The eggs never stick around for long.

If you'd rather do it yourself, you can always bring your own Easter eggs and set up a little private hunt in a quiet corner of your local playground. If you opt for an egg hunt in your home, we recommend using plastic or blown eggs. You don't want to stumble across any stinky hard-boiled surprises come summer!

Here are our top Easter egg hunts in New York City.