Our partners over at PBS' Channel Thirteen are celebrating their 50th anniversary with an awesome-sounding poster design contest for kids. Entrants can win sweet prizes like museum memberships, private parties, theater tickets and even a one-year membership to Kids Club Thirteen. One grand prize winner and 13 (of course) runner-ups will be selected from two age groups. There are a ton of rules so be sure to check out the contest website before starting.

Meanwhile, if your kids enjoy making art for art's sake, have them take a stab at illustrating the news for The New York Times. Although Draw the News has been going on since the spring, we only recently stumbled across it and the biweekly assignments are a great way to keep kids busy, and possibly get their artwork published in the paper of record... we mean the website of record.

There are already a lot of fantastic children's cooking programs in NYC, but there's always room for one more in our melting pot. The Kitchen Little Cooking School, which recently launched at Gymtime on the Upper East Side, offers hands-on classes focused on healthy meals for kids of all ages. There are even one-off workshops in case your little foodie doesn't want to commit to a full semester. Sounds sweet, or rather, sensible.

We know that those piano/violin/guitar lessons don't come cheap, but according to a new study the benefits of the early music education pay dividends for years after the credit card bills are paid off. If you're thinking of signing your kids up to learn an instrument, make sure you check our current list of deals, which has info about how to save 25% on in-home music lessons.

The long-running Berenstain Bears musical is moving to a new theater. Come October, the show will perform at the Manhattan Movement and Arts Center on West 60th Street. If your kids haven't seen it yet, you can save 20% on tickets by using the code SAVE20.

Got an eighth grader? Then it's time to go high school shopping. Yes, like Halloween candy on sale in August, high schools are currently offering tours so don't hesitate to book one.

We're always bummed to report the closing of a NYC kids' spot, but we were really unhappy to confirm that one of our favorite drop-in Manhattan play spaces, the Imaginasium in Greenwich Village, has closed for good. The romping spot was located inside the Children's Aid Center on Sullivan Street, which has now shuttered. The good news is, the New Acting Company—the children's theater troupe that was also located in the center—lives on! The company is still looking for a permanent home but is temporarily holding its kids' theater classes on West 14th Street.

A few months back we noted that the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art had suddenly closed. But the institution has been resurrected in a merger between MoCCA and the Society of Illustrators on the Upper East Side. Now you get two cartoon museums in one!

And finally, your weekly dose of cute: There are a bunch of new arrivals at the city's zoos. A trio of Amur Tiger Cubs are now prowling at the Bronx Zoo and baby Patagonian cavies and mini-goat kids are kicking at the Central Park Zoo.

Photo by Julie Larsen Maher © WCS