This Week: Columbus Day Weekend Fun, Best Halloween Events for NYC Kids, Mommy Poppins Night at the New Victory Theater

10/10/13 - By Raven Snook

The Columbus Day holiday weekend is the big to-do on all of our sites—and probably at your family dinner table, too. Three whole days off! The perfect time to take a family day trip (our Travel site has some great holiday weekend discounts), or go pumpkin picking, or prepare for the Halloween season by hitting a costume swap, making some creepy crafts and putting the absolute best seasonal celebrations in your calendar.

Our Halloween Guides in NYC, New Jersey, Long Island and Connecticut are already filled with fearsome fun, from the obvious (best Halloween celebrations, kid-friendly haunted houses, etc.) to the offbeat (NYC cemetery tours, Halloween train rides and amazing outdoor jack-o'-lantern installations). Speaking of unique Halloween events, our Mommy Poppins Halloween Family Cruise is coming up next Saturday, October 19. Hit New York Harbor on Manhattan by Sail's haunted Clipper City Tall Ship with the hilarious Dr. Blood, who'll perform kooky science experiments, creepy magic tricks and lead a kids' costume parade. Other attractions include face painting, nautical skills, incredible views and treats for all. Buy your tickets before they're gone.

Other good things to do today? Enter our soon-to-end Created by Kids art class giveaway and book your tickets to our Mommy Poppins Night at the New Victory Theater next Sunday, October 20—read on for details.

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

OUR LATEST VIDEOS

In honor of our new partnership with the New Victory Theater, we're hosting our first-ever Mommy Poppins Night at the New Vic. See the magical Me and My Shadow, snag a poster, enjoy fun extras like a pre-show puppet workshop and a post-show meet and greet with the cast, and save 20% on tickets. Buy yours before they sell out!

We added a bunch of new posts to our Halloween Fun Guide this week, including a roundup of 34 FREE Halloween events, our curated list of the top 12 Halloween celebrations for kids in all of NYC and easy-to-make Halloween crafts.

More frightening fun: five surprisingly beautiful NYC cemeteries to explore at Halloween time and beyond.

Our October neighborhood of the month is Sunnyside/Woodside in Queens. We kicked off our coverage with a roundup of the best things to do with kids in the nabes, written by a longtime local mom.

Is your child in a NYC public school? Then you'll want to read about the controversy surrounding inBloom, a new database of sensitive student info stored in an online cloud that seems to compromise kids' privacy.

Take a tour of Marble Hill in the Bronx and find out why it's technically part of Manhattan.

Best bets for the three-day Columbus Day weekend include the Little Red Lighthouse Festival, Open House NY, and a bunch of pumpkin fests and harvest celebrations.