With Memorial Day behind us and the first weekend in June just ahead, it sure feels good to welcome the warm summer months! June is full of family fun, whether you check out the Scottish Festival and Highland Games at Bonnie Brae, take a nature walk with your canine companion at Whittemore Wildlife Sanctuary or enjoy those first juicy strawberries of the season at Alstede Farms. Read on for our top picks and find a listing of all NJ activities in our Event Calendar.

This edition of our biweekly news roundup is kind of all over the place. We've got the scoop on a new children's shoe store in Williamsburg and a new school fundraising craze, as well as the death of a beloved NYC kid lit great and the demise of a popular summer family movie series in East River State Park. Plus, FREE golf in Midtown West, a chance for a lucky Brooklyn high school student to win a laptop, pianos to play throughout the five boroughs and more.

From a very young age, my twins gravitated towards creating art in various forms.  Whether my son is sculpting food or super heroes with PlayDoh or my daughter is sketching an imaginary landscape, someone, somewhere in my home is creating art.  With my own art skills lacking (I'm the writer, NOT the artist), we needed to enlist some professionals to help our kiddos hone their skills.  In our part of the state, here in Eastern Connecticut, we luckily had a large selection of classes to choose from!

While there are lots of wonderful children's books about New York City, our kids are lucky enough to live here. They don't need to read a book to find out what it's like to play in the street on a snowy day or run amok at the Plaza or visit the Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.

Yet there are times when flipping through a book about an iconic NYC experience can actually get local children excited for the real thing, like going to an art museum. Recently, Mommy Poppins founder Anna got her nine-year-old psyched for the Gutai exhibit at the Guggenheim by giving him Speeding Down the Spiral: An Artful Adventure, a picture book about visiting the museum that contained a catalog of its permanent collection. He pored over the images and couldn't wait to see the works of art in person.

There are other inspiring kids' books out there about exploring NYC's great art institutions. We're not talking about those general enjoy-the-museum stories that take place at fictitious culture spots. These 10 titles work as primers so your kids will be excited to spend a day at the museum, be it the Met, the Guggenheim or MoMA.

[UPDATED 5/25/2013]

Connecticut will be throwing open the front door for residents and visitors alike to try something new in the Nutmeg State on June 8th.  The State Department of Tourism calls the event 'Open House Day' and 2013 marks its ninth year.  More than 175 art galleries, museums, and parks statewide will offer free or reduced admission, free gifts or special exhibits.  It's the perfect excuse to try out that spot you've been curious about. In Fairfield County, the Open House Day participants list is heavy on the arts, which means lots of free crafts for the kiddos.

What could be better than having access to the Mommy Poppins Connecticut website not only on your computer, but now on your phone? We’re working on developing an app for NYC to launch in June, and with your help, Connecticut's content could follow almost immediately. Read on to find out about how you can help make it happen and the super-cool incentives you can get for helping, like having a photo of your child at their favorite kids' spot represent that location, a ticket to our swanky launch party or having your business be the featured location in your area.

So what would this app do? The Mommy Poppins App will allow you to find all the great places we write about on our sites—spots to create, be active, learn, shop, eat and more—easily on your phone. With the Mommy Poppins App, you'll be able to:

Memorial Day weekend is the talk of the town—and out of town, too. All of our sites have posts about the best things to do over the three-day holiday, whether you opt for a New York City staycation or decide to take a day trip to Connecticut, New Jersey or Long Island. Tri-state area beaches open for the season this weekend, and we've got the scoop on what to expect post-Hurricane Sandy at NYC, Connecticut and Jersey Shores. We also have some great suggestions for day trips, all less than two hours from the city by car. In other words, we've got your entire Memorial Day weekend covered!

Have you contributed to our IndieGoGo Mommy Poppins App campaign yet? We're in the process of creating an app for all of our sites so you'll have our carefully curated content at your fingertips when you're on the go. For as little as $2 you can ensure that the app will be free to all, and we're offering some cool rewards for more generous contributions. Speaking of apps, we're proud to be partnering with family activity app RedRover, which recently relaunched and now includes Mommy Poppins event picks.

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