This week, we give a bid farewell to a busy April and say hooray for May! Seasonal outdoor adventures continue this week with the Cape May Spring Festival, Lunch & Learn with a Naturalist and Splish, Splash! If you’re looking for some free fun for little ones, check out storytimes at Pottery Barn Kids and Barnes & Noble, plus Happy Tree Planting Day at the Allentown Library. Don’t forget to check out our Event Calendar for even more weekday and weekend events.

This is a week filled with all those things that send a child’s imagination soaring: castles, trains, and stories. Kids can craft cardboard castles (say that ten times fast) at the Arroyo Seco Library, and celebrate 75 years of trains at the Pasadena Model Railroad Club’s spring open house. Then throw the family in the car and head north for the 16th annual Ojai Storytelling Festival, where yarns get spun, and orators celebrate journeys around the globe from Africa to Ireland. Wherever you find yourself at the end of the week, there's a half-price frappucino waiting with your name on it.

Say goodbye to the last days of April with some fun events happening this week on Long Island. From celebrating national poetry month at LICM to sampling some yummy snacks in Central Islip, mom and dad can keep the kids engaged until the warm weather finally arrives. There are also plenty of ideas on how to have a great time, even when it's chilly or rainy, in our Indoor Play Spaces, Sports Centers & Fun Zones Guide.

Of course, this list is just our top picks, so be sure to check our jam-packed Event Calendar for more options. To receive posts like this in your inbox, sign up for our free newsletters.

April showers should hopefully bring May flowers by the end of this week. So, with that happy thought, some great opportunities to enjoy the outdoors this week include a Babes in the Woods Hike in Stoneham and an ARTfull Play session at the deCordova in Lincoln. For more ideas on how to get out and enjoy the season, check out our list of the Best Spring Activities with Kids in Boston.

For indoor events, stop by the Discovery Museums in Acton for a free visit this First Friday Night. Great events for teens this week include a Poetry Slam in Boston and Bike Repair Night in Somerville. On Friday, the Harvard ArtsFirst Festival opens in Cambridge with a free jazz concert for all. Read on for details about all of our picks of the week, and don't forget to check out our full Event Calendar!

April hasn't been the consistently warm and wonderful salute to spring we'd been dreaming of all winter, but with May arriving on Friday (how did that happen?), we continue to have high hopes about the days ahead. Although we just highlight one pick per day in this post, you can find lots of other suggestions in our Event Calendar and our Connecticut Day Trips Guide. If you're still trying to decide on summer camps, registration deadlines are approaching fast, so be sure to check out our Camp Guide, which includes both day camp and sleepaway options.

Though most "big" events for Westchester families take place on weekends, there are still plenty of weekday activities for kids large and small. We’ve highlighted our top picks for the coming week, many of which are FREE.

The big news this week is the return of Lightscapes: a luminescent display of flora and fauna fashioned from recycled materials. Other highlights include Dia!—para Las Familias, a bilingual celebration of Spanish culture, and Teen Minute to Win It, when teens have 60 seconds to do wacky things.

But that’s not all! Read on for more picks and check out our Event Calendar for great family activities every day of the week. You can also subscribe to our FREE newsletters to get our posts delivered to your inbox.

There is a lot of great family entertainment on tap this week. Watch a FREE performance by storyteller LuAnn Adams, catch New York City Children's Theater's musical, A Band of Angels, about the historic Fisk Jubilee Singers or take your tot to the Treehouse Shakers' interactive farm-themed show Hatched.

Although we only highlight one event per day in this post, you can find plenty of other options in our Event Calendar and our Spring Fun Guide.

This year almost 200,000 kids in New York State chose to opt out of the standardized state tests for grades 3 through 8. That’s a whopping 15% and almost four times the number that opted out last year. The growing dissent over the Common Core and high-stakes testing has been visible in article after article citing despicable practices, product placement and age-inappropriate questions. While I think most parents are in favor of high standards for kids, there’s obviously a lot of frustration with how the Common Core is being implemented, and it raises the question of what our standards really are.

Of all the articles bouncing around the Internet these days about the Common Core and standardized testing, two particularly caught my attention. One describes the standard expectations for a first grader in 1979; the second shares math problems from a first grade Common Core curriculum today. The difference is striking and astonishing, and will really make you rethink the educational road we've gone down since we were little.