We here at Mommy Poppins are all about mothers, and this weekend, we’re celebrating the biggest mother of them all: Mother Earth. We are blessed to live in a region full of outdoor destinations, many of which host Earth Day festivities. Naturally, we’ve compiled a guide to the best Earth Day celebrations.

What’s more natural than kids and garbage? Earth Day ushers in the season of Sanitation Open Houses. Kids can tour sanitation yards, attend recycling fairs, visit landfills, and even ride in a garbage truck.

Oh, mama, wait til you read what our kid critics have come up with! Check out their reviews of some of the films in the upcoming Los Angeles Children's Film Festival. Be sure to leave comments on your favorites: the critics with the most comments win exciting prizes. (Plus, if you use the links in their reviews to purchase your festival tickets the school of your choice gets a donation!)

And, of course, our thoughts are with the people of Boston and now Waco. We are inspired by the resilience of these communities, and by the courage and strength of those who run towards the disasters to assist others.

Keep reading for our favorite picks for the weekend…

This weekend, get ready for Earth Day with some great events!  Head on over to the Garden of Eve Organic Farm & Market in Riverhead for their Chick-A-Palooza: Backyard Homesteading Festival, where you’ll partake in workshops on chicken-keeping, beekeeping, and gardening, along with farm tours, fiber arts, sheep shearing, and cooking demos.  The Long Island Children’s Museum in Garden City is presenting Our Changing World - Earth Day Celebration, where you’ll honor and find out how you can help more than 41,000 plants and animals that are on the brink of extinction.  Celebrate Earth Day at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor where you’ll help create a gigantic group sculpture using recycled materials with artists from the NYC based art collective Free Style Arts Association.  Super Science Focus: Build A Biome To Celebrate Earth Day is taking place at the Maritime Explorium in Port Jefferson, where you can create a habitat of your own using recycled water bottles.  Also on tap: Wacky Wednesday and The Diary of Anne Frank at Theatre Three Productions in Port Jefferson.  As always, check out our events calendar every day for fun activities for the family!

It's a great weekend for family theater, music and outdoor festivals. Lots of notable kids' shows debut this weekend, including two picks from our April NYC Go List: Wanda's Monster the Musical featuring songs by Laurie Berkner and TADA! Youth Theater's Adventures from Ezra Jack Keats, along with the kickoff of the second annual New York Children's Theater Festival.

There are also a slew of FREE Earth Day-themed festivals, like the art-filled St. George Day Festival on Staten Island, plus celebrations in Harlem's Marcus Garvey Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park and Union Square.

On a somber note, our thoughts and hearts are still with our friends, family and colleagues in Boston as they recover from Monday's attack. Sunday is Family Day at NYC's 9/11 Memorial and we suspect the organizers will do something special to honor the victims and survivors of the Boston Marathon bombings.

All of our best bets for the weekend are below. Remember, you can find additional ideas in our Event Calendar and our Spring Fun Guide.

Earth Day is Monday, April 22, and there is no better way to honor mother earth than by educating your children on how to keep her safe and clean. It is the largest environmental event across with globe, with over 100 countries participating. Our beautiful state has several events to mark the occasion. 

On Monday afternoon, inspired by the runners in the Boston Marathon, I started a Couch to 5K running program. When I got home after my first training session, I heard the terrible news of the tragedy at the marathon. At first, I thought about giving up on the 5K program. But then I made a completely different decision: Although I am in the worst shape of my life – I can’t even run a mile (seriously, but please don't judge) – I am going to start with a 5K, and then keep going all the way to next year’s Boston Marathon. Every race I run will be for all the people who are no longer able.

Races have always been a family affair for us. Over the years, my kids have done several fun runs and kids races  while one of the adults in the family runs the “big race”. I plan to continue our tradition. If you’d like to give a race a try, either just for fun, or in honor of the Boston Marathon runners and their loved ones, take a look at my round up of upcoming family-friendly races in Massachusetts this spring. 

In the age of digital everything you might think old-school DJing with those shiny black things we called records would be dead and gone. But not so. There are a number of DJ schools in NYC that teach retro turntable action as well as digital music mixing via state-of-the-art technology.

While most of these programs are primarily aimed at adults, three Manhattan schools also offer classes for junior DJs. Mixing, blending, scratching and beats are just some of what participants learn, and by the end they have their own professionally recorded demos. (Too bad they'll need to wait until they're 21 to actually spin at a club.) Here are the top DJ classes for tweens and teens in New York City.

You’ve spent three hours at the Boston Children's Museum exploring, dancing, climbing, banging and blowing, and now it’s time to fill those hungry bellies. There are a multitude of options for dining near the museum. We’ve narrowed down the best ones, plus bonus tips for adult-time munching, too.