Finding Your Village: How New Parents Can Use FindandGoSeek.net
Guest blog written by Sarah Wojcik, Owner of Find and Go Seek, Vermont’s guide to family activities across Vermont
By now, you've leaned on Vermont Birth Network for the big stuff — the prenatal classes, support groups, the reassurance that what you're feeling at 3 a.m. is normal. But post-birth, somewhere between the feedings and the mountain of tiny laundry, a different kind of question starts creeping in: what do we actually do with this baby all day?
Once you've got the basics of survival down, the next challenge is finding your rhythm out in the world — and that's where a resource like FindandGoSeek.net comes in handy.
What is FindandGoSeek?
FindandGoSeek is a locally run guide to family life in northern Vermont — a running list of what's happening around the state, organized and searchable, without the scrolling.
It covers everything from toddler story times and playgroups to summer festivals and after-school options, sorted in a way that recognizes "family-friendly" means very different things depending on whether your kid is six weeks or sixteen years old.
For new parents especially, it's useful for a problem you didn't know you’d have: you're suddenly looking for low-key, no-pressure things to do with your baby, but you don't have much bandwidth to go dig them up yourself. This is a place where that legwork is already done.
The Event Calendar: Your New Best Friend
The heart of the site is its event calendar. You can browse by day, so on a random Tuesday when you're staring down another long afternoon at home, you can pull up "today" and see what's happening nearby — a stroller-friendly story time, a nature playgroup, a free concert in the park.
Even better, listings are tagged by age group: Babies, Toddlers, Kinder, Kids, Tweens, and Teens and by county in Vermont. That means you're not wading through a list of teen crafternoons trying to figure out if any of it applies to your four-month-old. You just filter for "Babies" and your location and let the site do the sorting.
You can even dig deeper with category selections like indoor or outdoor activities, music & movement, and art. It’s a subtle feature, but if you've ever spent twenty minutes googling "baby activities near me" only to land on a blog post from 2019 about a baby music program that has since disappeared, you'll understand why it matters.
Explore Interests: Shop by Vibe
If you're not looking for something specific but just want inspiration, the Explore Interests section breaks activities into the same categories: Outdoor Activities, Music & Movement, Indoor Activities, Culture, Sports, and — this one's worth circling — Family Resources. That category tends to be where the more support-oriented listings live: things beyond pure entertainment, aimed at helping parents navigate the early years.
In this section you can also dig a layer deeper finding libraries, museums and science centers under “Culture,” playgroups, photography, and childcare under “Family Resources” or pumpkin picking under “Fall Fun.” You get the idea!
The Chirp for Weekly and Seasonal Updates
Beyond the calendar, the site runs a blog and email campaign called The Chirp, full of seasonal guides with real local flavor — where to find the best creemees, where to go berry picking, how to plan a summer of family adventures without losing your mind. It's not clinical parenting advice; it's more like a knowledgeable friend telling you where the good stuff is.
For sleep-deprived new parents who still want a little joy and novelty in their week, this kind of content hits different than another generic "10 tips for new moms" listicle.
Plus, The Chirp email delivers this content right to your inbox: family-friendly weekend events, camp planning guides, where to find summer, fall and winter fun. Plus it’s where they offer great giveaways like free passes to museum, sporting events, seasonal light shows and more. Sign up here!
Free Fun Matters
When you're on parental leave, adjusting to one income, or just trying not to spend $40 to entertain a baby who is equally happy staring at a ceiling fan, free fun matters. When perusing the calendar, look for the events tagged “Free” in daily and weekly lists.
Library story times, playgroups, and outdoor events show up right along the paid festivals and camps, but the “free” tag makes budget-friendly outings are easy to find.
Looking for free events for the month? The site has a special page just dedicated to them here.
Speaking of libraries — they show up constantly on the site, and for good reason. A local library story time is basically the perfect first outing with a newborn: free, low-stakes, air-conditioned or heated depending on the season, and full of other bleary-eyed parents who get it. Plus, you can keep it short or extend it with free play at the library, without having to commit to anything.
Real Reviews from Real Parents
Here's a detail that's easy to miss but genuinely useful: listings on the site can be reviewed and rated by other parents and caregivers who've actually been there.
So instead of guessing whether that "family-friendly" farm tour is truly stroller-accessible, or whether a class is worth the drive, you can check what other Vermont parents thought first.
Reviews are anonymous, which tends to make them more candid than what you'd find on a business's own website. And business owners can respond to reviews too, as long as they identify themselves — so if a listing has some feedback, you can often see both sides before deciding.
It's a small feature, but if you've ever shown up somewhere based on a glowing website description only to find the reality didn't match, you'll appreciate having a few honest opinions to check first.
Building Your Village
There's a reason "it takes a village" gets repeated so often to new parents — it's true, and also genuinely hard to build from scratch, especially if you're new to an area or your usual social rhythms got upended by a baby.
FindandGoSeek, and the community it connects to on Facebook and Instagram, can be one small but real piece of that village.
It's a way to find your people — other parents pushing strollers through the same story time circle, the same splash pad, the same free Tuesday concert — without having to engineer those connections out of thin air.
A Resource That Ages with Your Family
As your baby becomes a toddler, then a "kid," then eventually a tween who rolls their eyes at everything, the site grows with you — the categories and age filters simply shift to match. It's worth bookmarking now and checking back seasonally as your family's needs change.
And for what it's worth: Vermont Birth Network also has a presence here, alongside the classes and events you already know them for. I
f you've found your way to us through the site, or the other way around, that's the whole idea — different resources pointing parents toward each other, so no one has to figure it all out alone.