DANVILLE — Laurie Fitzpatrick and Lori Smith are headed to New Orleans early next month where they'll help rebuild a neighborhood playground and pick up some tips for constructing a similar project in their own hometown.

"I've always wanted to be involved in missions," said Mrs. Fitzpatrick, a Riverside borough resident.

For the past year, she and about 10 others have worked to raise money, information and interest in a proposed playground at Trinity United Methodist Church on Lombard Avenue in Danville.

The project picked up steam last year when Ms. Smith came across information about KaBOOM, a national nonprofit organization that assists communities in creating playgrounds by providing training, grants and resources.

VALLEY SPRINGS - Erin Cottle, 17 months, and Deven Anderson, about the same age, got off to a rocky start Monday morning. They met over a puzzle. Something under Deven's control, possibly a piece of the puzzle, smacked Erin's eye.

Tears flowed. Erin retreated to her mommy, Catriona Cottle, for a kiss, a hug. Deven, concerned, toddled over to see if she was all right. The storm passed. First Deven, then Erin, slipped happily back to playing with 15 other children on the carpeted floor of a rented martial arts studio.

Such bumps and adventures were once a routine part of childhood. These days, however, unstructured play with other youngsters is limited or absent for many children, pushed aside by the isolation of a car-oriented society, busy schedules and even electronic entertainment, say parents and early childhood development experts.

GAUTIER -- Hundreds of volunteers will hammer, haul and heave as they come together to give local children a new city park Tuesday.

With tool belts on their hips and love in their hearts, volunteers from all over the nation will construct three Habitat houses, a playground for neighborhood kids and a community pavilion complete with 12 picnic tables. The entire project will be completed in just one day.

Leading the construction effort to build the KaBOOM! playground and Habitat houses in the northern part of Gautier is Habitat for Humanity Mississippi Gulf Coast, Schneider Electric, Gautier residents and city leaders.

At some point in our childhood, whether at home or school, we were issued numerous warnings about playing: "Stop playing around," "Quit playing" or "This is not play time."

The question "Can I go out and play?" can be the start of a battle between children, parents and teachers everywhere. As we move farther away from the playground years and enter the parenting stage, we often forget that play is an important and essential part of life.

Much to the chagrin of my second-grade teacher, play has always had an important role in the development of children. From jumping rope to playing with dolls, play is critical because it lays the foundation for healthy development.

Every play activity emphasizes a different aspect of development. For example, when two children disagree over a call in a baseball game, they are sharpening their abilities to both communicate a point of view as well as learn to negotiate compromise.

Cabresha Nard, 11, popped in and out of the "mansion" she and her friends built under a plastic archway inspired by The Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

"We didn't want it to be a regular door. We wanted it to be like a skyscraper," said Cabresha, a fifth-grader at Hamady Elementary School.

Cabresha and other Hamady students likely will be featured this year in a PBS documentary that bemoans the loss of unstructured playtime.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE        

CONTACT:    Margie Hall, KaBOOM!
202-464-6165

A PLAYFUL EDUCATION: KaBOOM! HOSTS AWARD-WINNING TRAINING AND HANDS-ON PLAYGROUND BUILD IN NEW ORLEANS
KaBOOM! University of Play (U Play!) partners with Woodmere Elementary to build new playground in one day for New Orleans area children in conjunction with national training

What: The national nonprofit KaBOOM! brings its award-winning training U Play! to New Orleans on February 8-10, 2007. U Play! is a three day training conference that promotes the importance of play and provides participants the knowledge and resources needed to build playspaces such as playgrounds, skateparks or sports fields in their community. As part of the training, over 300 volunteers from U Play!, Woodmere Elementary and residents of the New Orleans area will join forces on February 10, to build a new playground at Woodmere Elementary.  The playground design is based on drawings developed by Woodmere students at a Design Day event held in December.   

December 31, 2006

Dear KaBOOM! Friends,

Just wanted to send another "thank you" your way.

The city of Pass Christian (Mississippi) has always started off the Christmas season by what is called "Christmas in the Pass," when the whole city takes part in going from shop to shop enjoying cocoa and goodies, caroling, and spreading Christmas cheer. With Hurricane Katrina washing away much of the city shops, most people thought this would be a thing of the past. With a city so destroyed, Christmas cheer was a much-needed commodity.

As Trevor Field headed to South Africa's coast for a fishing trip nearly 10 years ago, he saw a quartet of women standing next to a windmill, waiting for the wind to power it so they could get water from the ground. Returning home from that trip, he saw the same women standing there.

"They had been there three days. That was pathetic,'' the South African native told a group of Slauson Middle School students Thursday morning. "I thought there had to be a better way of powering the windmill.''

Field found an unique way to power a well without electricity. He uses children playing on a merry-go-round.

The first KaBOOM! build of 2007 had some special guest stars: several NBA legends and 130 NBA Cares volunteers. The Lake Forest Elementary School in New Orleans got a new playground featuring an adventure bridge, tire swing, picnic tables and benches. 

New York City, with its rich history of public playgrounds, is on the verge of a bold experiment in the way children play, one that could accelerate the trend away from monkey bars, swings and seesaws used by generations of city children.

In an unusual public-private partnership, the city is developing a playground near the South Street Seaport that will have trained “play workers” on hand to help children interact with features of the new playground: water, ramps, sand and specially designed objects meant to spur the imagination.

Those of us who suffered through a year of painful planning meetings sensed that it was happening, but last week we got the final word. The money is gone.

The only elements of Unified New Orleans Plan that will be funded, we're told, are "recovery" items. We can forget "visionary" items, including bike paths, playgrounds and beautification.