Play Today

The summer of 2010 was a summer I will always remember—but not because of an exotic vacation or cross-country road trip or adventure-filled summer camp. Instead, I stayed right at home and explored local playgrounds with my twins. We were one of six families to participate in the first-ever KaBOOM! Summer Playground Challenge.

When the Challenge ended, I observed a marked change in my children – they appeared healthier, happier, stronger, and more self-confident. While everyone knows that outdoor play is  beneficial for kids, what I didn’t expect was how transformative the Challenge proved for mom as well!

Here are five reasons why parents should join the 2012 Playground Challenge:

1. Regular outdoor play is good for the soul. Activities like swinging, building sandcastles, rolling down grassy hills, and running through a fountain on hot summer days help you feel like a kid again. You will also have incentive to escape from computers, piles of laundry, and other distractions.
    
2. It’s easier to get your kids to bed. Each day will provide your children with opportunities to be physically active as they increase their strength, coordination, and endurance. As a result, they won’t be as squirmy at home and will rarely have trouble falling asleep at night!
    
3. Play opens doors to teachable moments. Rather than constantly playing the role of disciplinarian, you become a support to your child’s exploration, discovery, and learning. As you explore playgrounds and nature areas, your children will undoubtedly ask you endless questions, and each day will be filled with teachable moments.
    
4. You meet new people in your neighborhood. As you explore, you will inevitably strike up conversations with other parents, contributing to a sense of community and connectedness. This can be particularly meaningful for stay-at-home parents – a job that is sometimes very isolating.
    
5. Your family can experience new places right at home. Many participants, myself included, found that until they took on the Challenge, they were unaware of the surprising number of parks, playgrounds, and nature preserves in or near their community. They discovered hidden gems and explored nearby neighborhoods they had never had reason to visit before.

As a gift to yourself and your children this summer, allow for plenty of time to play, and consider being a part of the national 2012 Playground Challenge!

The 2012 Summer Playground Challenge asks parents to visit playgrounds and add them to our Map of Play using our soon-to-be released Tag! mobile app. If you need another reason to join our Challenge, participants will earn points and badges toward great prizes throughout the summer and toward one of three Grand Prizes--a trip for two to Washington, DC! Sign up for more information here.

Photo by Liza Sullivan, 2010.

Last week, in honor of National Backyard Games week, we asked our readers to share outdoor games they invented as children.

As we read through your wonderful responses, it became clear that children and adults have different definitions of what constitutes a "game." Unlike most adult-invented games, the games you shared all had elements of challenge but no obvious winners or losers.

Congratulations to the inventors of our three favorite games, who will each win a copy of our new book, Go Out and Play! Perhaps we'll add these to our next edition:

Frixening
"We had a big willow tree in the backyard, on a hill surrounded by juniper bushes. We invented 'Frixening,' which required us to grab the willow tree branches and with a running start use them to swing out as far as we could over the prickly bushes without losing our grip and falling in. I have no idea where we got 'Frixening' from."
- Alice Requadt Marks

Mud Ski
"My little brother and I did all sorts of things with our swing set—but probably the greatest was when we could get our hands on the garden hose. We'd fill up the ditch under the swings with water, and wade around until it was good and muddy, then wrap the swings a couple times to get them to chest height and 'water ski' across the void. Many a good, filthy hour was spent that way. Getting hosed off by our mom before we were allowed inside was almost as fun as getting muddy."
- Maia Tel Sol Dei

Boss
"As children, my best friends and I would often play 'Boss.' Using a disconnected telephone in the basement, we would take turns making up calls we received from the Boss telling us about missions we had to go on for work (of course, we all worked at the same place!). These included anything from having to sneak by Mom barefoot to searching for treasures in the small creek in our yard to riding our bikes through make-believe trails we created in the neighborhood—and named after our favorite candy!"
- Margaret A. Powers

Want to see more of our favorite outdoor games? Donate $15 to get your own copy of Go Out and Play!

Photo by Bill Dubreuil (cc).

"Take Our Children to the Park... and Leave Them There Day" (Saturday, May 19) has a provocative name for a reason: to call attention to itself.

Had Free Range Kids founder Lenore Skenazy, who originally came up with the idea, named it, "Give Your Children A Chance To Gather Outside With Other Neighborhood Children and Engage in Unstructured, Unsupervised Play for an Hour or Two," I'm not sure that so many people would be taking notice.

Parental paranoia has risen dramatically over the last two decades. It's a trend driven by fear--fear of crime, fear of injury, and even fear of children growing up to be failures. Some parents, like Lenore, have decided that enough is enough.

The world has dangers, yes, but it is not the inherently evil, threatening place that we often make it out to be. As Lenore and others point out, rates of violent crime are lower today than they were in 1974, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and have been steadily declining since the 1990s. Parents fret about child abductors while carting their children around in cars, even though kids are nearly 12 times more likely to die in a car wreck than they are to get kidnapped by a stranger.

And yet, people accuse Lenore of being "out of her tree."

All that she is asking, really, is that parents use their common sense. She is not issuing a decree that ALL parents MUST take their children to the park this Saturday and leave them there... or else! This day is really all about empowering, not endangering, children. Lenore is hoping that by making a big deal over leaving kids to play together at a park, it will, over time, cease to be a big deal.

As Lenore puts it,

"Clearly we are in the middle of a vicious cycle--there are no kids outside so I won't let MY kids outside, so there are no kids outside, so you don't let YOUR kids outside, so I don't let MY kids outside, etc., etc., etc--which is why the holiday (or whatever it is) is even necessary. It is a day to break the cycle. A day to get kids outside to meet each other and re-learn the lost art of playing!"

Will you be taking your kids to the park... and leaving them there?

A longer version of this piece originally appeared on The Huffington Post.