Year: 2020
Rediscovering What Matters Most
Dear friends, With the end of 2020 here, it’s tempting to just want to put it behind us and look ahead to 2021. No one will blame us for saying “Good bye” to a year of divisive turmoil, social separation, distancing and, for all too many of us, a year…
Goric’s Guide to Virtual Playground Fundraising
Playground fundraising is never easy. In the best of times, it can mean an endless round of bake sales, car washes, 5ks and benefit dinners. In the midst of our COVID pandemic, when these types of gatherings are risky or prohibited, fundraising may seem almost impossible. The good news is…
Play Everywhere Is Turning Sidewalks and Streets Into Playgrounds
Long before the coronavirus shut down parks and playgrounds, kids were hijacking streets and sidewalks and appropriating vacant lots to create their own play areas. They jumped rope, chalked hopscotch on sidewalks and turned any space large enough to build a cardboard fort into an impromptu battlefield. The nation even…
Games to Play With Others and Still Stay Safe
50 years ago, a ping pong tournament connected China to the world. Today, the table top tennis game is doing the same for families and neighbors. Social distancing may have put a halt to team sports, but games like ping pong, badminton, corn hole toss and tennis are allowing Americans…
A Plan for Your Elder Playground
Note: This is the third in a series of articles about play and playgrounds for seniors. Links to the previous posts are at the end of this article. ∼∼∼∼∼ Happily, we in the elder demographic are not likely to be admonished for eating sand or walking backwards up the actual…
A Case for Elder Playgrounds
Note: This is the second of three articles about play and playgrounds for seniors. Links to the series are at the end of this article ∼∼∼∼∼ Our smile-less masked world is a sort of backdrop begging to be painted over with happy scenes. With trepidation we’ve burst forth from our…
A Vision for Elder Playgrounds
Note: This is the first of three articles about play and playgrounds for seniors. Links to the series are at the end of this article. ∼∼∼∼∼ Our static moment of quarantine has been surprisingly elastic. Just as we acclimate and refine the art of stay-at-home lifestyle, society flirts with re-opening….
What You Should Know About Playgrounds and COVID-19
Note: Post updated July 6, 2020 As the nation begins to reopen, parents are understandably concerned about the risks to their children of contracting COVID-19 in parks and playgrounds. It’s a reasonable fear. We know that the coronavirus spreads when people cough, sneeze or just talk. Does this mean children…
Water Play That Lets Kids Be Engineers
There is a new thinking in water play design that has as much in common with the ubiquitous splash park as a neighborhood playground has with an adventure destination. We noted this trend several months ago in discussing the first season of the water play area at Knudsen Park in…
Magical Bridge Is Changing What a Playground Should Be
It was after the birth of her second daughter, developmentally disabled Ava, that Olenka Villarreal discovered how isolating a playground could be. The 34 playgrounds in Palo Alto, California where she lived were all ADA-complaint, but to Villarreal accessibility was not the same as usability. Her quest for a place…
Risky Play and the Study That Fueled a Movement
Meghan Talarowski “I hate taking my kids to the playground.” That’s not something you expect to hear from a person who researches and designs playgrounds for a living. Yet there was Meghan Talarowski on a TEDx stage, flashing a picture of one of those cheerfully colored, boxed-in, plasticized kiddie slides as she…
Find a Hippo, Create a Yarn Monster and Other Creative Ideas For Kids and Parents
With schools closed, parks and playgrounds off limits and group activities banned, parents everywhere are struggling to find new and creative ways to keep their children active. They’re turning to Facebook groups with names like Activities for Children During Isolation, Virtual Activities for Children and Youth and Best Ideas for…
