My friend Sara was just telling a few of us about Playborhood.com, started by a Bay Area dad she met while attending a cool workshop down south. He has a strong belief that kids need unstructured, spontaneous, and (for older kids) unsupervised play–and safe places for doing so.
The website is a collection of stories about kids and adults who exemplify these ideas as well as communities that are working by intention and design to create such places. Additionally, the website provides good parenting resources, many specifically relevant to the benefits of play.
Sounds awesome to me. I can hardly wait until we (as a family) are mature enough for some unsupervised play. And I hope we live in a community that supports this goal. Right now, I can usually walk a couple rooms away for as many minutes with my two alone together.
Berkeley has its own site at berkeley.playborhood.com. One section of the website allows people to let potential home buyers know how kid friendly the neighborhood is. Brilliant.
Please take a minute to check it out and leave comments on what you think of it. Maybe you have ideas to make it better? Or a story that you think would be perfect to share with other like-minded, play focused people in the area?
As Sara says, “Thanks for checking it out. Keep playing!!!”
