Our "Playborhood"

My neighbor Sarah (Robert's Mom) introduced me to the concept of a Playborhood awhile back. Basically, you want to encourage interaction with your neighbors and free-play. Kids running around and playing together, inventing their own games, that sort of thing. It appeals to me, BIG time.

The Playborhood blog has some great articles discussing how to get back to that era of free-play, rather than adult sponsored interaction. (Use the pulldown menu entitled "Show all categories". I was reading them (instead of working) the other day and realized that we have that in our neighborhood! In fact, its one of the things I love about our neighborhood.

We go to the park pretty regularly and we always run into other families we know. Three days this week when I got home from work we played with our neighbors Claire and Robert. When we came home on Thursday they were actually in our yard. Robert was playing on the slide while Claire pushed the doorbell a few hundred times in the belief that we'd finally come out and play. Meanwhile other families were coming home from work or walking home from the park and they'd stop by for a visit. When we bought the slide I purposefully put it in the front yard, hoping that it would encourage play amongst all the kids. And it worked!

One of my favorite things right now is watching Anthony play with the other kids. He has so much fun. At the park Wednesday he played with Emma, who was 3. He followed her up the jungle-gym and they rode the side-by-side down together, giggling hysterically.

PS Sorry I don't have a great picture of the kids playing. I was too busy supervising the Cozy-Coupe and blowing bubbles to handle a camera, too. The Cozy-Coupe is Robert's. Anthony loves it, though. I'll have to keep an eye out on the garage sales for one of our own.