School recess is an exhilarating time for most students – a few minutes of running, shouting, and free play in the middle of a structured day.  But the playground can also be stressful when disagreements arise amongst children who do not know how to handle the confrontation.  One Illinois school is empowering their students to resolve conflicts on their own by implementing the Peaceful Playgrounds Program, which provides students with various avenues to work out their differences.  Click here to read more about the new-and-improved recess at Whittier Elementary, and then check out the Peaceful Playgrounds Program website by clicking here.

When asked what the most nerve-racking part of building or remodeling a playground is, most people will probably yell “surfacing!”  With so many options to choose, varying costs to consider, and concerns about fall safety and accessibility, it can be tough to choose the “just right fit” for your playground.  Now an advocate for inclusive playspaces is pioneering a new material – recycled car tires chopped to bits and placed under vinyl matting.  The product is called SMARTE, and is creating fans at the few sites it has been placed.  Click here to read more about SMARTE, and then click here for facts on more traditional playground surfacing such as mulch, poured-in-place rubber, and even accessible turf.

Hernando wants to be known as a city that cares about its children -- a Playful City USA.

City officials voted Tuesday night to declare Sept. 29 as Hernando's annual Play Day, as a step toward perhaps gaining a Playful City designation.

Play Day, aimed at children under 13, will run from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Conger Park, which contains the city's biggest playground.

The city has applied to KaBOOM!, a national advocate of children's playgrounds, to become one of 30 cities to be named a Playful City USA.

Last spring during a classroom break at Fairview School, Sarah Harper said, she wondered how her church could give community children a place to play. Around Pleasant Grove, pastures are many but parks are few.

Her brainstorm was to publish a newspaper and give it in exchange for donations to a playground fund. She told her mother, Karen Foster Harper.

Harper said her daughter dreamed up the paper and has kept it going every week since April 1.

(Decatur Daily photo by Jonathan Palmer)

All the fresh coats of paint and new landscaping brought plenty of smiles.

But it was the new playground installed Saturday that brought widespread rounds of praise from kids, parents and teachers at Seattle's Northgate Elementary School.

"I'm so thankful for the playground being built," said 5-year-old Wesley Wong.

There wasn't much for young Wesley to do except watch more than 300 volunteers do their version of an extreme makeover at the 53-year-old school, which has about 250 students from kindergarten to fifth grade.

A group of real estate developers, builders, architects and brokers who belong to the Washington state chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP) organized the massive work party.

A year after administrators at Villalovoz Elementary School were forced to pull faulty playground equipment out of the schoolyard, students have taken matters into their own hands.

This week they stuffed old clothes with hay to create 27 scarecrows to compete in the annual Dell'Osso Family Farm scarecrow contest over the next month.

The school has a chance to win thousands of dollars in prize money if one of its scarecrows beats out the 100 on display. The farm will also donate $1 for every combo ticket purchase from visitors with a Villalovoz contest flyer.

(Photo by Thomas Hawk via Flickr)

More than 25 parents, teachers and community volunteers turned up at the new playground space at Sawtooth Elementary School on Saturday to help put it all together.

They poured concrete footings, set up equipment, shoveled gravel, put down ground cover and then poured ground-up chips of old tires which were dyed a bright blue over the entire playground, creating a safe, cushioned and fun place for kids to play.

Indianapolis linebacker Gary Brackett helps refurbish an elementary school field in Indiana.

The Home Depot NFL Neighborhood MVP program will reward 17 players, one for each week of the regular season, with a football field refurbishment or a playground build in their local market and a donation to the charity of their choice. Each player will work with representatives from KaBOOM!, a national nonprofit that envisions a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America, and volunteers from The Home Depot to complete the field refurbishment and playground projects.

At the end of the year, one player will be honored as The Home Depot NFL Neighborhood MVP of the Year. The MVP of the Year will receive a $25,000 donation to the charity of his choice and will be recognized during Super Bowl XLII week. The MVP will be selected through a national consumer voting contest and by a Blue Ribbon Panel of judges; online fan voting and the Blue Ribbon Panel will each constitute 50 percent of the total vote. Fans can log on to www.homedepot.com/NFL and cast their votes for the most deserving player starting Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 22.

See some video on the NFL site.

The words that came tumbling out of Principal of Wheatland Elementary School Kevin Lane’s mouth during a Grade 6 math class spread like wildfire around the school.

The kids will be knocking on doors around the community in order to get the chance of a lifetime to shave their principals hair. The child that raises the most money for their read-a-thon to raise dollars for a much needed new playground gets to do the deed.

“The school has been fundraising for four years now so it has been a longtime coming. Adding the playground is not only great for the students but people from the community are also welcome to use the upgraded equipment,” said Lane.

Lane told the students if they collectively raise $10,000, matching last year’s efforts, the fundraiser with the highest total dollar amount will get to take the clippers to their principal’s head. If the students raise $7,000 they will take part in a mystery surprise.

The children of Edgehill Center recently created drawings of their dream playground, complete with slides, swings and a rock wall.

Their ideas will be the basis for a new KaBoom! Playground to be built at the Edgehill Center in October with help from country music artists Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn of the multi-platinum duo Brooks & Dunn. The center's playground is no longer safe for daily use.

The playground project is in recognition of Brooks & Dunn as the 2007 recipients of The Home Depot Humanitarian Award at the 42nd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards. The award recognizes country music artists who serve others, have a generous spirit and help build the dreams of those in need.

Northrop Park’s state-of-the-art EVOS playground structure was opened to residents last week. Many youngsters jumped at the opportunity to try out the new playground equipment Tuesday during the rescheduled Northrop Park ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Five years ago, the Thief River Fall Kiwanis Club became aware of the need for playground equipment in the area of the old Northrop School. Barb Natvik, then president of the Kiwanis Club, sold her fellow club members on the idea of raising funds to install playground equipment at the park.

Over the past five years, the Kiwanis Club has received significant contributions from several local foundations, individuals and business. In January 2007, it was determined that enough funds were available to begin installation.

Are you feeling in a "playspace rut" and just want some new ideas about what a child's playspace can be? Take a look at Belgium designer Allain Gilles' thinking.

"Too often, playgrounds are seen as boring and are deserted after a while. Hence, the idea to have a solid structures allowing for different games to be rotated between playgrounds, or even within every playground itself. So the various elements are held to the ground by a series of studs evenly embedded within the foundation of the playground itself. It goes without saying that this grid is a constraint that has to be taken into account during the conception of each interchangeable element. It plays a role in the determination of the size and shape of each game, just as much as the ergonomics and general legislations."

You can see a summary of what he's doing on a design blog:

http://www.dexigner.com/design_news/playground-for-urban-cities-in-2015.html

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Allain's vision. Do you think he's on to something here? Is he off his rocker? Log in and comment!

It was Gary Brackett's day off from football, but he still enjoyed getting dirty.
 
The Indianapolis Colts middle linebacker joined volunteers to lay 62,000 square feet of sod in a refurbishment of the football field at John Marshall Middle School, 10101 E. 38th St.

"I'm a blue-collar worker. I bring my hard hat and come out here and get to work," Brackett said. "The rest of the guys, they get to hand out books and sign autographs. I get to lay sod."

Read more about Gary and the day.

Here are the before and after photos of the field.

MONTREAL — When Edmonton's Greenfield School officially opens its new playground with a ceremony later this month, there will be no swings for parents to push or seesaws for children to clamber on.

Instead, the $200,000 play area has features such as Wobble Pods, Swiggle Stix and an Orbiter Spinner, which together resemble a suspension bridge, twisted and sliced every which way. There is also a massive, spiral rock-climbing wall.

Greenfield's playground, designed by Landscape Structures, represents some of the latest thinking in playground design, which aims to get children playing harder and longer by tempting their brains as much as their bodies.

With the push to get children active, playground innovation has suddenly taken on new importance. Designers are wising up to something parents have long suspected: Traditional playgrounds are boring to most children past age 5 or 6 - especially in today's climate, in which concerns over safety dominate design and limit risk-taking features.

The ePhilanthropy Foundation has recognized the KaBOOM! website as a finalist for its Best Online Community Building/Volunteerism and/or Activism Campaign. That means everyone who is working to make sure there is a great place to play within walking distance of every child (that's YOU) is exemplifying inspiring, striking and outstanding efforts made to support their charity through non-revenue generating online campaigns that build community, volunteerism and/or promote activism for a cause. (Yowza. How's that for a long sentence?) This award honors the organization that uses exceptional online philanthropic strategies, techniques and opportunities to support community building, volunteerism and/or activism.

This is about you and what you are building on the KaBOOM! web site. Ballots are due Monday, Sept. 17th so just take a minute and vote now. You can only vote once so be sure forward this to all of your friends.

  Vote for KaBOOM! today!

What first got you interested in becoming a part of this mission? Most people have something that made this "click" with them. Share your story with the rest of us on the KaBOOM! forums.

When actress Jennie Garth was a child, she wasn't completely a girly-girl.

"I was a tomboy," she told The ShowBuzz, "but I was still always really feminine. I loved horses and animals; riding my bike outside. I did a lot of playing outside, which is something I think kids today are lacking."

Garth, who has three children of her own, says it's important for kids to have a place to play outside. That's why she's teaming up with the non-profit organization KaBOOM! to help build playgrounds around the country.

"Yesterday I took two of my daughters to South Los Angeles, and in the morning when we started there was just a big empty open field in the back of this apartment building," she said. "By the end of the day, there was this awesome fun playground for kids to play in that is safe and protected and their parents can watch them play."

Rain falls from purple clouds at the touch of a button. Overgrown swizzle sticks entice kids to spin and spin and spin without falling down. At this state-of-the-art playground, slides shoot through scenic mountain rock. A big blue ring is actually a retro merry-go-round. The swing set looks like a slim modern-art sculpture.

The new $1 million Stapleton Central Park playground, which opened this weekend, represents the kid space of the future, designers say, where form is as important as function, and function must exercise everything from muscles and minds to fantasy and imagination.

A rare experience happened Thursday at Brownsville Elementary School.

Just days away from heading back to school, students were waiting restlessly outside classrooms — happy to be at school before it started.

But, it wasn't their education the students were excited about. It was the new blue, green and red playground equipment that sat shining in the sun Thursday afternoon.

"It's awesome," said third-grader Daniel Sierman.

His friends, 9-year-olds Cameron Lax and Cole Bender, agreed as they stood on the sidelines of the play equipment, watching their classmates break in the slide and mini rock wall.