When children do not move and exercise, a variety of long-term problems arise. Obesity, lack of attention span during class, lack of ability to work as a team, lack of want to take risks. All research shows that without play, children grow up to be non-productive adults. We could not let our students be in this position, just because our playground was 12 years old, rotting, too small and as the kids say "too boring". We will ensure after this playground build that all of students are moving around during recess and after-school getting all of the benefits of PLAY!

We decided in April that our playground could not go another year without improvements. So in what maybe the fastest community build project ever, we raised the money, created a design, are recruiting the volunteers and will put up a new playground a week before school starts in the fall. We knew that we couldn't build another "boring" playground. So we asked our sixth graders to design the playground for us. They came up with wonderful and creative ideas. And although we could not safely include a trampoline or zip line : ), we did use all of the other ideas the kids had. You can see for yourself the design they came up with.

We looked around during recess and saw that not everyone was playing. In fact, many of the girls were just standing around talking not getting any exercise at all. This was just not acceptable to us. So we decided in April that by the beginning a next school year our children would have a new playground that was not "boring", but would be one where every student was hanging, climbing, swinging, sliding.

We need 100 volunteers of every shape, size and skill level to join us on August 17th to BUILD A PLAYGROUND IN A DAY!! Volunteers will be putting playground components together, replacing all of the mulch in the playground, playing with children so that their parents can volunteer and much more.