Allied Arts / Stanford Park & University South
Elementary Schools Are Enemies of Play
Young children have always had to deal with a sharp decrease in their free play time as they transitioned over a couple of years from no school to elementary school, which they attend about seven hours a day.
However, in decades past, schools recognized that children of that age need a lot of play to develop appropriately. They had ample recess breaks with free play every day during the school day, and they let children leave school behind them every day when they went home.
In recent years, though, elementary schools have become enemies of children’s play. Many are working to eliminate play at school recess and to eat away at the small amount of play time children have at home by assigning more and more homework.
by Mike Lanza
Allied Arts / Stanford Park
How We (Finally) Found a House to Buy
Whew! It’s taken us over two and a half years to find a house to buy, but we finally did it! In that time, we’ve lived in three different rented houses. We’ve investigated the blocks around at least 100 different homes for sale, and we’ve toured inside at least 50 of them.
So, what makes our new house on Yale Road, Menlo Park so special? Is it the house itself? Absolutely not. It’s OK for us, but nothing special. We’ve probably seen a dozen houses we like more.
by Mike Lanza
Crescent Park
Playing Until the Sun Goes Down
Remember playing in your neighborhood after dinner, until you couldn’t see the ball anymore? Well, last night, I played a game with my son Marco (3-1/2) and three other boys outside in our neighborhood until the sun went down. This is something I did countless times as a kid, and I’ve been longing for play like this in our neighborhood in Palo Alto. I want to tell you about what we did, and about how we got to the point where we could do something like this with our neighbors.
After dinner last night, Marco and I were riding our bikes around the block, and three brothers we know implored us to cross the street and come over to their house. After riding around their block with them a few times, they asked us to play “Red Rover.”
by Mike Lanza
College Terrace
Klutz Has a Toy Store in College Terrace!
Do you like Klutz toys? I love them! I admit that my infatuation started with the self-deprecating Yiddish name and their adult-oriented toys, but since I’ve become a parent, I’ve come to appreciate them even more.
Well, I’ve recently discovered that Klutz is based in Palo Alto and has a retail store in College Terrace, Palo Alto! It’s on College Avenue, a few storefronts up from JJ&F Market.
Certainly, I also really like other local toy stores like the Palo Alto Sport & Toy World on Waverley in PA, Diddams on Hamilton in PA, and Cheeky Monkey Toys on Santa Cruz Ave. in MP. However, I was thrilled to find the Klutz Store because of its unique focus on Klutz toys.
Klutz toys are distinctive because, like sporting goods, they are low-tech and often encourage physical activity, but unlike sporting goods, they are explicitly designed to spur creative invention.
by Mike Lanza
PAMP General
Neighborhood Reviews
See those house icons on the map above? Each one represents a home for sale in the Palo Alto / Menlo Park area. By clicking on one, you get a popup that gives you the address plus three links to:
- details about the home
- a form to submit a review of the neighborhood around the home
- Neighborhood Reviews, if any have been submitted
Also, note that the “Neighborhood Reviews” located below the map lists all homes for sale in text.
Since we recently launched this feature, we need reviews! Once we have many reviews, this site will become a valuable resource for families seeking homes in Playborhoods.
So, why would you submit a Neighborhood Review? Well, you may live close to the home for sale, and you may want another family with kids your kids’ ages to move in there. Or, you may be house hunting and you may want to help out other house hunters. Or, you may be a real estate agent or other person knowledgeable about neighborhoods, and you would like to help families who are seeking a Playborhood.
Whatever your reason, we could really use your help!
by Mike Lanza
PAMP General
Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques IV: Visit the Neighborhood and Talk to Neighbors
[NOTE: This the last in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques. The first article is an introduction to the topic, the second is about researching neighborhood reputations, and the third describes how I research online information about neighbors of a house for sale.]
If the larger neighborhood reputation and my online searching give me a pretty decent feeling about the immediate neighborhood around a house, I’ll visit there to look around and talk to neighbors. After all, for getting a feeling for a neighborhood, there’s no substitute for talking to neighbors in person and seeing what they actually do.
I’ve found that the best time to go - i.e. the best time to see kids play outside - is late afternoon, between 4 and 5:30, any day. I’ll go earlier during the winter, when the sun goes down early, and perhaps a bit later during the longest and hottest days of summer. Nothing is a better indicator of the potential of your kids playing in a neighborhood than seeing kids your kids’ ages playing there when you visit. So, as soon as I see this, without looking any further, the house becomes a candidate for purchase.
by Mike Lanza
PAMP General
Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques III: Research Neighbors Online
[NOTE: This the third in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques. The first article is an introduction to the topic, the second is about researching neighborhood reputations, and the fourth discusses what to look for and do when visiting a neighborhood around a home for sale.]
Because driving to a house for sale and nosing around there takes a lot of time, I search publicly available online information on close neighbors first to get some indication of whether kids my kids’ ages might be living there. After all, from kids’ point of view, preschoolers in particular, next-door neighbors are by far the most important, so if I can find that at least one kid my kids’ ages lives next-door, that makes it likely that I’ll spend the time to visit the house and neighborhood to get more information.
Be forewarned: the methods I describe here seem invasive, but I’m only searching for publicly available information, and I’m doing it for a noble cause - to find neighborhood playmates for my kids.
So here’s what I do:
by Mike Lanza
PAMP General
Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques II: Research Neighborhood Reputations
[NOTE: This the second in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques. The first article is an introduction to the topic, the third article is about researching neighbors online, and the fourth article discusses what to look for and do when visiting a neighborhood around a home for sale.]
Why is researching neighborhood reputations a “guerilla Playborhood hunting technique?” Isn’t this something everyone does?
Well, as it turns out, accurate neighborhood reputations are not easy to find, so doing a good job of this requires some active research. In The Hubris of Neighborhood Profiles I wrote last year about how neighborhood guides, or at least the one for Palo Alto compiled by the Palo Alto Weekly, are not critical enough. Every neighborhood gets a great review.
I also find that realtors’ pronouncements about neighborhoods are too uniformly rosy. Some good realtors will give you some useful critical information, but on the whole, realtors will oversell neighborhoods even more than they oversell houses.
In addition, I’ve found that parents’ casual comments about the quality of kids’ lives in a neighborhood aren’t very useful. They almost always say wherever they live is “great” for their kids. In order to get a useful information, you need to ask very specific questions.
by Mike Lanza
PAMP General
Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques I: Introduction
[NOTE: This the first in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques. The second article is about researching neighborhood reputations, the third article is about researching neighbors online, and the fourth article discusses what to look for and do when visiting a neighborhood around a home for sale.]
My wife and I have made “Neighborhood for Kids” - i.e. a Playborhood - our #1 criterion in searching for a home in Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Think about that for a moment. It makes searching for a house extremely difficult, given the information that the real estate industry provides us.
Basically, all that stuff other than price that we see on all the real estate sites and the newspapers is useless to us before we find a house in a neighborhood we like. Architectural style? Whatever. Bedrooms, baths, and square footage? All that may be important, but it’s *secondary*. None of these things can give our kids a good life like a Playborhood can.
by Mike Lanza
PAMP General
A Reggio-Emilia Preschool, Italian-Style (or why Bing Nursery School may not be perfect…)
[EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve been out of it for two weeks. I had hip resurfacing surgery back on March 26, then I was swamped working on the video below. I’m doing very well now, limping but doing just about everything again. I’m sorry for the hiatus, but I’m back, stronger (and more cantankerous) than ever...]
I just shot and edited the video below about La Piccola Scuola Italiana (LPSI), a wonderful Reggio-Emilia inspired preschool in San Francisco. I am very happy with my son’s preschool, Bing Nursery School, one of the most prestigious, sought-after nursery schools in the US. However, I prefer LPSI. Unfortunately, we live in Palo Alto, CA, 40 minutes away from LPSI.
Why do I prefer LPSI to Bing?
by Mike Lanza
PAMP General
Picking a Preschool: Play-based vs. Structured is One Choice, But There are Many More
A lot can be written about finding the right school for your child - public vs. private, secular vs. religious, coop vs. traditional, and of course play-based vs. structured. There’s a wide spectrum in all of those areas plus other specialized programs, and where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, the variety of options can be overwhelming. But let’s say, for the sake of simplification that we’re searching for a largely play-based environment for our children during their early years. What then?
Before my husband and I decided to try for a baby, I naively scoffed at new parents fretting about where to send their kids to school; I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about - and why on earth was it such a big deal to get kids into “the right preschool”? Then a couple of years later, we made our decision to start a family, I soon became pregnant, and lo and behold, people were already warning me: “Have you gotten on any waiting lists yet?” They said, with obvious tension in their voices. I shrugged in reply. “You really should,” they responded.
Crescent Park
Hot Wheels on the Sidewalk!
My son Marco and I have been having the time of our lives ever since our first eBay shipment of Hot Wheels track arrived a few days ago.
I decided to get him the same kind of track that I got back around 1970 rather than the track Mattel sells today. Perhaps this is just for sentimental reasons, but I have another rationale: the old sets are just track and other parts that can be configured in myriad ways. The new sets have departed from the concept of modular parts, and are more like kits. This is similar to the change in Lego over the past few decades.
by Mike Lanza
PAMP General
Social Class and Neighborliness
The neighborhoods with the nicest homes in Palo Alto and Menlo Park are very quiet. Very, very quiet. I’m talking almost-never-talk-to-your-neighbor quiet. So, they’re not Playborhoods (i.e. neighborhoods where kids go outside and play), regardless of whether kids live there or not.
That’s the conclusion my wife and I have come to, by and large, after two plus years of house hunting here.
Of course, we want a house in a Playborhood, and as for the house. we would like lots of interior space - at least 3000 square feet. We’ve discovered that finding both of these things is nearly impossible. We’re square pegs trying to fit into a round hole.
The fact is that, overall, the owners of these 2+ million dollar homes are not very “neighborly,” at least when they’re compared to owners in other neighborhoods with much less expensive homes.
by Mike Lanza
PAMP General
Conversation With David Solnick
I recently had coffee with David Solnick, Chair of the Palo Alto Architectural Review Board (ARB), at Caffe Del Dogge on University Avenue in Palo Alto. I wanted to know how Palo Alto might get a new urbanist development like The Waters or a retrofit co-housing community like N Street. These both represent very innovative approaches to housing that result in very vibrant communities and great neighborhood lives for kids.
by Mike Lanza
Barron Park
A Pack of Boys Playing in Nature!
On the afternoon of Sunday, February 24, 2008, I saw something I’ve never seen in Palo Alto: a large group (6) of boys, ages around 8-11, playing alone, with no adults around, among the trees of Bol Park in the Barron Park neighborhood of Palo Alto. They were playing some sort of tag-like game for at least a half an hour. What’s more, it was drizzling outside at the time, so it wasn’t the best weather for playing outside.
Yes, I know things like this happened all the time decades ago (to people like me at least), but it’s simply the best display of free play I’ve seen here in recent memory in Palo Alto or Menlo Park. Here’s what’s unique and heartwarming:
by Mike Lanza
Recent Comments
Mike Lanza wrote, "A good friend who has a fifth grader at Addison told me ..." in Elementary Schools Are Enemies of Play
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