Allied Arts / Stanford Park
Camp Yale Epilogue
Camp Yale was quite a success. On days 4 and 5 we continued the positive momentum of the first three days with trampoline lessons, Roxaboxen house building in our creek bed, and more mosaic making, plus lots and lots of wild free play.
So, what’s the lasting legacy of Camp Yale 2010? I’ve identified two:
by Mike Lanza
Allied Arts / Stanford Park
Camp Yale, Day 3
For the first half of today, the kids engaged in wild free play once again. They just can’t get enough of that. They have settled on three main centers of play: the Slotwood house in our driveway, the trampoline in our back yard, and the playhouse in our back yard. Also, kids frequently come to the picnic table in the front yard to grab snacks or a cup of water.
Then, my artist friend Jaying Wang helped our kids make mosaics - one big one to put on our fence, and a “stepping stone” for each kid to take home. The big one is a design inspired by the book Roxaboxen depicting the play village that kids have been building in the creek by our house. Below is a photo of the mosaic we made at Camp Yale last year. That one features a quote from another favorite children’s book of mine, The Big Orange Splot.
by Mike Lanza
Allied Arts / Stanford Park
Camp Yale, Day 2
We started our day by walking to the San Francisquito Creek bed close to our house, which is totally dry this time of year. Paul Heiple of Acterra led a lively discussion of the creek. He taught us things like where the creek water comes from, what affects the erosion of the creek bank, what happens when the creek floods, what kinds of rocks we find there, and what kinds of plants we find there.
After Paul’s talk, the kids foraged and climbed the banks a bit, then they collected rocks for painting, and we went back to my yard (Camp Yale headquarters). There, some kids painted rocks, while others played in our back yard or built a Slotwood house in the front.
It was a fun day that flowed very well. The kids who didn’t know any others at the camp yesterday, when we started, got much more comfortable today. Three hours passed very quickly. The kids could really get used to this (in a good way...). Perhaps we could switch off between multiple parents and do this for most of the summer. Hmmm…
by Mike Lanza
Allied Arts / Stanford Park
Camp Yale, Day 1
[Note: For the second consecutive year, I’m running a neighborhood summer camp at my house on Yale Road in Menlo Park. Below are notes from our first day.]
Fellow Yale Roader and magician Hugh McDonald mesmerized us with his magic tricks, and he taught the kids a few, too. I got a great testimonial from a mom this evening: “My kids had a great time at Camp Yale today. Donny in particular is just raving about it. He loved Hugh. He is practicing his magic act with the coin to show his dad tonight ( I already saw it!!).”
Before and after Hugh’s show, the 12 attendees, ages 2-1/2 to 8, engaged in some wild free play. They built a Slotwood house, played street hockey, jumped on the trampoline, played a chase game, and played some sort of family-based role-playing game.
Many of the kids knew our yard and each other very well before coming today, so they hit the ground running. A couple of others didn’t know the other kids very well at first, so they started tentatively, but by the end of the day, they were feeling a lot more comfortable.
by Mike Lanza
Allied Arts / Stanford Park
Play Day & Parent Seminar at the Playborhood!
226 Yale Rd., Menlo Park, CA
Saturday, May 1
RSVP to for the Play Day and/or Parent Seminar
Play Day
3pm - 6pm
Bring your kids to play with us in our Playborhood! See how we’ve transformed our front and back yards into venues for everyday play. Fun activities include the following:
- draw on front yard white board
- play with vintage (circa late 1960s) hot wheels track and cars
- build huge structures with Slotwood, which is like life-sized Lincoln Logs
- play in sandbox
- play in fountain (also see this video)
- jump on in-ground trampoline
- do the following with our huge playhouse:
- climb up it (see this and this)
- slide down its slides (front and back of the playhouse)
- draw on its whiteboard walls inside
- hang out on the 2nd floor
- play chase games with our big beach balls in the back yard (see this and this)
- swing on the swing set (see this and this and this)
Parent Seminar
Neighborhood Play, Every Day
4pm - 5pm
Playborhood.com’s Mike Lanza will share his secrets with parents on how to give your kids a life of neighborhood play, everyday. He will show you how to:
- Simplify your kids’ lives
- Move to a play-friendly block
- Make a neighborhood hangout that draws kids to play outside every day
- Embrace technologies that get kids socializing face-to-face and playing outside
- Facilitate Self-Reliance, don’t control your kids
by Mike Lanza
Allied Arts / Stanford Park & Downtown North
Explorers in Our Own Neighborhood
Yesterday, my son Marco (5), niece Andrea, and I ventured down the San Francisquito creek bed about a mile from our house to Marco’s preschool. I’m sad and excited at the same time to say that it was a wonderful, frontier-like adventure.
I’m sad because we encountered absolutely no one on our hour plus trip down there. In fact, in my many visits to that creek, I’ve hardly ever seen anyone else there. Thus, I feel sad for all the kids who live around here and never get to experience our creek bed as we did.
On the other hand, it was wonderful because the creek bed is so beautiful, and because the desolation down there really made us feel like we were explorers.
by Mike Lanza
Allied Arts / Stanford Park
A Play Day & Parent Seminar in Menlo Park!
226 Yale Rd., Menlo Park, CA
Sunday, September 27
RSVP to Mike Lanza for the Play Day and/or Parent Seminar
Play Day
3pm - 5:30pm
Bring your kids to play with us in our Playborhood! See how we’ve transformed our front and back yards into venues for everyday play. Fun activities include the following:
- draw on front yard white board
- play with vintage (circa late 1960s) hot wheels track and cars
- build huge structures with Slotwood, which is like life-sized Lincoln Logs
- play in sandbox
- play in fountain (also see this video)
- play street hockey
- do the following with our huge playhouse:
- climb up it (see this and this)
- slide down its slides (front and back of the playhouse)
- draw on its whiteboard walls inside
- hang out on the 2nd floor
- play chase games with our big beach balls in the back yard (see this and this)
- swing on the swing set (see this and this and this)
Parent Seminar
Making Your Neighborhood Into a Playborhood
4pm - 5pm
Playborhood.com’s Mike Lanza will share his secrets with parents on how to make your neighborhood into a Playborhood. He will show you how to:
- Move to a play-friendly block
- Make a Place that draws kids to play outside every day
- Embrace digital technologies that get kids socializing and playing outside
- Show Up in your neighborhood to help make it a safe, nurturing, and fun place for your kids
by Mike Lanza
PAMP General
We’ve Changed Our Minds on Kindergarten Redshirting
My article on kindergarten redshirting (i.e. holding a child back a year before entering kindergarten) this past spring elicited heated comments on both sides of the debate. There, I announced that my wife and I had decided not to redshirt my son Marco, born in July of 2004.
Well, in the past week and a half, we’ve had a change of heart. We scrambled to find a spot in a good “Young 5s” or “Pre-K” program for him, and we found one. We just informed our neighborhood elementary school, Oak Knoll in Menlo Park, that he would not be attending this fall.
So, why did we change our minds?
by Mike Lanza
Shoreline West
A Happy Hour in the Neighborhood
Seven years ago we moved to our neighborhood and decided that we wanted to know our neighbors.
So, taking matters into our own hands, we launched a regular series of backyard happy hours for our neighbors and friends with the goal of having a casual drop-in/out event in our yard on a regular basis in the summer. Now, seven years later I look back on the impact of this simple event, and it is amazing:
- We know all the people on our block, almost everyone on the neighboring block, and the folks on the sides perpendicular to ours. Some of these people we are now very close with.
- When we walk through our neighborhood, go to the farmer’s market, or eat at local restaurants, we regularly see people that we know.
- I feel like I live in small town America not in a mid-size city like Mountain View.
This article is about helping you create that atmosphere in your neighborhood by sharing some simple instructions on how we run our happy hours so that you can do it too.
Allied Arts / Stanford Park
Home for Sale in my Playborhood
It’s three houses down and across the street from my infamous front yard and our surrounding Playborhood. 3 BR, 2 BA, $1.6m. for more info on the ‘hood. For info on the house, see for yourself.
by Mike Lanza
Allied Arts / Stanford Park
The Kindergarten Decisions: Neighborhood Public School or Not?
This fall, my son Marco will start kindergarten at our neighborhood public elementary school, Oak Knoll. So will our next-door neighbor Jonathan. So will the girl who lives behind us, Bailey. So will the kid around the corner, Eli. So will the kid one block away, Spencer. So will my good friend’s kid, Emma, who lives three blocks away.
Marco will ride his bike to school most days along with many of those kids. I fully anticipate that our kids will have a wonderful time playing outside here every day after riding back from school. All the groundwork we’ve laid in making outdoor play a habit here plus all the attractions we’re adding to our front and back yards (I’ll write more about these in future articles) will help assure that, but there’s no denying that going to the same school and biking to and from there will be great bonding experiences for these kids.
On the other hand, the kid a block down the street, Andrew, will start kindergarten this fall at a private school. I’m guessing he won’t have much of a relationship with any of those Oak Knoll kids. He hardly plays with the neighborhood kids now. Once kindergarten starts, he’ll get busier, so he probably won’t play with them then, either. His friends will be almost exclusively from his school and not from our neighborhood.
by Mike Lanza
Duveneck / St. Francis
Home Available in Iris Way Playborhood
[Editor’s Note: The author, Wendy Kandasamy, is the listing real estate agent for the property discussed in the article below. She works for Alain Pinel Realtors.]
I lived in a “Playborhood” long before I heard of this word. I live on Iris Way, which is a micro-community within the Green Gables area of Palo Alto. It is more than a beautifully tree-lined street. It really is truly a community! There are seniors, families with children of all ages, and young professional couples who were drawn to this street because of the charming homes, canopy trees, and close to Duveneck Elementary School.
However, it is the neighbors that are truly remarkable. We look after each other. I open my front doors to let my children out and the neighborhood kids in. Swings in the front yard are a standing invitation for children to just come by. You’ll see bikes and trikes on the driveways. There’s the “Duveneck Parade”, the neighborhood term referring to the children walking to their elementary school, on school days. Although there are block parties, we catch up with our neighbors as we walk with our children or dogs. In the summer, part of the street is blocked off regularly to let the children just play in the streets with neighbors all watching out for every child. There’s a beautiful house on the street on the market right now at 241 Iris Way. This is a rare opportunity to live in a “Playborhood”. We’d love to have a wonderful new neighbor who wants to be a part of our close-knit community.
Allied Arts / Stanford Park
9 Months Later - Is It a Playborhood Yet?
My family’s lived for nine months now in a home we spent 2-1/2 years searching for. We were determined to live on a block that had great Playborhood potential, and I was pretty sure we’d found it.
So, how’s it going? In brief, my verdict is that we’re right on the verge of becoming a bona-fide Playborhood now. I consider a Playborhood to be a place where children, ideally from more than one family, play outside on their own on a regular basis - i.e. at least a couple days a week.
At least three or four nights a week after dinner, I play with my two boys - Marco (4-1/2) and Nico (1-1/2) - in the street. We usually play street hockey, but we’ve also played basketball and t-ball. If it were only us out there, we would be no closer to being a Playborhood than when we moved in and I saw kids playing outside very rarely.
However, other families are starting to join in, too. And, most importantly, Marco and other toddlers are starting to take some independent initiative. Three nights ago was an excellent example of this.
by Mike Lanza
Allied Arts / Stanford Park & Linfield Oaks & The Willows & Crescent Park & Downtown North
What About the Creek Down the Street?
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we live in a land of wonderful public parks. There are countless web sites and books telling us how to take advantage of them. What’s more, we all know dozens of people who go there every weekend.
Unfortunately, almost all of these are not accessible to us and our kids by foot. In other words, getting there depends on planning and driving.
The picture to the right shows my sons at a beautiful creek scene. You might have a photo like this, too. What’s interesting about this one for me is that it was taken on the bank of San Francisquito Creek, which is within a five-minute walk from my house and thousands of other homes in the Palo Alto / Menlo Park area. And we took it on a beautiful Sunday afternoon (March 8).
by Mike Lanza
Palo Verde
South Palo Alto Playborhood Has Eichler for Sale
A street in the Palo Verde neighborhood of South Palo Alto well-known for having lots of kids and outdoor activity has a nice Eichler for sale. The address is 720 Holly Oak. A friend of mine and reader of this blog who has a 3-1/2-year-old boy just bought a home here because of its Playborhood reputation. So far, he’s very happy with his decision to purchase there (He’ll probably respond if you post questions as comments to this post.)
I’ve spent time on Holly Oak myself. I agree that it’s one of the few bonafide Playborhoods we have in Palo Alto and Menlo Park. I can’t say much about the house itself because I haven’t seen it.
If you check it out, please let us know what you think!
by Mike Lanza
Recent Comments
ctexashomes wrote, "It is sad that we have become so suburban that our children ..." in Explorers in Our Own Neighborhood
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