Palo Alto / Menlo Park Forums

Playing in the Rain

2008-11-09T23:02:01-08:00

Then yesterday, it looked like it was going to rain before we left home to go ride bikes into downtown Palo Alto, so we put all our rain gear and went out anyway. Sure, we hit some rain, fairly heavy at times, but we had a great time. We even saw a huge rainbow when things cleared up a bit!

Today, we went shopping for rain gear, and we got some great stuff. I can now cover him, head-to-toe, with excellent, comfortable rain gear. He now has no excuses for refusing to play in the rain.

I’m very happy we’ve been doing this. Kids don’t dislike being in the rain unless adults teach them to dislike it. I want Marco to go outside any day, regardless of the weather.

In the last week since the rain started here, my four-year-old son Marco and I have played in the rain twice. First, on a day when the rains were coming down so hard our street formed enormous puddles, Marco and I put on boots and splashed around. I had forgotten how much fun sloshing around in puddles could be.

Allied Arts Scores High on the Trick-or-Treater Index

2008-11-03T23:54:00-08:00

Parents drove their kids in from many places, especially low-income towns East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park. In addition, though, Princeton Road was the go-to place for all Allied Arts trick-or-treaters. Residents blocked off the street with cones, so revelers swarmed the entire street.

Many houses were party centers. One served cocktails to parents, another played movies on a large screen (so did I on Yale, but to a more discriminating audience), and another played dance music on big speakers after most trick-or-treaters had gone to bed.

Yes, I admit it, I was a bit jealous of Princeton Road, but we’ll be rocking more on our block on Yale in the next few years as our dozen or so kids, all six and under, get a few years older.
In a recent post on Playborhood.com I wrote about the “Trick-or-Treater” index, a measure of a neighborhood’s child-friendliness based on the number of trick-or-treaters visiting a house on Halloween.

Well, my street’s results are in: Yale Road in the Allied Arts neighborhood of Menlo Park scored 200. That’s very good. However, just one block away, our friends and rivals on Princeton Road had a world-class sort of night. One family reported giving out 500 pieces of candy to trick-or-treaters!

Elementary Schools Are Enemies of Play

2008-06-04T23:51:00-08:00

Recess: Schools Work to Eliminate Play at School
Numerous schools across the US have eliminated recess entirely or reduced the amount of time to devoted to it. This is true despite the numerous research studies that show that recess actually helps elementary school children learn better in school.

An organization called Rescuing Recess has recently been formed to bring recess back to schools, and it is sponsored by such organizations as the Cartoon Network, the National Parent Teacher Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Education Association. That’s quite an impressive set of supporters.

A National Parent Teacher Association press release announcing the formation of Rescuing Recess states that 40 percent of American elementary schools have either eliminated or are considering eliminating recess.

In addition, many schools like Palo Alto’s Addison Elementary, are re-engineering recess to take all the fun out of it. For instance, children at Addison can’t touch each other in any way, so playing tag or even high-fiving could result in a suspension.

According to a New York Times article, children at Oakdale School in Connecticut can’t play competitive games, and were prohibited from playing with a ball until parents protested and were able to get a non-competitive, supervised form of kickball instituted twice a week.

Children are still encouraged to be active, according to the principal, and are “free to walk the grounds with the school nurse, or depending on the day, sing in the chorus, play chess or pick up litter.”

Homework: Schools Eat Away at Play at Home
In a previous article on Playborhood.com, Sandra Hofferth notes that 6-12 year-olds spent 25% more time doing homework in 2003 than they did in 1997. That’s on top of increases of 144% for 6-8 year-olds and 9% for 9-12 year-olds between 1981 and 1997. The actual averages in 2003 are just over 30 minutes a day for 6-8 year-olds and just over 50 minutes for 9-12 year-olds.

Despite this trend, no one can point to research that says that homework actually helps elementary school kids perform better academically. No correlation between homework and performance has been found. (See this article for a great overview of the evidence, or lack thereof.) Nada. Zilch.

You may have heard the commonly cited rule of thumb about how much homework is “appropriate” for students - 10 minutes per night per grade, so that a first grader should get 10 minutes per night, a second grader should get 20 minutes per night, and so on.

The person responsible for this rule is Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, who is perhaps the most famous academic researcher on the benefits of homework. Ironically, in his popular book on the subject, The Battle Over Homework, he states that there is no evidence that homework improves academic performance for elementary school students. His recommendation for homework every night for elementary school students is based not on research evidence but on his intuition that it helps them develop time management skills. Intuition. He has no evidence. Thanks, but no thanks, Professor Cooper.

We Can Work to Reverse This Trend
So, schools are robbing children of their childhoods. They play less and suffer the effects of this, but according to the research, they get no benefit from playing less. What can we do to fight this trend?

Fortunately, there are many examples of schools and parents fighting back successfully. For instance, Denise Clark Pope of Stanford University’s School of Education has started a movement called ”Stressed Out Students” (SOS) that puts reduced homework at the centerpiece of its recommendations. Many schools have recently announced reduced homework policies, citing SOS as their guide. SOS runs an annual conference for principals to show them how to implement their recommendations.

Oak Knoll Elementary School of Menlo Park is surrounded on all sides by some of the most competitive, homework-heavy elementary schools in America, but it has a very well-articulated “reduced homework” policy. Principal David Ackerman has the full support of parents in his community, and Oak Knoll’s test scores indicate that it’s keeping up with its neighbors academically.

In the final analysis, vocal parents get the school policies they want. Addison and Oak Knoll, two schools within a couple of miles of each other, have taken the very different paths they have on this issue because they’re doing what their parents have requested. So, if you believe your elementary school should have real recess and a no homework or reduced homework policy, you need to fight for these things or move to a school that already has them, as I just did.

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 ...

Elementary Schools Are Enemies of Play

2008-06-04T23:51:00-08:00

A Reggio-Emilia Preschool, Italian-Style (or why Bing Nursery School may not be perfect…)

2008-04-14T11:06:00-08:00

I have four reasons:

While both are Reggio-Emilia inspired, LPSI is run by people who went to the best Reggio-Emilia schools in the world - in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy. Bing is run by people who have studied this approach from Stanford University in the United States. So, LPSI has the Reggio approach running through its veins more than Bing, and it works fabulously. This fact is quite evident in the video.
LPSI is small and family-like, while Bing is much larger and laboratory-like. Classes at LPSI have 12 students each, while classes at Bing have 36. Kids get to know each other much better at LPSI, and teachers (and administrators and cooks!) regularly hug and kiss the kids.
LPSI has a cultural/linguistic theme, while Bing doesn’t. That cultural/linguistic theme is Italian, and it gives the whole community more of a unifying purpose than just a great preschool. Thus, the parents, Italians and non-Italians included, form an exceptionally tight community. The school is not just about the kids. It’s about the kids and Italian language and Italian culture. If you care at all for the latter two, having this theme creates more bonds among parents, kids, teachers, and administrators.
LPSI is Italian. Yes, I’m Italian-American, but even if you’re not, you’ll have to admit that Italian language and culture are pretty wonderful, aren’t they? Besides, what other preschool can boast that they have their own cooks from Italy who cook gourmet organic Italian lunches for students (and staff) every day?

LPSI, flush from the success of their fundraiser last weekend, is considering expansion, either to a K-8 school in San Francisco or to another preschool in Palo Alto or elsewhere in the Bay Area. I vote for the latter. How about you?
[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?

Making Our Front Yard Into an Outdoor Family Room

2008-08-28T13:35:00-08:00

We live in the suburbs, where the closest bar is about a half a mile away, and the closest cafe is about a mile away. No retail zoning exists closer than that bar. So, there’s pretty much no chance that any retail establishment will fulfill the role of third place for our neighborhood.

So, my wife and I are going to try something pretty radical - we’re in the process of redesigning our front yard on Yale Road in the Allied Arts neighborhood of Menlo Park to be like an outdoor family room. Our goal is for multiple neighbors to be hanging out in our front yard everyday. We want to provide kids with a place to play and learn, and we want to provide parents with a place to socialize with each other and with their kids.

So, how do we do this? Because the whole idea of inviting social interaction in a front yard is so foreign in our society, this requires an awful lot of thought and planning. What will attract kids initially to check our outdoor family room out? What will attract parents initially? What will keep them coming back? How do we indicate to neighbors that it’s OK to hang out there on their own, without asking us? How do we empower them to make their own impact on it?

I definitely have lots of concrete ideas about this, but I want to hold them close to my vest for now until they’re closer to being realized. Trust me, though - we’re on the verge of doing something very exciting for neighborhood life here at Yale Road! Stay tuned…

We don’t have a family neighborhood hangout where we live. Chances are, you don’t either.

What do I mean by a “family neighborhood hangout?” I long for a place in our neighborhood where parents and kids can go to hang out with other parents and kids - a place for spontaneous, casual socializing. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg calls these “Third Places,” (see his book, The Great Good Place) behind the First Place, home, and the Second Place, work.

If you live in a city or a small town, you might have a “Cheers” type of local bar or cafe close to your house. However, today, most local bars and cafes have very little spontaneous social interaction. Recall the words from the TV show’s theme song, “You wanna go where everyone knows your name.” Do you know of any public place where you can just drop in and be fairly sure you’ll have a conversation with someone you know and like?

Traffic Restriction in Menlo Park: I Used to Hate It, Now I Love It

2008-08-01T11:14:00-08:00

In fact, I’ve been living there for over a month now, and I’m only now figuring out all the roads.

The upside of all this traffic restriction here is that we usually go tens of minutes without seeing a car drive down the road. On my block, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car pass by that didn’t start or stop someplace in the block. In other words, it’s as if we live in a cul-de-sac - we have no pass-through traffic. However, unlike living in a cul-de-sac, we can easily access destinations in either direction from our house.

Because of the meager traffic we have here, my four-year-old son Marco and I go bicycling an awful lot in our neighborhood. In this last month, he has gained a tremendous amount of confidence in handling his bike and navigating the roads. We usually ride to downtown Menlo Park now rather than drive, even though we live more than a mile away.

In addition, in biking around, Marco and I have gotten to know many families here. Almost every night, we run into someone we know and hang out with them for a bit.

I’ve always hated traffic restriction practices in Menlo Park. Examples are:

Sand Hill Road Extension: This seemed like an obvious need to me from the moment I moved here in 1981, but it took 20 more years. And, what they finally built doesn’t connect Sand Hill to Alma, which drives me nuts every time I’m on Sand Hill heading toward El Camino.
Willow Road Extension: This (extending to El Camino), too, has always seemed obvious to me, but we’ll probably never get this one.

Now, though, I’m living in a traffic restriction mecca of Menlo Park, and I’m seeing this from a different perspective. In fact, I’m loving it! I live in Allied Arts, where getting to points on adjacent Sand Hill Road, such as Stanford Shopping Center, is way more difficult than one might assume.

How We (Finally) Found a House to Buy

2008-05-21T08:28:00-08:00

True to my promise in other articles on Playborhood, we’ve chosen a house with our children’s quality of life as our first priority. For us at least, that means our children’s opportunity for a rich neighborhood life with other kids is most important. After that, our other highest priorities are school district (but with our own criteria for what makes a good school district) and walkability to retail and other important places.

In this article, I want to tell the story of how we found this house and how we came to a decision to buy it.

In my Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques article series, I describe three steps that we’ve been using to search for a Playborhood around a home for sale: 1) research neighborhood reputations, 2) research neighbors of promising homes for sale online, and 3) visit the neighborhood and talk to neighbors. I discuss each of these steps below for this house.

Research Neighborhood Reputations
Yale Road is in the Allied Arts neighborhood of Menlo Park. We’re friends with two families there: one on College Avenue by Blake (about three blocks away), and another on Princeton Road (about a block and a half away). So a great deal of what we know of Allied Arts we know from them. Both families love their immediate blocks, where there are lots of kids playing, particularly on Princeton, which is just one block away from Yale. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean Yale Road has lots of kids playing, but it does indicate that the neighborhood has a certain tendency to have this.

In both places, our friends tell us that Halloweens are very, very active.

Also, they and others told us that people often walk to the retail shops in downtown Menlo Park from there, and indeed, it’s less than a mile away - about a 10 minute walk. On walkscore.com, the Yale house gets a score of 71, which is very good for a suburban residence.

Finally, and perhaps most important from a neighborhood perspective, we’ve been very impressed by what we’ve heard about Oak Knoll Elementary School, which is the public elementary school our kids would go to (unless over-enrollment problems in Menlo Park force us to go elsewhere). Like all schools in Menlo Park and Palo Alto, it has great test scores, but what makes it stand out is that it has a reduced homework policy thanks to its visionary principal, David Ackerman. I’ll be writing about this topic in a separate article soon, but here I’ll just say that educational researchers have not been able to identify any correlation between homework in the elementary years and student achievement, so homework in those years seems to be a waste of time that cuts into children’s playtime.

Research Neighbors of Promising Homes for Sale Online
I received frequent email alerts of homes that I might be interested in from my brokers and from Movoto.com. When I received these, I would scan the prices, bedrooms, baths, square footage, and location (which from my local knowledge I could usually map to a neighborhood). Whenever I saw a promising house in a neighborhood I liked, I would research next-door neighbors of the house as I describe in an article on this topic. In our case, I was looking for preschoolers and parents likely to have kids in the future, since our kids are 3-1/2 and 6 months, and we plan to have more.

In this case, when I saw the alert for the Yale house, I found it appealing enough to do next-door neighbor research on Zillow.com and Intelius.com. For the neighbor on one side I Googled the parents and found a birth announcement in 2006 in which an older brother was mentioned. Great news!!! Then, I Googled the neighbors on the other side and found the personal home page of the owner, in which he showed wedding pictures from the summer of last year. I guessed that a newly married couple buying a nice 3+ bedroom house in Menlo Park would be having children soon.

So, my online neighbor research was a home run - it was likely that both next-door neighbors would have kids our kids’ ages. This was definitely enough good information to warrant my taking the next step, a neighborhood visit.

Visit the Neighborhood and Talk to Neighbors
When I visited the immediate neighborhood around the Yale house for the first time, the first thing I saw was two neighbors and a toddler girl hanging out talking. Good. I joined their conversation, telling them that my wife and I were interested in buying the house for sale, and because I have two preschoolers, I wanted to know about others who lived around there.

Since I was talking to a mother of a toddler, I got a rundown on the feeling of the neighborhood and the kid population of houses close to her. I was impressed, both by her friendliness and by what she told me about preschoolers there. After that, I knocked on the doors of the next door neighbors of the house for sale. I spoke to the father whose child had a birth announcement two years ago, and indeed he spoke ...

Blocks w/ Spontaneous Play in Palo Alto or Menlo Park

2007-11-21T05:22:00-08:00

So, *please* post your recommendations as comments to this article. I have some recommendations from Playborhood Survey respondents that I will share on this site shortly.

Also, of course, please comment on anything else that strikes you about the inquiry and summary of responses…

The Inquiry: blocks w/ spontaneous play?

My wife, 15-month son and I are currently living in San Francisco, but we’re looking to move to Palo Alto (preferably) or Menlo Park. The number one motivation for moving by *far* is quality of life for kids.

We’ve talked to a lot of parents in PA and MP who say that their kids’ lives are totally ruled by appointment calendars - you know, piano lessons, sports practices, play dates, etc. We’re *horrified* by this prospect.

Sooo, we’re making a concerted effort to find ahouse on a block that has lots of babies and parents who want to have more kids (to be friends w/ our future kids - we’re trying for more), and an atmosphere of outside spontaneous play. You know - playing kickball on the streets, hide-and-go-seek from yard to yard, and basketball and hopscotch in driveways.

Do any of you live on blocks like this? Do you know of anyone else who does? Where are these blocks? Better yet, do any of you know of available large (4+ BR, 3000 sq ft +) houses in these blocks?

Yes, we’re fishing, but we definitely need help.

Thanks in advance…

- Mike Lanza

Summary of Responses
Boy, this has been a very interesting topic!!! It has certainly generated a lot of responses.

The picture I get is that totally scheduled lives for kids are the norm in the Palo Alto/Menlo Park area, especially as houses get bigger and house prices go up. This seems very weird to me, since I always thought that people with money had more choices in life to do what they want. Apparently, they’re not choosing for their kids to have maximum fun, to learn to be creative (remember making up games???), to acquire excellent social skills, and to be physically fit. I don’t get it. [If anyone wants to discuss this topic in particular, I have a *lot* to say.]

The reasons that people gave for the lack of spontaneous play are:

competitive parents (leads to full schedules)
materialistic parents (?)
not enough young kids in the area
houses that are too big and comfortable (smaller houses force kids to go out and play)
big back yards (keep kids in their back yards rather than their front yards)
too much homework (do kids who don’t go outside have more homework?)

Also, note that almost 90% of recommendations were in Menlo Park, with the balance going to Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, and San Francisco. Since “Palo Alto” is half of the name of this group, Palo Alto made a *very* poor showing. Does this mean that Palo Alto is a really bad place to live if you want your kids to play outside? I fear this is the case, but I hope not…

My wife and I had been prepared to pay for one of those higher priced places, but we may end up in a “lower rent” area where kids play in the streets because we think that’ll be better for our kids.

Of the thirty or so that I’ve received, about six or seven people are looking for the same thing we’re looking for (a house in a block w/ babies & spontaneous play in the streets, front yards, and driveways). The rest gave me advice about where to look.

So, below is a list of some areas that were recommended to me, in descending order of the number of mentions.

six mentions: The Willows neighborhood of Menlo Park, which is between Willow and the creek, on the 101 side of Middlefield. This neighborhood was mentioned by six different respondents, three times more than any other neighborhood! It must be a great place for kids!

two mentions: Vintage Oaks in Menlo Park, which is by Middlefield across from USGS. his area seems to have larger homes than The Willows.

one mention
Linfield Oaks, Menlo Park
Flood Triangle, Menlo Park
Suburban Park, Menlo Park
Oakdell, Menlo Park
area 3 mi W of 280 on Sand Hill, Menlo Park
area behind Stanford Golf Course off Alpine Rd., Menlo Park
Midtown, Palo Alto
College Terrace, Palo Alto
Southgate, Palo Alto (behind Paly, before Alma)
Guinda between Forest and Hamilton, Palo Alto
Covington School area, Los Altos
Whisman Station, Mountain View
Cole Valley, San Francisco. One respondent told me that there’s a lot more spontaneous play outside her house in Cole Valley than there was outside her former house in Old Palo Alto.

On October 17, 2005, I sent out an inquiry to the Palo Alto / Menlo Park Parents Club email list asking if they could recommend any blocks with spontaneous play in Palo Alto or Menlo Park. I copy that inquiry and the summary I created from the flood of replies I got below.

The inquiry elicited a great number of replies, including many recommendations. However, my wife and I have still yet to find t…

Playing Until the Sun Goes Down

2008-05-14T10:18:00-08:00

I agreed, but I had no idea what this game was. The oldest boy, six years old, explained the rules to me, but I see now that he got them all wrong. You can see the commonly used rules here.

Here are the rules that we played with: everyone but one person would stand at one end of their yard, and that one other person would stand in the middle of the yard. With his back turned to the others, he would say, “Red Rover, Red Rover, I call [color].” He would then turn around, and anyone wearing at least a bit of that color would charge toward him and try to run past him to the other end of the yard. If the person in the middle touched someone, that person would then have to be the person in the middle.

Playing this last night connected me to my childhood in my neighborhood better than anything I’ve ever done with Marco. The older kids and I improvised rules. The youngest kids, including Marco, had only a vague sense of the rules, but they played the game in their own way and had a great time. At one point, one of the kids fell and skinned his knee, cried a bit, then continued playing. We played and played until it started to get dark outside and the moms came out to tell us the kids needed to go to bed.

When Marco woke up this morning, the first thing he told me was that he wanted to play Red Rover again. We absolutely will do that, until he or the other kids get tired of it and start playing something else. I’d better brush up on “Capture the Flag,” and the various flavors of “Tag” and “Hide and Seek!”

So, how did we get to this point where we happened to stumble upon this game of Red Rover? While this may have seemed completely spontaneous, actually setting up the conditions to make this happen took a lot of steps. What I’m trying to convey here is that you shouldn’t just shove your kids outside one day one expect them to get involved in a great neighborhood game. A lot of groundwork needs to be done before this is even possible. Here are the things we did in the months before this:

Play Outside in Our Front Yard: Marco played with me or his nanny many, many times in our front yard before this. We played Hot Wheels, bouncy ball, golf, baseball, etc. It’s important to note that we did this in our front yard in full view of other people in the neighborhood, so we got to talk to people as they walked by, and sometimes they would join us for a time. Thus, Marco got comfortable playing among his neighbors, and they got to know us.

Knock on Neighbors’ Doors to Find Play: Often, when we have some free time, we walk to the houses of neighbors who we know have young kids (0 - 11) and knock on their doors. Our neighborhood is as lame as most, so the probability that a family will be home on a weekday or weekend afternoon is far less than 50-50, but we do this anyway. A lot. In the few times kids had been home in the past, we were able to get some play going, but I must admit that my son Marco wasn’t so good at playing with the other kids. Instead, he engaged in parallel play. In addition, he never asked to see these kids unprompted. At any rate, he has been getting more and more comfortable being with these kids as we’ve seen more of them, and they’ve been gettin more used to him, even if they’re not actually “friends.”

Walk and Bike Around the Neighborhood: A month or two ago, we started walking around our block and other adjoining blocks. Now, in the last couple of weeks, Marco has gotten into riding his bike on these routes. So, he’s getting more and more comfortable with our neighborhood and all its details - the people, the houses, the trees, the flowers, the bumps in the sidewalks, etc. He’s also getting confidence for navigating the geography on himself, although, of course, we don’t let him cross streets on his own just yet.

So, our evening of “Playing Until the Sun Goes Down,” was no accident. We spent an awful lot of time over the past few months sowing the seeds for this. Now that it’s happened once, though, I’m going to do everything I can to get it to happen again and again…

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.”