KaBoom & KoolAid Make Time to Play

Everyone understands how important playtime is for children. To help raise awareness of the importance of play for kids, KaBOOM! and & KoolAid, are rallying communities across the country to host Play Days. Today Beth Feldman (RoleMommy) invited Daniel and I to the Kool-Aid & KaBOOM! event, where we learned how thousands of communities can host free, fun-for-the-whole-family events that celebrate play from September 19th – 27th.

KaBOOM! Play Days are an opportunity for communities to come together. By combining national reach with local impact, these events encourage each community to get creative and customize its Play Day to fit its own unique needs. To help communities in their planning, there is a online training session. You can also received a Play Day kit filled with games, activity ideas and gear to help make their Play Day great To learn more visit ~ http://kaboom.org/playday

While waiting for our turn with the photographer, I learned all these interesting Kaboom facts, met the other moms and of course enjoying some Kool-aid...can you believe they had grape? Black folks love grape Kool-Aid (inside joke!)...

Now how odd it is that I remember the 80's and 90's Kool-Aid advertisements. It was a treat to introduce my son to such a icon. I hope the Kool-Aid brand will continue to look the same for when my son has kids. How funny it will be for him to show this photo to them. Ha ha ha.

Soon it was time for our photographer session with Jade Albert. Man it was alot of hard work because Daniel didn't want to smile and kept wiggling around. Eventually after some tickling we caught the shot! During all this back and forth, my son Daniel did his part to support the program.

Daniel really showed his support for playtime. He played with the Kool-Aid man, the others kids at the event, and when he tired everyone else out...then he played by himself. LOL. Believe it or not all that playing is actually a good thing.

Some interesting Facts on Play

• The area outside of the home that parents feel comfortable letting their children play unsupervised has shrunk by 90% since the 1970s. (Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv)
• Children in low-income households are estimated to spend 50% more time watching television than their more affluent peers. (B. M. Miller, S. O’Connor, S. W. Sirignano, and P. Joshi, 1996)
• 90% of teachers and 86% of parents believed that physically active children are better able to learn and are better behaved in the classroom. (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2003)
• Two recent studies indicate that children with ADD and ADHA showed fewer symptoms after playing outside in “green” environments. (Taylor, Kuo, & Sullivan, 2001 and Kuo & Taylor, 2004)
• Unstructured play leads to healthy brain development, by allowing children the opportunity to learn how to work in groups, to share, to negotiate, to resolve conflicts and to learn self-advocacy skills. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 2005)

I hope more people join in this effort to host Play Days during September 19th – 27th. If anyone within the NYC area does host Play Days...make sure to invite us!