jcooper

Rest assured, these awesome temporary tattoo's will soon be mine.

"Don't forget to play," tattoo's from Tattly.com

Congrats on the new blog Angie!

Yes, Clemyjontri is a favorite for many people and one of the most popular on our Map of Play.

The place just looks amazing. Thanks for sharing Mara!

To help celebrate the two-anniversary of Let's Move, First Lady Michelle Obama battled Jimmy Fallon in a game of Tug of War.

They also competed in push-ups, hula hooping, dodgeball, and potato sack race battles.

The segment aired last night, but you can watch the entire battle on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon website.

Spoiler alert! Jimmy ends up on the floor crying in defeat. (see bigger picture)

According to the blog New Columbia Heights (http://newcolumbiaheights.blogspot.com/2012/02/carodozo-track-is-closed-to-public-for.html), the Cardoza track, usually open to the public, will be closed to the public during school renovations.

Perhaps you are right. I'm sure handbags come in handy for bringing along snacks and sunscreen. Maybe it was a public service instead of spam. ;)

Updates to the Map of Play

We've recently made some changes to the Map of Play that we hope everyone enjoys.

First, we had some trouble with spammers a few weeks back that we've taken care of without taking away the ability for people to comment or add pictures to playgrounds without a KaBOOM! account. This will make for cleaner, better mapping community and will make the Map of Play less prone to comments about handbags (a frequent topic of spammers, for some reason).

Next, we recently rebuilt our "browse" pages on the Map of Play. These pages were built a few years back to help people that wanted to see a list of playgrounds in a city instead of using our map. These pages had problems keeping up with new, edited, and deleted listings. Well, that is no longer the case. In addition to browsing by state and city, you can now browse by country. If you've ever wanted to know more about the playgrounds in Switzerland, well here's your chance.

Finally, we have a new, Community Spotlight area on the Map's main page. We will feature people that are helping us map all the parks, playspaces, and playgrounds in America (or just adding really good content). First up in the Spotlight is AngieSix.

Visit the Map of Play to see all of these new changes in action!

Thanks for letting us know. We will mark it as a private playground and add that information to the description.

Bike + Bus = Buks? Or how about Bise? Buscycle?

Great to hear Brandon. Have any favorite riding locations you can share in our Map of Play?

Beginning this past weekend, http://hello.kaboom.org, has been experiencing stability issues. If you've tried to create a new profile, sign in to your project page, or visit any of our Discussion groups, you may have experienced long load times and pages that wouldn't load up at all.

We apologize for the downtime and the inconvenience.

It's our top priority to resolve the issue and we expect to by up and running at 100% very soon.

If you have any problems or questions, please feel free to call me, Jason Cooper, at (202) 464-6189 or email me at jcooper@kaboom.org.

Hello!

There isn't a method for you to upload or embed videos on your project page just yet, but it is definitely part of our planned features for this year.

In the meantime, you can a scrapbook post that links to a video that's hosted on Youtube.com, Vimeo.com, or any other video sharing site.

Thanks for the suggestion Julie!

Everyone's favorite free-range parent, Lenore Skenazy, was in the Wall Street Journal last Thursday talking about how the pursuit to make our kids smart and safe has, in her words, turned kids into, "bored blobs."

Read her article, The Importance of Child's Play on WSJ.com.

She describes the problem as centering on parents fear for their child's safety and the fear that their kids may fall behind academically. Lenore also details the solution: play.

The funny thing is, if you are really concerned about children's health and school-readiness, there is a very simple way to increase both. It's called playing.

Kids learn through play. When kids play, they're not wasting their time. They're learning everything from motor skills to social skills and numbers. Think of all the counting that comes with hopscotch, or with making two even teams. Those activities are a lot more fun than flash cards, but they teach the same thing: math. Kids playing outside also learn things like distance, motion, the changing of the seasons—things we take for granted because we got time outside. But many of today's kids spend all their daylight hours in child care.

Do agree that our current parenting culture is turning kids into bored blobs? Do you think there are other problems contributing to children's health? In addition to play, what else can help kids avoid obesity as they grow up?

• Four Barell Public Parklet
• Fabric8 Parklet

I'm loving all of the pictures you added this morning PlayTC. Thanks for uploading!

Thanks for letting us know! We'll remove this entry from our map.