Read Me – Intro

All the world’s a playground, and all the boys and girls the players. They have their swings and their see-saws, up and down, back and forth, they run and they tumble. There are cuts and scrapes, friendships made, make believe castles protected and shipwrecks rescued. Moving to the beat of play, there are never too many playground adventures for a child. In their time they will make hundreds, if not thousands of visits to old favourites – roundabouts and slides and climbing bars. This age of innocence, bright eyes and exuberance is blue skies everlasting.

I am hoping that Playground Chronicles, the companion Google Map and Picasa photo albums will be a resource for parents and caregivers. Over time, with the participation of other contributors, these cyberplaces will document and review most of Greater Halifax’s playground spaces. In addition, perhaps it can serve as a forum where neighbourhoods can learn from each other on how to go about mobilizing community effort. Maybe your neighbourhood needs to replace a long in the tooth playground that has seen better days, or maybe there’s nothing to serve an area with a growing population of young families. No need to reinvent the wheel. There are others who have rolled down this road before.

Playground Chronicles is a work in progress. I will update it on a regular basis. However, it will be most successful if there are plenty of write ups, photos, playground locations, and tips from other contributors. My two youngest – Noah, nearly 4, and Nellie, coming up for 2 – and I love to find new playgrounds. It gets us out and about discovering the city and provides a little playground variety and spice. Clicking on the map will show you where our adventures have taken us so far. As you’ll see there are many areas that we haven’t even touched. There are lots of opportunities for other contributors to provide information on their favourite playgrounds.

Playgrounds are great makers of memorable moments. As a kid growing up in North York right next to the zooming rush of the 401, the playground in the little dale immediately outside our apartment block was fun central. It was our daily adventure station with standard swings, slides, monkey bars and a rocket ship inclined at a 40 degree angle to the heavens. We could readily while away the good part of a day on the equipment using them as props for war games, the circus and space exploration.

For young girls and boys there were also feats of derring-do and plain foolishness. These were simple games like powering the climbing arc of a swing to madly jump from the highest possible height tucking and rolling on hitting the ground, or the gladiator type fights hanging suspended from the monkey bars and grappling opponents only with your legs. As a kid back in the day, or out with my kids now, playgrounds have always been synonymous with laughter and excitement.

On occasion businesses will be mentioned in these posts either because they’re in the neighbourhood of a playground and offer something of interest to families, or because they are kids friendly, or oriented. This is a not-for-profit blog. There will be no exchange of goods, or money for a mention of a business in this blog.

If you’d like to contribute guest posts, or photos, or have ideas that could generally improve this product, contact me through the comments feature, or at playground.chronicles@gmail.com. Contributor Guidelines are posted here. I’d enjoy hearing from you.

If you’d like to find out a little bit more about us, you can drop in on Commuter Dad, or Ta-daaa: 180 Days of Magic

Playground Chronicles is a labour of love with massive dollops of play and fun. Welcome, let the games begin, pass on the link to friends with young kids and, get involved if you have the time, submit a write up and photos about your favourite Greater Halifax playgrounds. According to a 2009 HRM publication, there are 325 playgrounds out there. That’s a lot of playing……

Alex Smith
Editor
PlayGround Chronicles