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conuly
I already mentioned Duck, Duck, Bruce, of course.
Next month I intend to get playground equipment.
Now, the way I do this is as follows: I make a big list of everything I'd buy if I had lots and lots of cash, and then I whittle it down to reflect the fact that, in fact, I have no cash. I do most of my non-essential shopping like this, and it's about the only way I know to do that sort of budget. This sort of sudden death elimination helps me keep my priorities in order. If I *don't* do that I end up with a lot of regret after the fact, wondering if I forgot something.
(Tangent for a second, Ana and I have been playing jacks lately (must rescue my jacks from upstairs first thing in the morning!) I never actually played jacks as a child. I had jacks, certainly, and I played with them and had a vague understanding of how the game went, but I was too uncoordinated (and certainly saw myself as uncoordinated, which was a combination of reality and a self-fulfilling prophecy) to play the game itself so instead I just sorted my jacks by color and spun them around a lot. (And a lot and a lot and a lot. Evangeline came across me absentmindedly twirling a hanger on my finger the other day. "WOW. That's AWEsome. It's AMAZING, Connie! How do you DO that!") Ana's not very good at it lately and, every time she makes a mistake, says "I'll never get it!", with such pitch perfect inflection that I start to wonder if she's repeating something she heard elsewhere. Interesting fact, this backfires if she's in a serious snit, but if she's just a little peeved mimicking her is a great way to get her to be less melodramatic. She's a good little actress, really, and when you copy her and then ask her to do some other face she will often comply so fast she gets whiplash, as well as a bad case of the giggles. BACK ON TOPIC NOW RAR!)
Anyway, playground and gym equipment. I'm told they have nothing.
Now, I asked for help earlier and you all responded admirably, except those of you who didn't respond at all, of course, but you know what I mean. I have a tentative list, but it's very important that I get stuff as high quality as I can afford - it has to survive not just children, but little children. Ye gods!
Firstly, if anybody has any further suggestions, please make them.
Second, my list! Advice on the best, the cheapest, more resources?
Jump ropes
(Book on jump rope rhymes? Should I get double dutch ropes as well or instead of single ropes?)
Chinese jump ropes
(Definitely need a book on some simple routines. Definitely need to get good quality ones that won't snap.)
Playground balls
(How many? Classes are ~24, and there are 3 classes per grade (excepting next year's second graders. Only one of those.)
Hula hoops
(How many? Which ones are best quality? THAT I CAN AFFORD. No custom hoops unless somebody's nice enough to give us a nifty discount. Huh. Come to think of it... I wonder if I can get a hooper to volunteer to teach a class for six or eight weeks....)
Ribbons? Bit girly... I'd only have to get half as many!
Chalk. Essential for making hopscotch grids.
(Should I get a hopscotch mat for use indoors?)
Hackey sacks. They're cheap, and easy to find.
Should I get a book on handclap rhymes? One on playground games? The kids in my area play outside, but in other areas... I had somebody tell me she didn't think her kid could ride the bus at 13! WTF?
Skip-it like devices. I only think of this because I can get a nifty set of 6 in rainbow colors for $25, which, if I bought it over the summer, wouldn't be that bad a deal. I'd get two sets, most likely. Maybe I could see if other people want to chip in.
Should I get some things for traditional playground play for indoor recess? I'm thinking jacks, marbles, that klutz book on string figures. But where does one get jacks without paying an exorbitant amount anymore? All I can find ever are the huge-ass useless plastic ones, and even the ones I got off of Amazon (do NOT ask me how much they came to with shipping) are larger than the ones I had as a kid. (Neither do they twirl. I am not a happy Connie about that.)
The school yard has a playground on street level, and then down a flight of stairs is the general playspace. It has two basketball hoops. Given that the oldest child in that school is 7, that's a bit WTF?, but there you go. The local teens have taken to sneaking in the yard at night to play basketball. Everybody knows about it and brings the subject up like they're worried, but then say in the same breath that it *must* be all right because they're not littering or being loud. Well, duh, I should hope it's all right! Nobody else is using them! And we're so bereft of sport areas (or playgrounds) in this area it's a travesty. It really is. Silver Lake is nice, but it's a hike up several hills and it's all greenery. I like greenery, but it'd be nice to have something else as well.
What they could really do with that space is set it up properly for handball. The way the school is, built into the hill like everything around us is, the wall around the yard goes up well above an adult's head, and then the backyard above it has a fence around it as well. Plenty of space on that blank concrete wall for a handball court, and if not there then on any of the *other* blank concrete walls. (I'm tempted to go there with some chalk one day and cover it with color, anything other than gray gray gray.)
When I was a kid I read a pretty forgettable book (I read a lot of those) that mentioned tetherball, which was the first I'd ever heard of it. I've never seen it in real life, which is strange. You'd think NYC would be all over this, as it sounds like it doesn't take much in the way of equipment or space to set up. I wonder if that would fly past the PTA and could get set up. Just to have something that the kids could do that's not basketball :) (Well, they'll grow, I guess. But the basketball hoops - and surely we didn't really need two of them for a full game, just one would suffice for pick-up games! - are smack in the middle of everything. Anybody's playing there and the rest of the yard will pretty much be useless to play in.)
Next month I intend to get playground equipment.
Now, the way I do this is as follows: I make a big list of everything I'd buy if I had lots and lots of cash, and then I whittle it down to reflect the fact that, in fact, I have no cash. I do most of my non-essential shopping like this, and it's about the only way I know to do that sort of budget. This sort of sudden death elimination helps me keep my priorities in order. If I *don't* do that I end up with a lot of regret after the fact, wondering if I forgot something.
(Tangent for a second, Ana and I have been playing jacks lately (must rescue my jacks from upstairs first thing in the morning!) I never actually played jacks as a child. I had jacks, certainly, and I played with them and had a vague understanding of how the game went, but I was too uncoordinated (and certainly saw myself as uncoordinated, which was a combination of reality and a self-fulfilling prophecy) to play the game itself so instead I just sorted my jacks by color and spun them around a lot. (And a lot and a lot and a lot. Evangeline came across me absentmindedly twirling a hanger on my finger the other day. "WOW. That's AWEsome. It's AMAZING, Connie! How do you DO that!") Ana's not very good at it lately and, every time she makes a mistake, says "I'll never get it!", with such pitch perfect inflection that I start to wonder if she's repeating something she heard elsewhere. Interesting fact, this backfires if she's in a serious snit, but if she's just a little peeved mimicking her is a great way to get her to be less melodramatic. She's a good little actress, really, and when you copy her and then ask her to do some other face she will often comply so fast she gets whiplash, as well as a bad case of the giggles. BACK ON TOPIC NOW RAR!)
Anyway, playground and gym equipment. I'm told they have nothing.
Now, I asked for help earlier and you all responded admirably, except those of you who didn't respond at all, of course, but you know what I mean. I have a tentative list, but it's very important that I get stuff as high quality as I can afford - it has to survive not just children, but little children. Ye gods!
Firstly, if anybody has any further suggestions, please make them.
Second, my list! Advice on the best, the cheapest, more resources?
Jump ropes
(Book on jump rope rhymes? Should I get double dutch ropes as well or instead of single ropes?)
Chinese jump ropes
(Definitely need a book on some simple routines. Definitely need to get good quality ones that won't snap.)
Playground balls
(How many? Classes are ~24, and there are 3 classes per grade (excepting next year's second graders. Only one of those.)
Hula hoops
(How many? Which ones are best quality? THAT I CAN AFFORD. No custom hoops unless somebody's nice enough to give us a nifty discount. Huh. Come to think of it... I wonder if I can get a hooper to volunteer to teach a class for six or eight weeks....)
Ribbons? Bit girly... I'd only have to get half as many!
Chalk. Essential for making hopscotch grids.
(Should I get a hopscotch mat for use indoors?)
Hackey sacks. They're cheap, and easy to find.
Should I get a book on handclap rhymes? One on playground games? The kids in my area play outside, but in other areas... I had somebody tell me she didn't think her kid could ride the bus at 13! WTF?
Skip-it like devices. I only think of this because I can get a nifty set of 6 in rainbow colors for $25, which, if I bought it over the summer, wouldn't be that bad a deal. I'd get two sets, most likely. Maybe I could see if other people want to chip in.
Should I get some things for traditional playground play for indoor recess? I'm thinking jacks, marbles, that klutz book on string figures. But where does one get jacks without paying an exorbitant amount anymore? All I can find ever are the huge-ass useless plastic ones, and even the ones I got off of Amazon (do NOT ask me how much they came to with shipping) are larger than the ones I had as a kid. (Neither do they twirl. I am not a happy Connie about that.)
The school yard has a playground on street level, and then down a flight of stairs is the general playspace. It has two basketball hoops. Given that the oldest child in that school is 7, that's a bit WTF?, but there you go. The local teens have taken to sneaking in the yard at night to play basketball. Everybody knows about it and brings the subject up like they're worried, but then say in the same breath that it *must* be all right because they're not littering or being loud. Well, duh, I should hope it's all right! Nobody else is using them! And we're so bereft of sport areas (or playgrounds) in this area it's a travesty. It really is. Silver Lake is nice, but it's a hike up several hills and it's all greenery. I like greenery, but it'd be nice to have something else as well.
What they could really do with that space is set it up properly for handball. The way the school is, built into the hill like everything around us is, the wall around the yard goes up well above an adult's head, and then the backyard above it has a fence around it as well. Plenty of space on that blank concrete wall for a handball court, and if not there then on any of the *other* blank concrete walls. (I'm tempted to go there with some chalk one day and cover it with color, anything other than gray gray gray.)
When I was a kid I read a pretty forgettable book (I read a lot of those) that mentioned tetherball, which was the first I'd ever heard of it. I've never seen it in real life, which is strange. You'd think NYC would be all over this, as it sounds like it doesn't take much in the way of equipment or space to set up. I wonder if that would fly past the PTA and could get set up. Just to have something that the kids could do that's not basketball :) (Well, they'll grow, I guess. But the basketball hoops - and surely we didn't really need two of them for a full game, just one would suffice for pick-up games! - are smack in the middle of everything. Anybody's playing there and the rest of the yard will pretty much be useless to play in.)
