Designing for the soul...: Progressive Play Date!

Jun 13, 2010

Progressive Play Date!

If you are a mom with kids out of school for the summer, you want to read this post. You may even call me and thank me for explaining this. hee hee! It was a brilliant idea from one mom (not me!) and her son and a few boys at school during lunch one day just before school ended. I am sure the conversation went something like this: "What are you boys looking forward to doing this summer?" "We'll have to get you together soon to play!" etc, etc, etc.

Then somehow, the idea grew and grew quickly into what became known as THE PROGRESSIVE PLAY DATE. This mom took notes from the boys and they quickly gathered a group of eight 9 year old boys (all good friends already) and she made the plan. (Thank you Heather!) One boy was out of town at the beach (we missed you Oscar!) so we ended up with seven, but I would say eight is a good total number for planning purposes. It started last Friday at 10am at one of the boy's homes. They stayed at each house 1hr 45 minutes then rotated to the next house. They were all in the same neighborhood for this particular event so they could walk and jump fences to get to the next house. There was a schedule we followed by the way, and all mom's were on board with the plan. We had two moms double-up and share the lunch time slot and another mom got a "bye" because her house just sold. The boys requested a different activity at each house and a light snack (of course!) At one house, they did water games, squirt guns, slip and slide, trampoline etc. One house... a bounce castle and more water games. Another mom created a cool scavenger hunt with clues and prizes at the end of the hunt. Popsicles, grapes, other snacks and tons of water and fluids were on hand because it was 94 degrees that day! After the last house we drove the boys to one of the swim clubs where the planning mom hosted Noodle Night. This was swimming at the pool and dinner catered by Nothing But Noodles. So the progressive play date started at 10am and ended at 7:30pm! They were all exhausted but they loved every single minute!

Here's a basic schedule you can certainly take and run with:

Replicate it with all girls, all boys, co-ed, whatever...and be creative!

10:00am-11:45am House #1

11:45am-1:30pm House #2 (2 neighbor moms shared this duty and served lunch)

1:30pm-3:15pm House #3

3:15pm-4:45pm House #4

5:00pm-7:30pm- swim and dinner at the pool!

Home to shower and sleep!

Ok, now for the fun part...when I asked William to think of something neat and fun we could do as our activity, he came up with this: making sculptures out of recycled materials...a.k.a. our trash! Perfect! We have plenty of that and boys love doing things like this! We covered 3 six foot long tables in the back yard. We sorted cardboard, plastic, and paper into the large recycle bins and drug them to the tables. My girls were the helpers and passed out scissors, duct tape, and masking tape.

The boys got to work and built the most amazing army tanks, boats, and crazy contraptions. They even filled the old sandbox with water and tested to see if their inventions would float! Most did and one capsized. Look at some of the awesome recycled sculptures they created!