A few summers ago, my then 4 year old son asked if we could visit every playground. He wanted to visit every play ground withing driving distance of our house in one day. We obviously didn't attempt it that day, but the idea stuck with me. What if we spent a summer visiting every play ground we could drive to? I don't know if anyone in our area has done that, but it sounded like a lot of fun and a fairly low key adventure for a family of 7. This is our summer!
We have a little bit of an advantage over other families - we homeschool. That means when fall comes and other children are in classrooms, we will probably still be visiting play grounds. We live in Kenai, on the Kenai Peninsula. The Peninsula is often referred to as Alaska's Playground, but that is not because we are riddled with parks for children to play at. It is because you can go from beautiful vistas to fishing, to hiking, to snow mobiling (we say snow machining) or hunting in one day and you are always just a few miles from any of them no matter where you are. The weather can be unpredictable, but there will always be something to do. The Kenai Peninsula covers an area of over 15,000 square miles, roughly 10 times larger than the state of Rhode Island, bigger than the state of Maryland and about 1/2 the size of Ireland. Our play ground reviews might be for a play ground 80 miles away in Seward or as far south as Homer. I don't know if we will make it to Seldovia, but we will certainly try.
I have children ranging in ages from 1 to 10 this summer, which will provide me with a varied pool of thought to draw from. I intend to have the older kids write short reviews or fill out essays for their personal assessments. For the younger children, we will keep it simple with sticker charts or coloring pages. Very professional, right? HA! We will try to drag other families along with us when we can and will also visit many other family friendly establishments along the way. We can't go driving around the Peninsula without squeezing as much fun as possible in to the day. In Alaska, you make it count.
As for the parks we will visit, I will have to take a vote from the kids for the type of play grounds we will review. Will it be only public parks or are we including school play grounds? Will we review parks that don't have play grounds? I want them to get really involved in the planning of our adventure.
While you wait for us to post our first reviews (it is June, after all, and we have a few play grounds under our belts already), check out the links to area guides and news publications. Wish us luck!
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