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Yes, the winter is upon us and with shorter, colder, wetter days, parents need to know where you can take your kids in the capital. That is why I drew up this list for Metrotwin and I thought I would share it here too:

Climbers & Creepers
An indoor interactive botanical playzone

Eddie Catz, Wimbledon (formerly Tiger’s Eye)
A great place for families on rainy days

Snakes and Ladders
One of the largest indoor playgrounds in London

Tumble in the Jungle
A jungle themed indoor adventure playground

Zoomaround
A great play venue in North London

Bramley’s Big Adventure
Indoor Adventure Playground for Kids

Gambado
All sorts of indoor fun for kids

Topsy Turvy World
Exhaust the kids before you go shopping

It’s A Kid’s Thing
Indoor Fun in Earlsfield

Eddie Catz, Putney
Indoor fun for under 5s

WebUrbanist has an interesting post on urban adventure playgrounds. The following certainly struck a chord.

In a sense, you and I have always played in “adventure playgrounds.” We created a fort in the kitchen cabinets, jumped from couch to couch across oceans; we snuck out through a hole in the fence to a new world. We climbed trees and hid in bushes. We played in the mud and the rain. We chased each other, made secret worlds with our own language. We created spaces with whatever we could find around us. Some of us played in abandoned buildings, or barns, or vacant lots between buildings, used what we found and made up stories of our lives to be. We looked everywhere to find our space.

One of the links took me to a charity I’d not heard of before called London Play. Their mission is

To enhance the development and education of children in the Greater London area by developing and supporting the provision of children’s play, primarily by:
• improving the quality, diversity and accessibility of play opportunities in London;
• raising awareness of the importance of play in the development of London’s children;
• promoting co-operation and co-ordination amongst the play sector in London;
• developing a network of local play support agencies in every London borough.

Why? Well …

“Sadly, and increasingly, children are unable or not allowed to go out to play, and engage freely in play activities that a generation ago would have been taken for granted.

There is a serious danger of serious and long lasting damage to a whole generation of children by denying them opportunities to explore, experiment, and experience the wide, wonderful world around them. Being ‘wrapped in cotton wool’, children are deprived of the most natural part of childhood – playing and taking risks. It is only by direct personal experience that children learn to assess and overcome danger and hazardous situations, and gain varied and flexible responses to the different situations they find themselves in.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve just sent off the form to register Little Legends’ support, and we’ll be adding London Play certified playgrounds from tomorrow onwards. It’s great to know I’ll be able to keep one resolution!

As everyone knows, Friday 31st August was the 10th Anniversary of Princess Diana’s death. Probably one of the best memorials to her is the Princess Diana Playground in Hyde Park. She loved kids and kids will love this place.

The Playground is in Kensington Gardens and a huge wooden pirate ship dominates the centre surrounded by a beach. There is also a sensory trail, teepees, and various toys and play sculptures.

Nearby you will find The Diana Playground Café. It serves fresh salads, sandwiches and drinks as well as offering a children’s menu. There are also toilets and baby changing facilities.

It is a good place to let kids run off steam if you are traveling into central London

Source:nudie head@flickr

This article reports that an elementary school in Attleboro, Massachusetts has banned children from:

playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they’ll get hurt and hold the school liable.

The Principal of Willett Elementary school has supported the ban because accidents mostly happen at breaktime.

However, Willett Elementary school is only one of a growing number of schools that has banned the game of tag.

This report says that the Principal of Franklin Elementary school is in favour of the ban because children are emotionally and physically injured by tag. Moreover, some children did not feel good about the game.

However, critics such as On the Pitch argue:

Accidents happen. Kids get hurt which is a terrible thing. But at what point do we say enough is enough? Are we really willing to ban activities millions of kids love in order to prevent a handful of injuries? That may sound crass when talking about kids because any kid that is hurt is a tragedy. However, when we stop being rational about things, we lose something. Like childhood games.

And just to be clear – I partially blame our lawsuit happy society for this along with the over protective parents and school administrators since you know this grew out of some lawsuit somewhere where a school got sued because Johnny fell down and broke his arm playing tag.

What will be banned next?