Bunchland

Wanna live on an awesome street where neighbours are friends and kids ride their bikes together (in other words, a playborhood to be proud of)? Get together with your neighbours and organize a block party! Pick a time, set up some tables and chairs and join together for an afternoon of eating, drinking and playing. Block parties are also a great way to raise money for a cause of your ‘hood’s choice, thought they can simply be a way to hang with your nabes outdoors.

The families who make up Toronto’s Brockton Triangle community are no strangers to hanging out and partying together, whether it’s through community gardening, massive yard sales or car sharing. So it should come as no surprise that they know how to throw down at a neighbourhood block party. We got mom Gretel (and designer of awesome kids’ dress-up gear) on the phone so she could share her top three block party planning tips with you.  Read more...

Designated play area: The Playborhood!

As kids, we played for hours. After school, we’d knock on our neighbours’ door and invite our friends out to play. Then we’d play outside until the sun went down, or until our parents physically dragged us back to the house.  Our playtimes ruled. The Wii had not yet been invented, and still we managed to have a blast. 

Today’s kids aren’t enjoying the same long stretches of unstructured free play. Whether it’s because they’re  overscheduled, glued to their video screens and/or not allowed to roam outside unsupervised, it makes us sad. California dad Mike felt sad about this too and wanted his three sons to have something akin to the hazy, lazy days of his own childhood. So he decided to turn his own yard into the most awesome neighbourhood hangout ever, and in the course launched the Playborhood movement and its accompanying online hub where parents can read his blog posts and share ideas. He thinks that, with a bit of effort, our front and backyards can be the best hangouts ever too.