Friday Fun: 50 Ways to 'Play Everywhere'

Gail Cornwall reports: "[KaBOOM!] "awarded $1 million to spur 50 new projects that create opportunities for urban children to play at places like bus stops, barber shops and Laundromats."

Cornwall highlights some of the inners to showcase the creativity and variety of the winning projects. Among the winners:

• A "giant solar-powered bubble maker that on sunny days will send bubbles drifting over a busy Minneapolis thoroughfare,"
• "periscopes built out of PVC tubes at East Harlem bus stops,"
• "retractable jump ropes outside barber shops and salons in Richmond, Va.,"
• "sidewalks in Detroit "repainted to resemble sprinting tracks,"
• and slides that "pop up next to stairways used to commute through the slopes."

Each of the winning projects has its own project page on the KaBoom! website.

The 50 winners were chosen from more than 1,000 entries. The Play Everywhere Challenge has support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Target, Playworld, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts.