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Play Time in Fairmount Park


Smith Playground Welcomes Spring Season with New Play Space

Hundreds of local kids jumped, climbed and slid their way through Smith Memorial Playground and Playhouse during a recent hands-on sneak peek of the playground’s spring season.

The March 26 Play-A-Palooza allowed youth and their families — who numbered close to 1,500 — to take over the massive East Fairmount Park playground before it opened to the public April 1.

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Photo Courtesy of Smith Memorial Playground/Zoe Hillengas

Apart from the famed 39-foot Ann Newman Giant Wooden Slide, a 100-year-old fixture at the playground, one of the star attractions of Play-A-Palooza was the new Nature Play Space. In the lushly landscaped and tree-shaded area, kids burned off energy while interacting with and learning about nature.

“It’s such a cool space,” Smith communications manager Zoe Hillengas said during Saturday’s event. “When you go in, the space dictates how the kids engage with it. Kids outside are running around like crazy and then you go into the nature space and it’s serene and kids will be picking up branches, exploring. It’s cool to sit and watch what the kids do, totally undictated by anyone.”

The space was made possible by Nature Explore — a collaborative effort between Arbor Day Foundation and Dimensions Educational Research Foundation — through funding provided by the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service. The grant supported nature-focused play spaces in urban areas and Nature Explore selected Smith as the first such site in the program. Project organizers consulted with the playground starting this past fall, with construction wrapping up earlier this year.

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/Jen Colletta

Lansdowne resident Rome Arquines and his son, 2-year-old Miro, spent time at a table in the Nature Play Space that introduces kids play to natural objects like pinecones and leaves.

Arquines said the setting and its many activities kept his son’s attention.

“This new outside area is really fun,” he said. “Usually his attention span is about five minutes and he gets antsy, but we’ve been here an hour and he’s spent the entire hour here in this space.”

Jenni Drozdek, of Kensington, brought her 15-month-old, Mina, to Play-A-Palooza specifically to check out the new nature area.

“This is the reason I wanted to come,” she said while in the Nature Play Space. “We live in the city so I want to expose her to nature as much as possible, so that’s where she’s been playing most of the time. She loves it.”

The nature space featured activities led by the city’s Grow up Green program, one of many community partners involved with Play-A-Palooza. Elsewhere in the playground, Philly Tutors representatives played board games with guests, Words at Play led literacy-focused activities, NorthEast Treatment Centers offered carnival games and kids tried their hands at arts activities with Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture and The Hacktory.

Guests at Play-A-Palooza represented the diversity that Hillengas said the playground sees all season.

Visitors come from all Philly zip codes, she said, as well as about 20 percent from surrounding counties and 14 percent from outside the region. About half of the average visitors are African-American, 32 percent Caucasian, 10 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Asian. About one-third of the guests are families in poverty.

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/Jen Colletta

Smith is free and open to the public, but the organization does offer paid family memberships, which provide benefits like free admission to special events, such as Play-A-Palooza.

Once the playground gates are officially open for the season, staff will be gearing up for a full lineup of spring and summer events, including Kidchella. This year, music lovers will have three opportunities to take in the music festival, as it expands from a one-time event to a monthly celebration in June, July and August.

For more information, visit smithplayground.org/visit.

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