Vancouver Spray Park Challenge

Our cargo bikes parked at Connaught Spray Park in Kits

Earlier this summer I was poking around the Vancouver Parks Board website & came up with the idea to make a list of all the spray parks in the city & try to visit every single one this summer. I made a checklist (of course--I love checklists!) which you can grab from the Vancouver Family Biking Facebook group in the Files section, if you want it.

We haven't made a huge amount of progress, despite the summer being half over. Here are the spray parks we've been to so far.

Connaught Park

Geese having a drink & pooping at the edge of the Connaught Spray Park

This one is a bit off the beaten path for us, but we trekked over to Kits to see it after going to the Let's Go Biking Book Launch event along the Arbutus Greenway. It is right along the 10th Avenue Bikeway, so it's quite nice to ride to.

It is a cute little spray park with painted concrete surface, several different sprayer things, no water guns & SO MANY GEESE. The geese mostly stayed away from the kids, moving back & forth from the field to the edge of the spray park while we were there. Until the water sprayers turned off after the kids took a break for a while. While the kids were playing in the adjacent playground, the geese invade the middle of the splash pad & POOPED all over it. Bleagh.

Linny runs through the water spouts in Harbour Green Spray Park

Harbour Green Park


This is a park we often bike through on our way to & from Stanley Park, but we rarely stop at. The spray park is very minimalist, no rainbow coloured pipes or giant ladybug things to climb on, but more like a fountain. Nonetheless, the kids looooved running around between the spouts of water. There are plenty of shaded benches on either side & the mist from the water blows over toward them intermittently, which is fantastic on a hot day. The park also has public washrooms on the south side of the spray park & it's easily accessible by bike as it's right along the seawall.

Relaxing in the shade as the kids play in the "stream" at Prince Edward Park

Prince Edward Park

This is our default spray park, only a few blocks from home. It features a small splash pad with a variety of sprayers & water guns, a bioswale artificial "stream", public washrooms, plus a large shady area right next to the spray park that has a couple of picnic tables. There is a good playground with lots of swings, as well as a small community garden & a playing field--definitely a place you could spend the day with kids.

I'll post again once we've visited a few more spray parks in the next couple of weeks. Have you been to any of Vancouver's spray parks? Which one is your favourite?

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The Social Side of Pokemon Go

Ooh, there's a Poke Gym near here!

Everyone has been all aflutter about Pokemon Go lately, so much so, that I actually decided to try it. A little background: I've been through some periods in my life where I obsessively played Space Invaders, Super Mario, Sim City, & a few puzzle type games on my phone, but I'm not much of a gamer. I was aware of the Pokemon franchise--how could you not be?--but had never watched the cartoon or played the game.

When I discovered that you could just download the app for free & that they had an Android version, I was ready to give it a go. I thought it might be a fun thing to do with Linnaeus occasionally. The Pokemon hunting isn't violent--when you spot one, you toss Pokeballs at it. Hitting near enough your target magically makes it disappear into the ball, to be catalogued into your Pokedex. You can also go to Pokegyms & fight Pokemon. I haven't actually tried this yet--just got past level 5 where I'm eligible--but I'm told the best strategy is to just repeatedly stab your finger at your phone screen.

Common Sense Media has a thorough review of Pokemon Go, giving it just three stars out of five, mainly for privacy & safety concerns. I'm not particularly worried that someone will track us via Pokemon, or that we'll get 'lured' to a site & mugged, but I think the security of the information you use to sign up is somewhat concerning. I hope the company sorts that out in the near future. I have signed up myself, & I don't plan to set up an account for either of my children. We'll play together on my phone--that's enough.

Another aspect that I like about it is the accessibility: designed to be played on a touch screen smart phone, which so many people already have. There is no expensive video game system to buy, no controllers. You can spend money to buy things in the game, but this isn't necessary to experience all aspects of the game.

Where I think Pokemon Go really shines is  that you have to actually go outside & walk around to make the game work. I don't think it's going to solve North America's obesity epidemic, but it can't hurt to get in a few more steps a day. I also disagree with the criticisms that this game creates 'smart phone zombies'. My experience using it has been that we've talked to more people that we usually would out in public, because we keep seeing other people playing.

My Pokedex so far

Oliver has had a few conversations with strangers & gotten some tips on how different aspects of the game work. Because there isn't much of a tutorial or any game book that comes with it, you need to figure it out as you go along, or do a lot of Googling. The other people we've talked to seem eager to share tips--the opacity of the game play actually makes it more social, I think.

Yesterday, I stopped on our way home from summer school to grab some free Pokeballs from a Pokestop on the bike path. Another mom & her daughter on a cargo bike were doing the same & we stopped to chat, immediately realizing that we knew each other from the Vancouver Family Biking Facebook Group. Christine has had the same experience as we have, talking with other people who are playing the game. She & I actually chatted for quite a while, & decided that we need to plan a Pokemon Go Bike Ride. Stay tuned for the details in the Vancouver Family Biking group...

The downsides to the game are that it's still in beta version so it can be a bit slow. I've discovered that the most popular time seems to be about 1-3pm (Pacific Daylight Time), which means the game is so slow you can't really play. This has been quite frustrating because I have tried to do a "Pokewalk" with Linnaeus after school three days running & the app hasn't worked every single time. Later at night seems like a great time to play--too late for the kids, unfortunately--but there are tons of people leaving lures & hanging out in the parks around here catching Pokemon.

Another potential negative is that there is a huge marketing machine behind the Pokemon franchise & familiarity with Pokemon world makes kids want to buy their branded stuff. I'm expecting Linnaeus to start demanding Pokemon themed toys & clothes any time now. The game uses GPS for location, your camera when you catch a Pokemon (though you can disable this if you like) plus it uses quite a lot of data. If you have an older phone, your battery may not survive too much playing.

There are already some savvy organizations & businesses capitalizing on the attraction of Pokemon Go, as mentioned by my friend Leigh in an interesting short piece in the Climate Examiner. The concept of augmented reality that the game uses during the Pokemon hunting is really interesting too--Leigh found some research on how this could potentially be used to improve people's habits around conservation.

Overall, I like the game & will keep playing it. How about you? Have you tried the game yet?What do you like or dislike about Pokemon Go? 

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Find Activities For Your Tot in Vancouver

"Sleeping" at the family drop in gym

Just the other day I was talking with Oliver about how frustrating it was to find the times of the family drop in gyms at community centres in this city. Going from one website to another & finding how exactly they've categorized it--parent & tot gym? family gym? preschool play time?--can be time consuming if you want to look for the schedules at a few different community centres. We typically use Hillcrest, Creekside, & Mount Pleasant, so I would go to three different websites to find a wear-Bronte-out-drop-in session.

Until I noticed a link in my Facebook feed to ONE page that amalgamates the baby, toddler, & preschooler drop-in program schedules for all the community centres in the City of Vancouver. When you look at the list, it only shows the names of the activities, not the location of each one, but if you click on them the details pop up without sending you to a further site. You can also filter the list by community centre, choosing one or more of your favourites.

Here's the link so you can easily find things for your rambunctious tot to do to burn off energy. If you haven't been to the comunity centre drop-in gyms yet, you should definitely go. They're very affordable--between $1.50 & $4 per kid, usually with a cheaper rate for two or more. Bronte loves to run around from kiddie car to little slide to foam mats to blocks to tunnel, etc & gets tons of good play time in there.

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Review: Ring It! by Blue Orange Games

Ring It! fun with Papa

The weather is getting cooler, wetter & we're heading to the park a bit less often these days. With more indoor play, the puzzles, building toys, & board games are seeing more action at our house. We've recently added a new one to our collection: Ring It! by Blue Orange Games.

Ring It! is a fairly simple game with a set of 90 round cards & a bell. Game play is a bit like War or Snap: you need to match cards with other players, either the numbers on the cards, or the colour.

What makes Ring It! different, & a little more fun, is that you need to do an action (clapping, or you can come up with something else like oinking) before ringing the bell. The game works with two to nine people, age five & up, though I think younger kids who know their numbers could do it too.

Wordless Wednesday

It's so nice to have a lake that's a 10-minute bike ride away

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Wordless Wednesday

Bronte disovered the joys of "suspension bridge" jumping at Ceperley Meadows playground Saturday.

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Book Review: 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids

Playing with Gak Dough

I got this book in the mail for review a few weeks back &, well, you know how it goes. I looked through the table of contents & then Bronte or Linnaeus needed my attention. The book got put at the end of my To Do list & I nearly forgot about it. Last night I finally had a moment to read it. Once I started looking at the gorgeous photos & the ideas in it, I couldn't wait to get started on some of these activities with the kids.

150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids, by Asia Citro, is essentially a recipe book. It's divided into sections like Slimes, Doughs, & Do-It-Yourself Toys. Each recipe has several variations, like making it safer for babies/toddlers who put things in their mouths, or making it glow in the dark. The recipes use ingredients that you probably already have around your house, or you can easily find, like white glue, or glitter.

The activities in 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids--finger painting, playing with little figurines in "small worlds", molding dough--are all just the kind of things that kids love to do at any age. Experimenting with colour, smell, texture, movement--the ideas in Asia Citro's book are great ways to encourage kids' natural curiosity to learn through play. In addition to her book, Citro has a popular blog, Fun at Home with Kids. She's a mother or two & has a Masters of Education with a strong background in science.

There are so many reasons to love this book if you have kids. Most of the ideas in the book require very little time to make or set up. The materials required are also inexpensive & many of them are reusable. There are activities appropriate for a wide range of ages, from about six months old right up to ten or twelve. Once your kids are playing with their dough, coloured rice, or dinosaurs in "mud", you might even have a chance to drink a cup of tea!

Though, to be honest, you might find like I did that you want to play too. When I made the Gak Dough, I had a lot of fun squeezing it, breaking it, & letting it melt between my fingers. Linnaeus played with it for about an hour, I think. In the past, when I've tried to set up craft type activities with him, he is far more interested in the process than the end product. Not surprising really, as that's basically the definition of play: exploration & enjoyment of process without worrying about making something or getting a specific result. Since the activities in 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids are all about sensory play, I'm pretty sure the kids will love them.

I kind of want to buy a copy of this book for every parent I know. Elementary school teachers, daycare workers, & preschool teachers would probably love it. You can find it in bookstores, online, or download it for your ereader too!


Disclaimer: I was given a free copy of this book to facilitate a review, but was not otherwise compensated for this post. 

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