Let's Play {Community Service}

I learned many years ago in school, during my early-childhood education classes, the importance of play.  It is said that play is a very important part of learning and growing for both children and adults.  Role playing for children is how they form their own ideas of how things should be.

Here are some things I learned about play many years ago and that are still true today.  Play is how we learn.  Play connects us to others.  Play teaches us to persevere.  Play helps us grow in creativity, and flexibility.  Play helps us when feeling lonely, isolated, anxious or depressed.  Play helps us to develop and improve our social skills, and to learn how to cooperate with others.  Play is a constructive way to pass the time.  It's good for you.  Play makes us happy.  Play is fun and brings joy.  In knowing all this, I would advocate for PLAY any day, and that's why I am!

I recently attended a conference for Bloggers called Blogalicious and had the opportunity to meet and participate with a great Community Service oriented group called Let's Play.  What is Let's Play you ask?  Here is what they have to say:

What Is Let's Play?

"Let's Play is a community partnership led by Dr Pepper Snapple Group to get kids and families active nationwide. We believe that the key to healthy living is managing calories in and calories out. Our goal is to help families achieve that balance by providing the tools, places and inspiration to make physical activity a daily priority."

Here is part of our fearless group ready for action!  We took a bus from our conference down to a local inner city elementary school {Walter Bracken Elementary School in Las Vegas} where we participated in this fun community service event.  Our task that day was to clean up and repaint the mural walls at their school and repaint the white stripes on their playground floor.

We were greeted by the principal of Bracken Elementary and some of her staff and were told what needed to be done.  Once they had a plan laid out for us we were ready for action. 

We grabbed our tools, found our spots on the playground and got straight to work.  Now the FUN begins!

The beautiful murals on their walls have already been pencil sketched out for us and we fill in the areas with paint.

I enjoy a fun but tedious job for a while, of filling in the cracks with a sky blue paint!

We even had a bloggers daughter as our littlest painting helper.  She was a natural Picasso too!

All in all it was a great morning of community service!  We got out and away from our conference for a while, bonded as a smaller group, and did some good for the community.  We got out and played with paint for a bit so the children who come out to enjoy this school can have a bright and pleasant environment to PLAY in.  It doesn't get much better than that!

I highly recommend getting involved in helping make your community better for the children in it.  Check out the Let's Play Website to see how you can get involved in both your community and to see tips for getting your own family out to PLAY more.  Be sure to follow them on Facebook (where you can sign the Let's Play Pledge) and Twitter to be first to hear any news.  How have you promoted PLAY in your community?  What will you do to promote PLAY now?