Pacific Gardens is Kidville!

Children at Pacific Gardens are especially blessed.

It's not just because we have a great outdoors play area where they can run, jump, dig, climb trees, play on the teeter-totter, ride their bicycles and tricycles and wagons and swing on the swings.

It's because they never have to go on a play-date. It's total kidville - they just tumble out the door, and there's always someone ready to do magic tricks, or learn break-dancing, play table-tennis, have a tea-party, or pretend to be a Ninja Turtle (who would have thought they're still in style?).

I always know when school's out, because there's a crowd of weans (as the Scots would say) roaring through the atrium playing games or running in and out of each other's homes as they plot their next adventures.

Now some people my age would really object to that, but I don't.  To me, it's the sound of happiness, the sound of children playing as they should play, free to explore, to come up with their own ideas for games, and to have the extended physical activity they require to grow up strong and healthy.

When I see the way the children here are free to roam, safe in a community where we all look out for each other, it reminds me of my childhood more than a half-century ago, when I would leave the house at nine in the morning and come back for supper - and nobody worried.

The children at Pacific Gardens are experiencing the best of both worlds - the freedom of unstructured play, within the protection of a cohousing neighbourhood where they know they are welcomed and loved.

Kathryn