Darell Hammond Quotes

Play exercises both your physical and creative muscles. It helps you move around, solve problems, challenge yourself, and think in new ways. Not to mention that it's just plain fun.

No child wants to fall off a jungle gym or slide. Accidents are an unfortunate fact of life, but to lower every last slide and jungle gym to a height that would only interest a toddler is doing our children a grave disservice.

Public swimming pools, recreation centers, summer reading programs, youth jobs programs - they are all shutting their doors. And they are all facilities and programs relied on most heavily by low-income children.

We know when children have a place to play they live healthier, happier lives.

Play is under attack in our nation's schools - and shrinking recess periods are only part of the problem. Homework is increasing. Cities are building new schools without playgrounds. Safety concerns are prompting bans of tag, soccer, and even running on the schoolyard.

Our society spends a lot of money on prison bars. For the sake of our kids, let's invest in monkey bars.

By providing our young children with opportunities for free, child-directed play, along with proper nutrition, we are setting them up for a lifetime of healthy habits, versus interventions needed later in life.

The national nonprofit I founded, 'KaBOOM!,' is on a mission to save play for America's children, and has long been championing the cause in high-need communities.

During the year, our schools are busy slashing P.E. and recess to make more time for math. During the summer, we get ourselves worked into a tizzy that our children will forget their fractions.

Just as playgrounds didn't even make the priority list of most of those responding to Katrina, they all too often slip off the radar of those building our schools, designing our neighborhoods, and drafting government budgets.

We must make sure that there is recess and P.E. class in every school, getting kids outside for 60 minutes, every day.

Kids who don't play are not just at greater risk of falling behind academically, but also of becoming overweight or obese, failing to integrate socially, and even engaging in criminal activity.

Our education system is increasingly embracing a black-and-white way of thinking, in which 'learning' and 'play' are diametrically opposed. 'Learning' is the serious stuff that happens inside a classroom and can be measured via multiple choice questions and a No. 2 pencil. 'Play' is frivolous, fun, and worst of all, optional.

When given age-appropriate challenges, children tend to take them very seriously; in fact, the more obvious the risk is, the more cautiously a child will proceed.

Aaah, summer - that long anticipated stretch of lazy, lingering days, free of responsibility and rife with possibility. It's a time to hunt for insects, master handstands, practice swimming strokes, conquer trees, explore nooks and crannies, and make new friends.

If there's one thing that 'No Child Left Behind' has proven, it's that more academics don't make for smarter children - or even higher test scores. And yet we somehow refuse to accept this reality.

At KaBOOM! we are crowd-sourcing a nationwide Map of Play that uses GIS data and user rankings to identify where the engaging playgrounds are located, but more importantly, where they are not.

Given that the biggest rise in childhood obesity rates are occurring in children ages 3 to 5 years, we must modify our efforts to place an emphasis on prevention versus intervention.

Increased physical activity during the school day can help children's attention, classroom behavior, and achievement test scores. Meanwhile, the decline of play is closely linked to ADHD; behavioral problems; and stunted social, cognitive, and creative development.

The lack of free, child-directed play time for our kids today will have dire consequences for these future leaders, making them less prepared to solve complex challenges and problems.

People have to see play as more important than what it currently is. We don't want to get boxed into thinking play only happens on a playground. The best type of play is all kinds of play.

A cultural shift is needed to incorporate exercise into our children's daily lives.

We're taking sports too far and starting kids too early.

Only one in five children in the U.S. lives within walking distance of a park. Many more lack access to a quality early childhood education that provides ample time and space to play.

I hope my organization will not be around in 10 years, because at a national, state, and community level, we will have evolved into a society that cares about children and the need for play.

We are raising today's children in sterile, risk-averse and highly structured environments. In so doing, we are failing to cultivate artists, pioneers and entrepreneurs, and instead cultivating a generation of children who can follow the rules in organized sports games, sit for hours in front of screens and mark bubbles on standardized tests.

'Our Dream Playground' is a new online project planner designed to help you build the playground of your dreams. It's a free resource, brought to you 'KaBOOM!,' offering step-by-step instructions to help you bring play to the kids in your community.

It's absolutely crucial that every child-serving organization - be it an elementary school, daycare, or community center - provide its children with time and space to play.

In neighborhoods without a usable park or playground, the incidence of childhood obesity increases by 29 percent.