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THE PORCH AS A PLAYGROUND
By THE EDITORS
A
RE you making the best use of your home porch this summer ? To us who live piled up on top of each other in flats the porch is the only regular access to outdoors. Yet some of us cliff-dwellers consecrate our postern gate, the back porch, to no better use than as a repository for the broom and oil can. So distinguished a personage as the librarian of Clark University asserts that the play-porch is as important and useful a feature of domestic architecture as the sleeping-porch. Not only is the porch oftentimes the coolest part of the dwelling, but by a bamboo curtain it may be made as private as any.
It does not require expensive or extensive furnishing. Of course, a hanging porch couch is a luxury, but it takes up room. A little swing is fully as pleasant to a little child. A slide is better, if a porch be on the ground floor. It acts as a substitute for the dear old cellar door. There is an adjustable one that the kindergarten houses sell, which father can make just as well, 91/2 feet long and 41/2 feet high at the top.
"We are so lucky at our house," a little girl told Joseph Lee. "You see, we have two barrels.,, A barrel is really a delightful plaything. You can ride it—or try to, and you can roll down inside it. It is almost as animated as a horse. Another simple thing that gives vent to this instinct for precarious footing is a humble 2x4. Fasten it to the floor of the porch, and the little children will toddle along it infinitely and learn balancing and body control. Large oblong blocks arranged in irregular pathways are even more beguiling.
Dry-goods boxes are staples for the porch playground. A nest of different sizes will build into a staircase for climbing. The biggest is just the material out of which to build the playhouse. It is much better than one you could buy for $75 all
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