Kids' Weekend Guide: Oct. 19th-21st

Explore a new-to-you playground this weekend, check out a nature center, American Indian Festival, Family Pumpkin Carving and tons of fun (and food!) at Stonyfield's Field Day at Magruder Park and more this weekend!

Adults' Weekend Guide: October 18th-21st

Temps are certainy cooler but so are the events this weekend! An 'All the Stars' Outdoor Dance Party at Prince George's African American Museum & Cultural Center in North Brentwood, StonyFIELD Day in Hyattsville, HY-Swap, College Park's birthday Parkrun & more, all inside Route One Fun's Adults' Weekend Guide! Share the Guide with someone you care for! :)

Celebrate StonyFIELD Day at Hyattsville's Magruder Park this Sunday!

StonyFIELD Day at Magruder Park, Hyattsville on Sunday (10/21)!

Stonyfield Organic is teaming up with the City of Hyattsville to bring its StonyFIELDS Initiative to Magruder Park and you're invited to the celebratory StonyFIELDS Field Day kick-off event this Sunday, October 21st! There'll be free organic BBQ, face painting, kids crafts and activities, live music, organic landscaping education and a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate this great new partnership!

Rumbling around at Hyattsville's Magruder Park

As many folks will attest, Hyattsville's Magruder Park is a great community park for families, kids and local residents who want to play outside. With trails perfect for exploring on foot or bike, basketball and tennis courts perfect for working up a sweat, a playground that keeps playful kiddos busy and grass that's perfect for sports...like wrestling your cousin on a comfy bed of leaves (exhibit A above 😊) - Magruder Park's a destination beloved by many. And thanks to the StonyFIELDS #PlayFree Initiative with the City of Hyattsville, playing at Magruder Park is about to get even better! 👏

Saturday morning soccer at Hyattsville's Magruder Park

I've been buying Stonyfield Organics products for our family for some time now. Made without the use of toxic persistent pesticides, artificial hormones, antibiotics or GMOs, their no-nonsense approach to healthy eating makes me feel better about what I put on the table for all to eat. My only wish is that the kids liked them a little bit less - just a smidge - so that they wouldn't always be trying to take mine!  😂

What's mine is yours and yours is....

In furtherance of its mission to keep food healthy and help protect the environment, Stonyfield Organic is rolling out its StonyFIELDS Initiative and partnering with the 35 communities across the country to make outdoor parks and fields a healthier place to play. Which may have you wondering - how could being active outdoors get any healthier? Here's how: Over 26 million children play on public grounds each year. Most of these fields and green spaces are sprayed with harmful pesticides known to affect neurological, respiratory, immune and endocrine systems in humans. Children are especially susceptible to these toxins: their skin is more permeable, their organs are still developing and less likely to be able to detoxify harmful chemicals and, let's be real, they spend more time rolling around in the treated grass than you and me - except for that one time. 😆

Up until now, I (sheepishly) haven't given much thought to pesticide exposure at playgrounds and parks. Sure, I've considered the impact of pesticides in our food and buy organic whenever I can, but exposure to these harmful chemicals while playing on outdoor fields and parks was just not on my radar. Thankfully, Stonyfield Organic's partnership with the City of Hyattsville is putting this concern on all of our radars and helping us all do something about it by working to make public grounds - like Magruder Park - that bit healthier for all of us!

At a time when funding and resources for toxic-chemical regulation are unfortunately being drastically cut, Stonyfield Organic's StonyFIELDS Initiative will invest half a million dollars to help 35 communities across the country convert outdoor fields and parks to organically maintained ones, where kids and adults can play freely without the worry of exposure to harmful pesticides. And lucky for us, Hyattsville's Magruder Park is one of those 35 communities! 👏😊👏

Come celebrate this good news, learn more about this partnership with the City of Hyattsville and the ways that you, too, can bring change in your own back yard at this Sunday's big kick-off event: StonyFIELDS Magruder Park Field Day! (October 21st, 11am-2pm.)  There'll be face painting, organic BBQ, kids crafts and activities, live music, organic landscaping education, a ribbon cutting ceremony & more!

Magruder Park is located at 3911 Hamilton Street, Hyattsville MD 20781. 

More about Sunday's StonyFIELDS event at Hyattsville's Magruder Park.

More about communities that are already making progress!

Thank you to Stonyfield Organic for sponsoring this post. And thank you, dear Route One Fun readers, for supporting businesses that make my work possible! 

Spotlight: College Park Nursery School, Maryland

College Park Nursery School

It's been a while since Route One Fun published a Spotlight on Schools post, so I was thrilled when local parent Courtney English reached out to reinvigorate the series with a guest post about College Park Nursery School (CPNS), a co-operative nursery school in College Park, Maryland. Finding a good, quality child care, daycare and preschool in Hyattsville, College Park, Riverdale Park and the overall DC suburbs of Maryland can be a full-time job, so hopefully having the perspective of (and this opportunity to contact) a parent with a child currently enrolled in one of these local schools will lighten your load. (Thank you, Courtney!) *CPNS is hosting an open house this Tuesday, 10/16, 9:30-11:30am.

Read below for Courtney's insight on College Park Nursery School. To read more parents' thoughts about local schools in our area, including University Park, Mount Rainier and Greenbelt Elementary, check out Route One Fun's Spotlight on Schools page.

Kids' Weekend Guide: Oct. 13th-14th

Touch-a-Truck (or bus!) is just one of the fun, local events this weekend!

So many fun events to check out and enjoy outdoors this lovely weekend! Touch-a-Truck, Zombie Run, Girls in Aviation, Harvest Festival, Festival del Rio Anacostia, Historic Ellicott City & more, all inside Route One Fun's Kids' Weekend Guide! 

Many thanks to this weekend's sponsor!