Ultimate Play Date
Scottsdale Public Library, Ariz.
Innovation Synopsis
Ultimate Play Date is an annual community event for families with young children to learn via hands-on experiences and access to healthy growth and development information. The key objective is to provide fun, engaging activities to foster a love of learning through play. Each booth provides hands-on, play-based activities emphasizing that children learn by doing.
Challenge/Opportunity
UPD provides an opportunity to bring resources and ideas together in one place so that families can learn new strategies to support their child’s learning. This fun-filled, annual event brings together early childhood stakeholders, who then demonstrate ways families can engage with their children in a variety of learning activities. All early learning developmental domains are addressed throughout the event. Families walk away with newfound knowledge and ideas that they can then use to benefit their child as they grow.
Key Elements of Innovation
UPD looks at all developmental domains including literacy, social and emotional, math, science and technology as well as physical development. Partners provide parents with a variety of strategies to help their child grow and learn, including a learning activity that focuses on an early childhood developmental domain. The unique learning opportunities emphasize ways parents can engage their children in a variety of tasks that are play-based to demonstrate how children learn through interactive experiences.
Achieved Outcomes
Ultimate Play Date has grown into an event with more than 50 booths showcasing ingenious activities that are fun and engaging for the whole family. To facilitate the experience, 65 library staff and 50 volunteers are utilized throughout the day. The event serves more than the Scottsdale community and the last one in December of 2019, which was the first time it was a winter event, garnered participation from approximately 4,000 children and families from 38 different ZIP codes.
