It's good to play

While the adult world is being bombarded with advertisments telling them, "It's good to talk" and "Orange - we've got it covered", 200,000 children around the country this Wednesday will be turning their attention away from the fast-moving world of communication to one more simple and creative. Playday, the annual event organised in conjunction with most of the country's local authorities, is now in it's eighth year. Anna Labelska, coordinator of NVCCP (National Voluntary Council for Children's Play) says the theme of communication "gives plenty of scope for the imagination and includes lots of challenging activities. It also enables children from different ethnic backgrounds and those with learning difficulties to show that they have ways of expressing themselves that others can learn from". Some activities have been suggested and organised by children themselves, and include games involving semaphore, morse code, braille, graffiti, CB radio and Chinese whispers. Children's author Michael Rosen has proposed a bid to break the record for the world's longest poem (currently standing at 500,000 lines). Balloons are to be launched in a grand ceremony in Stirling, while in Whyteleafe, Surrey, children will be creating a performance of Treasure Island. At Rutland Waters, a police communications vehicle will be on site relaying messages, Gloucester sees an organised rocket launch, and, perhaps most ambitious of all, kids in Cleveland will be busying themselves devising their own newspaper.

PRABJOT DOLLY DHINGRA

Information: 0171-383 5455 or call your local leisure services department