Cohousing-L Mailing List: Children from outside the community

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

Now that school is out we have a lot of kids from up the road coming to 
play in our playground and woods.  Sometimes they come down to play 
with some of the kids here, but sometimes they just come down cause  
"This is a really cool place"

In order to help our neighborhood deal with non-member kids we held a 
kids meeting with both our kids and the neighboring kids and they 
brainstormed up a set of rules for playing at Sharingwood.

To help make the connection we created a one page newsletter which 
included the rules which we passed out and also we are inviting all the 
kids and their parents to an ice-cream social next weekend in order to 
meet all the parents.  One of our goals from this meeting is to 
organize a block parent sort of program which will provide increased 
parental support and communication among all the parents and neighbors 
along the road.

Does anyone have any ideas about such programs, or any other advice 
about dealing with outside kids?