By the time Design Day was over for the proposed Slidell Community Playground, scores of kids and many of their parents were equally pumped up about the project.

Thanks to 12,000 local Slidell schoolchildren, the playground will feature a treasure chest of playground delights, among them a ship with a climbing net, rocket ship, a twisty slide, swings, ramps, tunnels, and a tree house.

Designer Dennis Wille of Leathers & Associates, the Ithaca, N.Y., firm that designs and organizes community-built playgrounds, spent a long day Friday listening to children's ideas, converting them into a schematic drawing and then presenting them to a crowd of children and parents who packed the John Slidell Park’s gymnasium.

The evening meeting was part celebration, part exhortation of would-be volunteers. The room was decorated with children's ideas for the playground. Brightly-colored ice cream that was served.

Singers decked out in railroad caps and neckerchiefs sang "Take Me Out to the  Playground".

Wille told the crowd of over 300 parents and children, he had enough ideas for three or four playgrounds "and some things I don't know how to do in a public playground, like the bungee jumping."

He will take his sketch back to Ithaca, refine it and develop a materials list. The next few months will be spent in organization. Slidell’s playground is slightly larger than the average playground, he told parents, and will probably take six days to build than the standard five days.

He described the moment when a paper chain made by children is cut and kids rush onto the playground for the first time. "Every time I try to describe it I get goose bumps," he said. “ And from the looks of the support – this playground will be a success!”