Little Lambs Playpen gives kids room to imagine

If you’re the par­ent of small chil­dren liv­ing in Winchester, you may have wished for a place where they can play in a safe envi­ron­ment with oth­er kids. 

Winchester now has such a place — Little Lambs Playpen — locat­ed right in the heart of down­town Winchester on North Main St. 

Owners Amy and Tim Keltner opened the new busi­ness in July and so far, busi­ness has been good. 

“Summer was great,” Amy told WinCity Voices in a recent interview. 

“It has slowed down a bit since school start­ed. Getting back into the rou­tine of school kind of slowed us down a lit­tle bit, but The Pioneer Festival week­end was great for us. We had a bunch of new faces. I think once the weath­er starts turn­ing, I’m hope­ful that we will pick up. And we do have a bunch of birth­day par­ties booked for October.” 

In addi­tion to freestyle play among the many attrac­tions locat­ed with­in the playpen, the busi­ness also offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to host birth­day par­ties and oth­er cel­e­bra­tions for groups of kids. They also fea­ture a nurs­ing room and a chang­ing room. 

Amy says she was born and raised in Winchester and met her hus­band Tim while attend­ing col­lege at Morehead. Tim is from Kettering, Ohio. The Keltners have three chil­dren who are home­schooled so when the busi­ness is open their kids are always there, which ensures that vis­it­ing chil­dren have oth­er kids to play with. 

Tim says that Amy is the offi­cial spokesper­son, so we let her answer most of the ques­tions. I asked Amy to describe the business. 

“We are run­ning an indoor play­ground, a play­room for kids,” says Amy. “Our inspi­ra­tion was these three young ones we have; we just thought that we need­ed some­where in Winchester to be able to take them when you need to get them out of the house, and so tru­ly the inspi­ra­tion was just to have some­where safe. 

“You can bring your lit­tle kids and you can let them play, and they can use their imag­i­na­tion. We’ve got blocks and dress up stuff. We’ve got train pieces, just a lit­tle bit of every­thing. . . . We just want­ed to pro­vide a safe place for kids to play where we didn’t have to trav­el out­side of our city.” 

I asked Amy how this dif­fers from tra­di­tion­al daycare. 

“So, we’re not a day­care cen­ter — par­ents stay with their kid­dos, so it’s like you come in you pay a fee for a two-hour-slot and then you just get to let your kids play. We have one mom I know who comes in and lets her kid­do play while she works on her book. And anoth­er mom [who works from home] so she’s come here a cou­ple of times while she worked and the kids played. 

“Parents come with their kids, and they can play with their kids, but it also gives par­ents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to just step out­side of their norm. And we have dif­fer­ent toys than what they might have at home, plus the chance to inter­act with oth­er kids.” 

Amy com­pared it to a place like Monkey Joe’s, though on a small­er scale. 

“Kind of that same. A lit­tle less of the jump­ing and real­ly active play. More of the imag­i­na­tive kind that uses that cre­ative side of their brain.” 

Amy describes the ven­ture as sort of an ongo­ing exper­i­ment to see what works, what Winchester par­ents want to see in a place like Little Lambs. 

“I mean, we’re kind of plow­ing new ground here. As far as Winchester, yeah, we’ll prob­a­bly be doing things a year from now that we nev­er thought of. 

“We’re going to do a pump­kin dec­o­rat­ing in October. 

“If we’re real­ly suc­cess­ful, and we out­grow this space, we would love to expand a lit­tle bit and maybe have some­thing for big­ger kids, because we have stuck to between the in the one-to-six age range. Eventually, if we could expand and we could have things for old­er kids.” 

Little Lambs Playpen is locat­ed at 16 North Main Street and is open every Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., except for Thursdays, when they open at noon. Saturday hours some­times vary because that’s typ­i­cal­ly when they have birth­day par­ties, but they post sched­ule changes on Facebook. Much more infor­ma­tion can be found on their web­site, where par­ents can also book play­time for their children.