Our Playground
Over the Spring and Summer of 2006 we were thrilled to be able to build a new playground for our children. This was possible due to the fundraising efforts of many past years of Creative families. It is a playground suitable for 3 to 6 year old children. The playground was designed to encourage children to run around, to use their senses, to explore their environment and stretch their imaginations. The play equipment we picked gives children a starting point, their imaginations do the rest.
Fire Truck and Slide
The fire truck was chosen for its ability to stimulate imaginative play, role playing and cooperation and has succeeded in this aim beyond our wildest expectations. The children have used it as a gym, a house, a home base for running games, a spaceship, a boat and of course a fire truck, to name but a few of the things it has become.
Climbing Cave
The climbing tunnel and rumble slide, develop the children's balance and upper body strength as well as giving the children the height to see the playground from a whole new perspective.
Calvin the Caterpillar & Drums
Calvin the Caterpillar is a wonderful piece of play equipment that the children can crawl on, under and around. He has many different textures as well as the life cycle of the butterfly on his belly, things to find on his feet and ladybugs on his back.
The three drum set is used by the children to create music, and to send messages to each other and can be used by more than one child at a time.
Our giant sandbox is also a huge hit with the children, this is a very imagination friendly piece of play equipment and the children love to play in it.
We also have two tables in our playground where children can have outside snack or lessons.
There are several geometric plant beds with plantings designed to have an interest all year round. The plantings introduce or develop in our children an awareness of the progression of the seasons as well as making the playground a fun and interesting place to be. They have provided unforeseen lessons for the children as happened when the ornamental cabbages were munched away by caterpillars. Where we initially thought, what a shame, the children thought WOW! They were fascinated to see the caterpillars handiwork.
Our Creative playground is a very sociable place for the children to be in and gives them opportunity to exercise independent choice with the number of areas in which to play.
We deliberately chose not to put swings into the playground for two main reasons; the children tend to queue for the swings and not play on other equipment or interact with each other and the amount of clear space you must have around swings would have meant we had little or no room for any of the other wonderful experiences we designed for the children.
This explains how and why we chose the equipment we did and our aim that it would help the children grow and develop. The children themselves do not see this. They do not understand what the founders of Creative Playschool understood and what parents who have chosen Creative Playschool understand - that children learn through play.
The children are firefighters, explorers, mountaineers, gardeners, musicians, animal experts - but above all they are playing with their friends and having FUN! FUN! FUN!!!