Creation of a Children's Garden

I'd had my eye on a particular patch of greenery for quite some time and had been observing it through the seasonal changes to gauge its potential as a children’s garden. It sits at the end of the Junior School corridor but the puzzling fact that it was surrounded by a thick hedge meant that we couldn’t access it. A number of reasons why we couldn’t use it had been given, but only ever anecdotally and none of the reasons seemed insurmountable. So I designed a proposal as a part of an outdoor learning and play spaces revamp, got the go-ahead and, one fine day, a entrance way cut appeared in the hedge and we were allowed in!

Joining in with Global School Play Day

(https://www.facebook.com/globalschoolplayday/)

One of our new focus areas in our Junior School is that of play so I was really keen for us to take part in Global School Play Day this year. Each class from Grades 1-5 were involved, incorporating play into the school day in the form of free play and more teacher-led activities. 

This wonderful grassroots celebration of play really aims for children to be engaged in purely unstructured activities as this is increasingly stolen from them in our race for them to be achieving and busy the whole time. I took this as an opportunity to also encourage our teachers to come up with ways they could design play-based learning engagements during the day in addition to the free play. It was also another invitation for more movement-based and outdoor activities. 

Of course, the children had a really fun day, and the teachers also enjoyed the challenge too!

Loose Parts Playground Launch

This week sees the launch of our ‘loose parts playground’! I’ve been working on a re-vamp of our outdoor spaces with a focus on re-directing the way we play and learn in them. One initiative I have been keen to bring in is the concept of providing children with outdoor play items which will provoke creativity, new ways of using the body, teamwork and communication. These items will supplement the existing fixed-to-the-ground playground equipment pieces and will consist of collections of random items which children can use to build structures of their own choosing. Logs, planks of wood, tree branches, tyres and fabrics are just some of the things we are including in our loose parts playground.