Transforming spaces - a review

Over the past little while, we've been focusing on rejuvenating our outdoor play area and what a journey it has been!

Our journey began with a question to children about what they wanted in their play and learning space.  Children came up with some pretty wonderful ideas...

Big rocks and little rocks

A waterfall

Lots of plants

A door and some windows

A rainbow

Water and mud

A swing bridge

Bigger monkey bars

Sand and trucks

A pool

Rainbow flowers

Another slide

A big as climb up and jump off

More thought was needed and the team sought further inspiration from a group of talented teachers at Onerahi Kindergarten in Whangarei. 

This team of teachers are well known for their efforts in creating nature inspired play spaces that spark children's curiosity and engagement in nature and we were so grateful for their professional discussion and support.  

 A walk through of their learning environment followed by professional discussion with the Onerahi team, got us thinking about what we wanted to achieve in our own learning space.  

We were inspired by the way they'd used natural elements within their play space to "draw children back to nature and inspire a love of nature."  As the team expressed to us "If we want children to care for the environment they have to have a love for it.  This happens through hands on engagement and play in nature" (Onerahi Kindergarten team)

Taking advantage of playful learning opportunities that nature provides @ Onerahi kindergarten!

Wobbly bridges meander through a variety of natural spaces...textures to stimulate the senses @ Onerahi kindergarten.

Another of the things we loved at Onerahi kindergarten was the way their team had created spaces for children to explore and play with water.  

Sustainability so obviously at the forefront of their thinking, as they conserved water and developed playful ways for children to grow an understanding of water as a valuable resource.  

Their concepts around flowing water was especially interesting to us as this was something that our tamariki had expressed interest in during our initial planning stage.  

Having gathered ideas and developed an understanding of what we wanted and why, our team were now ready to start our project.

Honouring children's ideas we started our upgrade with the creation of our very own rock pool.

Complete with waterfall...big rocks and little rocks!

The team spent a lot of time searching for the perfect rocks that would create a beautiful rock pool. We managed to find rocks that would allow water to flow from one to the other and then off the end of the last like a waterfall! A concrete base was added to secure the rocks allowing pebbles to be added and opportunities for us to catch and reuse water.

What a mission it was getting these enormous rocks in the right position.  Our Northland Kindergarten maintenance team worked hard to get it just right. A big thank you goes to Keith, Bevan, Jeremy...also Richard and Lloyd from our office management team, who all worked tirelessly to get this job 'play' ready and safe for our tamariki. 

 

 

“Being outdoors, especially in natural outdoor learning environments, provides the opportunity for open-ended interactions, spontaneity, exploration, discovery, risk-taking, and connection with nature” (theeducationhub,org.nz).

 “The benefits that the natural outdoors have are vital for children’s learning and development, and the significance of this cannot be underestimated” (Danielle smith, He Kupu).

"I do like it, I can play fishing with James. It makes me feel happy cause playing here is so fun" said Finn.

"I do big splashes, it splashes out" said James.

"I like to put water in the rocks to make a waterfall. I tip the water and put it back in" said Ben.

"The rock pools are fun to play in and so cool" said Taumauri.

"Lots of plants" was another request by children and over time we've worked on adding gardens around the rock pools to anchor them to the landscape.  Because our playground is basically built on a sand dune, planting choices were limited!  We chose agave plants for structural interest and bright grasses for sensory stimulation.  Both have done particularly well and the rock pools have become a beautiful natural space for children to explore, play and learn in. 

"I'm putting the water out and there's not much left" said Khan.

With our rock pools in place, we turned to naturalizing other elements within our play space.

We decided to take away the rubber soft fall matting from under the big boxes, replacing it with bark… lots and lots of bark! This was another mammoth task that the maintenance team tackled for us and we appreciate the more naturalized feel of the playground.

Newly barked and moving forward...we knew that we wanted to change our big box set to something different, but what? 

After some research of natural outdoor playground ideas we settled our minds on trying to source tree stumps. Lucky for us, an attending family offered us their felled trees and we set about making these logs into climbing equipment.  This was an interesting process!

A massive shout out to Bodhi, Catherine and Dale for these gorgeous logs!  Thank you for your generosity and support of this project.

The Hiab brought the logs to kindergarten and arranged them on the bark while the children watched on...

It was exciting times!

With the logs in place, it was time to play.

"I have to try and do the obstacle and balance to the very end.  I know you have to try.  The hardest part is you have to put your feet sideways and sometimes you do it.  Actually sometimes you fall off it.  It's challenging.  When we come up to the sideways part, sometimes I feel petrified.  I just go back down and try again and start all over again.  Then I did it and I made it and I feel happy when I make it to the end" said Jack.

"It's like a slide. I think its a tree" said Riley.

"We can stand on the logs, it's really easy for jump off.  If you don't want to jump off the high one you can walk down the logs to go to the end.  I can do it from the high one.  I was a little bit afraid but I can jump off now.  I just shook the afraid out of me and then I jumped off.  Sometimes I jump off all day!" said Oliver.

"I play and I walk on the logs...it's hard" said Corley-Jay. 

“Being able to run, jump, roll, climb and build in natural spaces is far more beneficial to children’s balance, agility and fine/gross motor skills than the experiences in playing on 

 man-made playground equipment” (Danielle smith, He Kupu).

Our aim is to create beautiful and inviting spaces that allow tamariki to explore, experiment, develop ideas, test theories, and challenge themselves whilst developing an appreciation and love of nature.   

We believe a nature inspired learning environment that offers challenge, open ended resources and is playfully child directed, supports and facilitates this learning for tamariki.  

We are slowly working our way to achieving this goal and enjoying the journey and discoveries along the way!  

Where to next you might ask?  Hmm..we came across this group of boys out in the playground and think they might be trying to tell us something!

Tranquility retreat maybe?  Watch this space!

Ngā mihi nui, the Bream Bay teaching team.