Dream Playground Ideas
These holidays when you find yourself confined with wet weather and a child complaining they’re bored, hand them paper and pencil to draw or write their playground ideas. Or if the weather is nice, snap some photos of the best playgrounds you visit.
Submissions will help inspire playground improvements that the school and P&C are planning. Download the flyer
here.
Where is the playground going to go?
The section of the playground due for upgrade as a priority is the soil area running along the Top Playground boundary next to the IXL building. (See images below). Students are not currently allowed to play in this area due to the dirt. Covering the dirt is essential for OH&S.
Process
1) Inspiration Phase: Feel free to let your imagination run wild as this is a brainstorming bit. What would you like most for the school playground? How would you like to spend your lunch time at school? Draw, paint, write, take photos, or make a collage or model to show us your ideas. Submit these to us before 9th of May so we can include them in a display.
2a) Sorting Phase: We'll identify reoccurring themes and ideas to understand what types of things are most popular among students. We may also do a survey of shortlisted options for all students to complete. This will give us a base to then design a playground that incorporates elements that kids most want.
2b) Planning Phase: Behind the scenes the school, P&C, and various adults involved with the working group will be doing the boring but necessary bits to make sure the playground will be safe and within budget (i.e. some ideas might be popular but unachievable due to issues of safety or expense). We'll work out what we can do in the short term, medium term, and long term. Hopefully we'll have a parent architect or designer helping us (put your hand up!). A P&C Working Group is being created and any parents interested in getting involved on the details are welcome to join. Any big P&C decisions will be raised at P&Cgeneral meetings where all members can have their say. We'll probably need to do some fundraising and/or apply for grants and matched funding.
3) Building Phase: This is the noisy messy bit. Works will be scheduled to take place when it won't affect students. Some small DIY elements may be achieved by a parent working bee, other more complicated bits will need us to bring in builders etc to do the work.
4) Playing Phase: I think you can work out what this phase involves! Kids having fun, and enjoying the playground upgrades.
School Layout
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| Darlington Public School Playground Upgrade |
The section marked in green is the rough area that is prioritised for upgrade. Below are some photos of the space.
We haven't measured it yet but it's about 4-5 metres wide, and 65 meters in length. We'll update you once we've got proper measurements.
(If anyone wants to volunteer to take measurements & draw scaled picture, step right up)
School Ideas
Some ideas for playground upgrades from the school include:
- Cover the dirt with liquid soft fall
- Stencil onto the liquid soft fall roads and have a bucket of toy cars
- Hand ball courts on the drive way
- Refresh existing stencils on the lower playground and add some more (e.g. snakes and ladders, hopscotch).
Past Student Consultation
In 2012 33 students from Darlington Public School were consulted for inspiration during the design process for Reconciliation Park in Redfern.
Erskineville Playground Crawl
Seeking some local inspiration? Use this
map to go on a park crawl around Erskineville.
Get Involved
Contact us on darlo.parents@hotmail.com to get involved in the Playground Working Group or ask questions.
