Our first working-bee for 2011 happened on February 20 2011. The rain came but spirits were not dampened! The committee of management are fired up this year and determined to create a new ‘natural’ playground for our children.
The tunnel/hill at our preschool has been a land-mark within the Mooroolbark community for sometime now. Everybody knows of the preschool with ‘the tunnel‘! And boy do we have plans to make our tunnel grand.
Our working-bee probably began the day before really, when our maintenance officer, Darryl and his friend with a digger (mysterious character… we’ve never met him yet!) prepared the ground and positioned our new slides. How much are the children going to love these!?
This area really needs to be viewed as a ‘work in progress’…. it will feature a tyre climbing slope with rope up through the middle of the slides and some planting of exotic grasses on either side of the slides.
On this side of the hill/slope we will have a combination of low planting and rocks for the children to climb, or perch on! To frame the entrance to the tunnel (on both sides) we will have two large potted plants (bamboo?). Hopefully, brightly coloured glazed blue ceramic pots!!??!
Wow… how much better does this look? We have hidden that horrible old concrete with a non-slip painted surface in a lovely sandstone colour. It will need another coat and unfortunately the rain restricted our progress on the day.
Check this out! A new lease of life for our cubby house! This is such an improvement! Previously, our cubby was not very user friendly (way too hot in summer and the huntsman spiders loved it!)… but remove an entire wall and door… and voila! … a great new play space!
It is now our ‘mud-pie’ kitchen! We hope to make a little stone pathway to link our sandpit to our kitchen. How much fun will this be for our children?!!… and maybe some sweet smelling herbs in pots alongside our path!
Another work in progress! This rather dull alcove provides such potential for a great play space!
It’s one awesome detail is this wonderful old tree stump which we intend to make full use of as a feature. At the moment, we have a couple of hay-bails for seating, but we have been given some great pieces of cut tree trunks (HUGE!) that, with the aid of a chain saw, will be turned into wonderful seats to surround our tree stump table! Fantastic!
We hope to hide the ugly tin shed walls with a variety of natural texture panels.
Not so long ago, we updated our rusty water-play trough for a new moulded plastic model. So, mmmmm… what to do with the old one… recycle it of course! Our grandfather Brian, drilled some holes into the bottom, lined it with fly-wire and added some topsoil. At the working-bee we added some plants and rocks… and there you go… an instant outdoor natural playscape! I think the children are going to enjoy playing with this in a multitude of different ways! The options are endless!
So, now let’s see what the children think of the changes their parents have made….
Oh yeah, I think they like it!!!!
