BELLBOWRIE KINDY

The design for Bellbowrie Kindy Nature Playspace follows the principles of nature play to fulfil the Kindy’s desire to increase the opportunities for children to enjoy more unstructured play outdoors. In doing so, the Playspace promotes the health benefits connected to nature play including cognitive, social and emotional development, and the building of resilience and creativity as well. Experiencing nature as a child can assist in the development of an environmental awareness and a concept of stewardship later in life.

Complementing the existing adventure playground, the Nature Playspace provides users with a series of features to encourage unscripted play. These include; a natural watercourse fuelled by a water pump to allow kids to control the flow of water down the creek, mudpits and digging mounds, barefoot garden paths around a forest of natural totem poles, log bridges, balance beams and stepping stones, scented and flowering native plants, pottery garden, and yarning circle centred on a firepit to introduce to children the indigenous concept of storytelling in an organic way.

There is increasing recognition in the playground industry that, in recent decades, the single-minded focus on injury prevention through risk elimination, that ignores the benefits for children of exposure to managed risk, has been to their detriment. This Nature Playspace embraces this realisation, in the hope that even at the kindergarten age, we can set a course for stronger, better-equipped and more resilient future citizens.