Have you taken the kids to a park recently?
This classic park surrounding the simply stunning Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art , in Kansas City is a great place to start – as long as the temperature are being kind !
The museum has a new exhibit which kids would really enjoy, as long as they are accompanied, it’s a glass Labyrinth.
Alternatively if you were across the pond in say Paris, France you could visit a more modern looking park. I think this is Parc de Villette
or perhaps a more tropical park in say Honolulu.
Sometimes just the local school has a pleasant surprise in store, as this school in south London achieved.
Most parks are designed and built to a much higher engineering standard, so they can last a long time without needed costly repairs.
Over the years we have designed & built a huge array of children’s play areas, mostly in parks or on community housing sites, occasionally in a school, the one above was a really fun project, quite a few years ago now.
The idea was to have a theme for the closed in ‘quiet’ area, so the architect suggested a ‘Kentish Riverbank’ , so we developed a dry river bed using kidney stones set in a flowing pattern, added a jetty to lin the ‘Oast’ house from the ‘Kentish Barn’ , included a loading ramp – to enable wheel chair access and created a few sail boats with trees for masts and sails. All the planting was native to a Kentish riverbank along the dry river, with more architectural plants around the edge.
We added a ‘hump back bridge’ in natural stone & a fallen oak tree, from years back when there was a very large storm.
One of the art teachers had the kids create a whole series of ceramic fish which we set into the river bed, they make excellent brass rubbings !
Children love to interact with nature, they also enjoy movement,as well as some risk, you will notice though that here we kept away from moving objects as this was a ‘Quiet Garden’ .
City parks in recent years have tended away from moving pieces of play equipment, mainly due to the liability from accidents, they use a more static type of play equipment, although the classic swing is still in evidence in many parks to this day.
More awareness of other dangers has lead to many play areas being fenced in, to protect the children playing.
Visiting a local farm is yet another wonderful experience “Pick you Own’ farms can be a wonderful treat for the kids..
Here in Weston, Missouri we have a classic old style farm that is just enchanting.
Ann & I, interviewed Farmer Steve last week he will be on our show very soon, to tell you how busy he is kept with all his animals and field of fruit and pumpkins not to mention around 15,000 kids visiting his farm each year !
You can hear our other interviews at Growing Trends on www.cravingtalkradio.com
Or you can visit our show web site at www.grotrends.com to read more
Enjoy your weekend, thank you for reading our blog, we would love to hear from you.
Ann & Chris
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