Duclos School in Bonnyville will have a new addition to its playground this week.
A new eight-piece structure will feature accessible and sensory equipment for children with sensory needs and mobility issues.
All pieces that require students to sit down will feature ‘bucket seats' to help keep children safe that are unable to use their strength to stay on the structure.
Two of the structures on this play set are a set of ‘Freechimes', which is like an xylophone and a colorful drum set. These are being used to shape students love for music, meet their sensory needs and to get some physical activity in the process.
“The purpose for doing this was to design and build an accessible special needs play area on our playground suitable for all students but, especially thinking of those that might have sensory needs or mobility issues,” said Duclos principal Richard Cameron. “We wanted an accessible and inclusive playground to make it as easy as possible for everyone to be able to play and to have a variety of things to do regardless of their abilities.”
The structure includes areas that are larger than most playground equipment.
“We also included pieces that were all able to hold more children, so groups of kids can interact with each other allowing kids who might not otherwise make friends (quite as easily), to have fun things to do in groups,” said Cameron. “All pieces are built for socialization.”
One of the main reasons for building this play set at Duclos was to give an opportunity to students who couldn't play on the normal play set, something to enjoy during recess.
“We were thinking about usability for all, and discovering new and unique pieces of equipment that we don't have right now and thinking about easy access for every child regardless of their abilities.”
The idea for this play set began developing last winter. The school wanted to get the construction of this structure started before the summer ended, but some delays took place but everything is going according to plan now.
Northern Lights Public Schools provided a loan for the equipment, which cost $105,000.
“We didn't want it to drag on for years and years of fundraising before building it, so our school division will front the money so we could book a playground installation company, choose the pieces of equipment that fit our needs and get it installed and built as soon as possible,” said Cameron. “Now we are running our own fundraisers over the next year or two or looking for donations. We have lots of communications going out now asking good corporate citizens if they're interested in contributing to this project and we will then just pay back our school board loan over time.”
That is a process that has been used many times before by the school board.
“We're really looking forward to seeing the kids playing on it, because we want to see how these types of pieces of equipment draw the kids attention and lets kids play that might not have had the see type of opportunities before.”
Duclos is asking anyone who would like to donate to this project to contact the school.
