A Captivating Early Years Playground At Kilnhurst
Kilnhurst St Thomas CE Primary School, located in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, wanted to extend and develop their EYFS children’s outdoor area.
They felt it didn’t promote the Early Years curriculum and was basic. Since the space is also quite small, they were worried about overcrowding the area, too. We were glad to be able to use our experience and expertise to help them to redesign this area and inject some colour, fun and learning.
Once hearing about their playground issues and worries, our playground consultant, Dan Young, worked alongside the staff to design and install an area that was right just for them, while meeting the needs of the project.
He installed a wonderful selection of EYFS playground equipment, creating a fabulous cross-curricular play environment perfect for this young age group.
Messy Play Space
Messy play is perfect for developing Reception children’s communication, language and social skills, along with introducing them to scientific and mathematic concepts! We therefore installed a wide range of equipment to bring investigative, explorative play to the playground.
Installing Reception class’ very own kitchen, we’ve created an excellent cooker and ingredients store to bring culinary play to life. The children have plenty of opportunities to explore a range of textures and materials as they collaborate in the mini mud kitchen, playing chef and restaurant.
They love weighing out their ingredients from the Mud Box on the Weighing Scales before placing them into Rope and Pulley Materials Mover that feeds the mud kitchen, and using them to bake, fry or boil delicious meals.
With a constant supply of mud, the children can explore numerous mathematic concepts and develop their understanding of the world through play as they dig, scoop and move the mud as much as they like!
Alongside Reception’s very own kitchen, we also extended the children’s messy play opportunities through the installation of a world of golden beaches, pirates and treasure.
Manipulating the sand, building sand castles and digging for buried treasure is a fantastic cross-over between sensory, messy play and imaginative play! The children love reacting episodes from Jake and Neverland Pirates, transporting themselves to new worlds using the Sand Table as a focal point for their play.
To further children’s opportunity of learning through messy play, we installed one of our excellent Water Walls with Water Spout. Guiding the water down the channels, forcing the rain cloud to rain and spinning the water wheel, the children are mesmerised by the each droplet as they work out new routes for the water to take.
Through the addition of an exciting water wall, the young engineers can explore scientific and mathematic concepts through play - discovering how gravity, the water cycle and river source to mouth works.
To view our huge range of messy play resources!
Literacy and Storytelling Area
Since we wanted to ensure the children had plenty of opportunities outdoors to develop their communication, language, social skills, fine motor and literacy outdoors, we installed a fabulous selection of playground seating, mark making equipment and even an outdoor performance stage!
Bringing storytime to life outdoors, our magical Freestanding storytelling chair and moveable seats are perfect for promoting reading in the playground.
The children are naturally excited to get up in the big chair as they read aloud pages of a book to others sat around listening, promoting literacy and good listening skills, too. Moreover, when storytime is taken outdoors, children’s imaginations flourish – watching the characters come to life and imagine the tales paly out infront of them.
Providing the actresses and actors of Reception with a dedicated space, our Mini Performance Stage with Chalkboard has brought a natural sense of freedom to the playground, encouraging children to sing, dance and get very creative in their performances.
While reacting fairy tales and plays to others watching, the audiences good listening skills are enhanced while others communication, spoken language, social skills and self-confidence are improved outdoors.
Finally, we also included a fantastic Easel Table to further promote literacy in the playground. Children can not only draw their own settings on the performance stage, they can also sit down and get creative on the Easel.
Writing, drawing and creating fabulous masterpieces, they have been provided with the perfect opportunity to develop their fine motor skills, creativity and literacy through play!
Active Play Zone
Since the area is on the smaller size, and the school’s senior leadership team were worried about overcrowding, we decided our Get Set, Go! Blocks were perfect for the area.
These adaptable blocks bring moveable active play value to the area, enabling the children to work together to pick up and move them, creating their very adventure trail.
Stepping, jumping and balancing from block to block is perfect for physical development. In addition, the children can develop their climbing confidence as they take safe risks and become more and more confident at different levels.
Making up their own games, the children love adventuring through a high ropes course as they step from each platform to the next, high up in the trees, before sliding all the way down to the bottom again.
At Kilnhurst St Thomas CE Primary School, the children have already enjoyed many hours of learning through play and have many, many more years to come! The staff at the school are also very pleased with the difference we’ve made to their children’s outdoor learning environment, leaving us amazing feedback:
“We are really pleased with our new area. The installation was completed quickly and once it was complete, the class teachers and caretaker we were given good advice about the new equipment installed. All of the installers on the site have been courteous and really professional.”
We thrive off knowing that we’re improving children’s educational play experience through the installation of our innovative EYFS Playground Equipment. View our dedicated EYFS page. If you would like to enhance your outdoor play space, please Contact Us.
