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The Dufferin Grove Playground Club
The summer 2016 playground club no longer exists.
What happened....
There were some good times (see below) but not many people joined and the deterioration of the playground caretaking by staff continued. There have been lots of experiments at the park over the years that worked, and lots of other that didn't work. This one didn't work.
So now there's a dilemma. By and large, the recreation staff are not enthusiastic about the adventure playground, and don't like to work there. The playground has become kind of an orphan, and it will gradually deteriorate if it goes on like this. Will some champions appear? At the moment (Spring 2019), it's still a cliffhanger.
The history
A new club started up in June 2016, to help the playground be as good as it can be, and share good ideas and news of coming events. For a suggested donation of $5 a year per family, members could get a membership card (kids got their own) and news updates from time to time. The funds were used for new shovels, pails, and building materials as needed, for the little engineers in the sandpit, and for buying play-cooking equipment at garage sales for the homebodies in the play houses. To join, people could email dgplaygroundclub@gmail.com.
Learn how to join here
July 25, 2016
the new banner, made on July 25 by Claire and some playground kids
July 20, 2016
the wading pool box arrived!
The playground club emails asking for a separate storage box for the wading pool staff worked out. The box took too long to come but it's actually better than the box that was promised. All the wading pool chemicals, hazard outfits, brooms, chlorine testers, staff backpacks etc. can fit into this standard-issue lock-box, which is exactly like those at other pools.
So now we have lots more space for the adventure playground equipment. Which brings me to some requests. Playground friends, if you have extra:
- large ice cream containers for sand buckets
- little toy cars and trucks for the play platform
- large pieces of fabric for the shelter-builders
- banged-up pots and pans you no longer use, for "cooking" at both the sandpit and the playground houses
- non-fragile cups, saucers for tea parties -- we have the silver tray and teapot already :-)
- clean old washable blankets for the baby spot (we can now bring down the CELOS play-setup for the baby siblings of the little engineers)
July 12, 2016: heat waves
July 12, 2016: how to deal with a heat wave
toy boats on strings
games tables
How to deal with heat waves: for parents and caregivers: try to stay in the shade and move as little as possible. For kids: stay in the shade and dig rivers and dams and get cool wet sand all over you, alternating with trips to the wading pool to play with the new toy string-boats (bought with the $5 playground club donations!) -- or just splash each other. Then back to the shade to play some chess, or make something with Ava.
water meter, June 21, 2016
The information is in about sandpit water use, compared to wading pool water use.
The sandpit: One hour of water running out of the sandpit watertap measures as 416 liters (Lee Valley garden hose water meter). The longest that the tap would be running in a day is 10 hours: 4160 liters a day.
The wading pool: after it's filled for the morning, the pool is emptied and refilled again 4 hours later, so that means it uses about 58,120 liters a day. read more
More wading pool news here