Pursuing Growth Through Play

Pursuing Growth Through Play

With one of our core School values being Wellbeing, we recognise the significant role that healthcare and family support play in our students’ lives. This includes nurturing the mental and physical stimulation of our students’ growth.

In encouraging wellbeing, we strive to support the growth of our younger students as they continue on their education journey, understanding that the skills children acquire through play at a young age help to shape them as they transition into young adults in the future. We, therefore, want to do our best to support and encourage this for your child at our School as much as possible.

As schools continue to develop and evolve in how we offer education and facilities for our students, Tyndale Christian School – Murray Bridge saw an opportunity to provide a new nature playground for our Junior School students.

We are fully aware of the benefits of outdoor play, particularly with the increase in nature playgrounds and what they can offer children. Whilst a simple and common type of play for children, it has such significant impact on their growth and development. Many of the benefits include providing children with the chance to:

• Acquire gross motor and sensory skills,
• Develop their cognitive skills through critical and creative thinking and problem-solving,
• Further their coordination skills by manoeuvring through playground equipment,
• Grow in resilience and self-confidence,
• Develop self-initiative,
• Strengthen collaboration and communication skills,
• … and many more valuable skills vital to children’s development and growth!

By tapping into nature and utilising the goodness of tree logs, plants, branches, rocks, drainage paths and ropes, nature playgrounds give children the chance to discover and explore a wider variety of textures and playground elements that differ from the classic steel and plastic equipment.

Our primary goal with the development of our nature playground was to increase positive collaboration and communication so that positive relationships can be strengthened through play in a natural, organically stimulating environment.

So far, we have found that our students have thoroughly enjoyed using their imagination to create new types of adventures on the nature playground. It has been exciting for them to utilise different coordination and movement skills to play on the new equipment!

We have loved seeing our students care for their new space whilst thriving and playing differently and look forward to seeing how this new implementation to our School will create a lasting impact on the development of our students!