Thank you to everyone who came out to the Environment Centre last month to celebrate the opening of our Nature Playscapes!
It was such a lovely day and we were so pleased to see over 100 community members, new & old friends of the Environment Centre come out to enjoy some food, music and lots of fun! It was a wonderful sight to see all the kids who came out and who upon seeing the playscapes would run over to explore and play on them.
The following is a version of our Executive Director Jacob’s speech including a little bit of background, thank yous and our hope for the playscape.
A nature playscape is any structure that encourages kids to play in and engage with the natural world. With the average child spending no more than 30 minutes in the outdoors playing per day – finding creative ways to connect our children with nature becomes more important than ever.
The idea of our nature playscapes started about four years ago when we were thinking about what we could do next at the Environment Centre. We’d come across some amazing photos of whimsical playscapes from Germany and it got us thinking about what we could do here. Those of you who know us at Camp Kawartha also know that we have no lack of ideas but sometimes it takes a bit of discipline and structure for us to translate ideas into action. There were a number of people who helped out with this and we wanted to honour their dedication, perseverance and hard work.
We’d like to thank the Trent Community Research Centre who provided us with two full time students. Both Jennifer Warr and Ulrike Fliesser conducted research on best practices from around the world and they came up with a plan – many of their suggestions have been implemented.
These kinds of projects need funding. We would like to thank, first off, Christa Falconer and Michelle Beattie for their grant proposals and effective crowd source funding campaign that helped to raise the money for this initiative. Next we would like to give our heart felt thanks the many donors who contributed to this project; An Anonymous Donor, The Gainey Foundation, Kevin Lee, Peter Brieger, The Peterborough Field Naturalists, Mike Bishop, The Mintz-Stones, Bob Burgis, Adrienne Ross, Lynn Smith, Carrie Sadowski, Geoffrey Butson, Paul Elliot, Samantha Driscoll, Jacob Rodenburg, Sarah and Jagger, Craig Brant, Karen Copson, Dianne Everson, Corin Forrester, Christa Falconer, Thomas Heyes, Jenn Warr, Maeda Welch, Mary Elizabeth Konrad, Michelle Beattie and Veronica Olas.
A thank you as well to the incredibly creative Paul Patterson who designed and built the elements.
We would also like to thank the Fleming Colllege Students who created our new lovely grape vine teepee. They are Reid Pierson, Jessica Gibson and Pamela Hartwick.
Finally we would like to thank our wonderful and incredibly dedicated staff and volunteers especially the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre Team (Craig, Amanda, Jamie, Glen & Paige) and our Maintenance Team (Mike & Jeremy).
The intention of these playscapes is not only to encourage kids to romp and play in nature but we really hope this serves as a catalyst to encourage parents. teachers and community leaders to create their own nature playscapes in their own backyards, school yards and green spaces. The more kids interact with the outdoors, the more they will come to love it and the more they will fight to protect these spaces when they are older.
