Our designs for outdoor learning and natural play are participatory, locally relevant and responsive to change
Educators
Specialist Design
As trained teachers we understand the needs of both staffroom and classroom. As experienced landscape architects and play space designers we know how to interpret your needs; natural play and risky play activities support reading, writing, maths and science programmes.
Workshops
We run workshops on managing the risks and benefits of natural play and risky play.
Courses cover:
- Playground Management
- Playground design
- Grounds maintenance
- Health and well-being
- Risk management
- Social and Academic
If you are interested in attending or hosting a workshop, please contact us for details.
School playgrounds for optimal educational outcomes
Modern learning environments can be so much more than ICT. Overwhelming research now shows the need to balance screen time with natural play environments outdoors. Outdoor learning is vital for both students and teachers. School playgrounds that support risky play and natural play promote health and well-being, and enhance academic outcomes.
We work with schools and pre-schools. Contact us to create low maintenance, cost-effective playgrounds and outdoor learning environments. We work through a process of consensus design. Our proven deep community engagement process ensures sustainable results. The NZ MoE top up funding programme "gives schools an extra boost to the Five Year Agreement (5YA) budget to allow them to build new, modern learning environments. The Modern Learning Environment assessment tool also encourages schools to think creatively about the way they teach and introduce 'breakout spaces' where students can work in an informal environment". Our environmental design interventions provide natural play, risky play, and outdoor learning environments as an ideal opportunity for schools to develop their creative curriculum. Playground and outdoor learning upgrades have been linked to:
Our adaptable, inclusive, accessible playgrounds designs are naturally dynamic, cost efficient investments that afford whole child development. Playgrounds designed and managed to promote natural play provide cost effective support for ECE, SEN +D programmes, Experience with all age grounds, from Early Childhood to Primary and Secondary schools allows our playground designers to work with you to create safe, low maintenance, sensory-rich natural play spaces for your children and young people. We don't need lots of space or a big budget to create playgrounds that become a sustainable community resource. Resilient communities come from home-school partnerships that tackle local issues. Healthy schools acknowledge the need for affordable fresh local food. School playgrounds can offer a community resource with fruit and nut trees, herbs and vegetables. Contact us for sensory rich outdoor learning environments that are, naturally, edible. Healthy schools offer healthy eating. Healthy living is a fundamental message schools need to share. Enviro School grounds can be an extension of the classroom, a space to feel inspired to create or perform poetry or dramatic pieces, observe the wonder of science in action or simply a place to unwind. There is nothing so inspiring as lying under an apple tree in blossom, breathing the fragrant air, looking up through the leaves to clouds flitting across a blue sky on a warm spring day. When planned and managed as part of an outdoor classroom design, or a school sensory garden, the edible gardens enrich the curriculum. Our workshops tell you how to maximise the benefits of your enviro school programme. Enviro Schools need the right setting. Education for Sustainability (EfS) and Creative curricula require flexible, adaptable playground space. Sustainable schools, edible garden design and community garden schemes teach the link between healthy active lifestyles, food and the environment. Education for sustainability fosters innovative approaches to curriculum design and review, and provides many opportunities for students to become confident, connected, actively involved, life-long learners. Our evidence-based designs are based on proven research from around the world. |
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- Through natural play we connect with nature on a biophilic level. Learning to care for our environment builds awareness of our social connections. Results for engaging the disengaged, with SEN pupils, and extending the very able gained from education outside the classroom demonstrates that high quality EOTC environments enable a significant raising of standards and improving personal development.
ECE settings need playful and playable gardens and outdoor space to be just as inspiring as the natural play areas designed for older children. All children benefit from the experience of lying under, crawling through, exploring, observing, connecting with nature. When you add the creative curriculum benefits of writing about, drawing, measuring, singing about, dancing, discovering, selling, as well as observing the growing and then eating freshly picked fruit and vegetables you have a well educated child.
ECE social obligations may require children of beneficiaries to be in school, but without attractive, inclusive spaces that can be difficult to achieve. We work with multi agency groups to create home-school partnerships where adult parenting, health and education goals can be met. School gardens are wonderful for teaching about healthy eating, climate change, the life cycle of plants. Edible gardens in pre-school playgrounds can become productive school gardens, feeding the wider school community.
SEN+D special needs school gardens need to ensure that plants are edible as students may put things in their mouths. In a sensory garden, edible plants make the taste sensation come alive. Through discovery in a sensory garden setting knowledge can be transferred to more natural settings.
Edible gardens can be designed as part of special needs gardens, sensory gardens, or simply espaliered along the tennis court fence! They are an important part of natural play, work well with outdoor classroom design, and are an essential component of school sensory garden design.
Culturally aware children who learn to safely eat ‘wild foods’ develop deep connections with and an appreciation for the natural landscape. Natural play using edible plantings encourages children to experiment with the world around them.
Vacant growing space is all around us. If you are tight for space there is likely to be someone nearby with land that you could share. Remember roof tops can readily be adapted to provide room to grow, and walls can have plants grown up or down them as well as hanging space. Fruit and vegetables don't need to grow on the ground.
Sensory gardens need to do more than provide a smelly leaf and colourful flower. They must engage all the senses, including imagination and artistic creativity, providing stimuli for whole child development. Sand and water play offers tactile stimulation which together with measuring and pouring adds depth to maths lessons.
Creative Sustainable Design
Take our ideas and imagine your own space. Inspiration for your edible garden, to enhance natural play or a special needs sensory garden is the thing you can take away and think,"Yes I could use that space. We could have a story teling area, outdoor drama, grow fresh fruit and vegetables to feed our school community."
Planning your school grounds?
There are 3 steps to a successful project
- Canvas the ideas and opinions of staff, students and the local community, then appoint someone to pull all the ideas together. Greenstone Design's effective stakeholder engagement and community consultation process allows valuable teacher staff time to be spent on school matters.
- Develop an overall plan. This document details the concept, scaled drawings of the site including services, and specifies the materials to be used. A planting and maintenance plan is an essential part of the playscape design process. We can produce a complete development master plan, to be achieved over 2, 5 or 10 years, as time and funds become available, or a simple outline plan, designed to be installed by community labour, or approved contractors.
- Funding can come from the Ministry of Education. 5YA is designed to be spent on urgent health and safety concerns. However without ecological health there can be no human health and well-being. Therefore it can be argued that the provision of appropriate natural play environments is essential to the health and safety, the fundamental well-being of the children. If a playground has been funded from 5YA, the playground is then owned by the Ministry and should be maintained through the Property Maintenance Grant. Under Ministry guidelines, "5YA cannot be used to upgrade the playground, but can be used to address health and safety issues (such as a lack of bark)". A lack of shade trees and playable plants also constitutes a health and safety issue.
Boards are also able to build playgrounds using discretionary funding. The board must then use its own funding for maintenance and capital upgrades.or any number of community and environmental grants (Note: grants will generally pay for the designer's fees as a direct cost of the project ) Please contact us for help with the design of your new community garden or grounds project .
Case study
Here is an example from an early childhood centre in Upper Hutt
"We use our grounds for practical learning about the seed-to-seed cycle. In Spring, the children gather the daffodils they planted the previous Autumn. They have earned this right by collecting the bulbs on shopping trips to the local garden centre, using them for counting work and then planting them. Each child learns how to pick responsibly, and what is safe to touch and which plants are best left alone. We feel It is important to offer the children the environment where they can make these distinctions, not to attempt to remove everything that appears to be harmful, but to show the children how to recognise plants and their properties. We have planted traditional healing plants such as willow, comfrey and feverfew and wherever the stinging nettle grows, the soothing dock leaf is nearby. Dandelions and daisies spread across the field in a carpet of white and yellow - an opportunity to estimate how many in a given area for maths, to observe how they open and close with the heat and cool of the day for science, to collect for art and daisy chains, to enjoy what many gardeners might dismiss as a troublesome weed."
"We use our grounds for practical learning about the seed-to-seed cycle. In Spring, the children gather the daffodils they planted the previous Autumn. They have earned this right by collecting the bulbs on shopping trips to the local garden centre, using them for counting work and then planting them. Each child learns how to pick responsibly, and what is safe to touch and which plants are best left alone. We feel It is important to offer the children the environment where they can make these distinctions, not to attempt to remove everything that appears to be harmful, but to show the children how to recognise plants and their properties. We have planted traditional healing plants such as willow, comfrey and feverfew and wherever the stinging nettle grows, the soothing dock leaf is nearby. Dandelions and daisies spread across the field in a carpet of white and yellow - an opportunity to estimate how many in a given area for maths, to observe how they open and close with the heat and cool of the day for science, to collect for art and daisy chains, to enjoy what many gardeners might dismiss as a troublesome weed."
Greenstone Design Limited is a company registered in New Zealand No 373 2566 Registered Office: 384 Minchins Rd, Sheffield, NZ 7580. GST registration No 108 766 034 |
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