BENTONVILLE -- Bright Field Middle School students helped redesign the Wildwood Park playground to make it more usable for children of various ages.
About 20 students who worked on the project-based learning assignment attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday to rededicate the playground.
Neighborhood support
The Brightwood Property Owners Association gave money to help pay for a fence to go around Wildwood Park playground, creating a barrier between playground users and traffic along Bright Road.
A plaque recognizing its contribution will be installed at the park in the coming weeks.
Source: Staff report
"What you've done is more than just a class project," David Wright, Parks and Recreation director, told the students. "It's a legacy that will live on for decades."
The idea came about after fifth-grade science teacher Stephanie Shinabery and another teacher went to a seminar where they were tasked to come up with a project-based learning project.
They thought about how students could explore the role of scientific concepts like gravity and potential kinetic energy have in playgrounds.
Shinabery and two other fifth-grade science teachers, Amy Cox and Diedra Gauw, approached Wright, who suggested students come up with ideas for the renovation of Wildwood Park, which is on Bright Road just south of the intersection at Southwest Regional Airport Boulevard. The park is less than a mile north of the middle school.
The small, plastic, residential-grade playground was up for renovation, and the city had $75,000 for the project, Wright said.
"It was like a Little Tikes playground," Shinabery said.
Students were given playground equipment catalogues and a budget to work with. City officials visited the school twice last winter to speak with students and hear about the designs they had created.
The Parks and Recreation Department took some ideas from various proposals to complete the final design, officials said.
Some elements include a color spectrum, where the sun casts different colors on the playground as it moves across the sky throughout the day; flower tubes, where one child can speak into a tube at one side of the playground and another can hear them on the other side of the playground; a large blue umbrella feature that provides shade; and various slides for different age groups.
There is also a merry-go-all that is Americans with Disabilities Act accessible.
"We kind of wanted it to be a place where a lot of different age groups could be, so we tried to do different pieces of equipment to go toward that goal," said Madison Halo, Bright Field sixth-grader.
The students were in fifth grade when they helped design the playground, but they are now in sixth grade.
"They were so excited because it was something they could actually see," Shinabery said of the students while they worked on the project. "It was awesome. It was an amazing experience to do with the kids. They thought of things we never would have thought about."
Students said they thought the playground looked good and was bigger than they expected it would be.
"Mr. Wright said that in 30 years you can show your kids that playground," said sixth-grader Cole Krebs. "That will be really fun to do."
NW News on 11/14/2016