Children Embrace a Healthier Lifestyle with New Outdoor Play Equipment at St Sampsons C of E School
Specialist playground equipment for a Wiltshire junior school is encouraging pupils to broaden their physical horizons and embrace a healthier lifestyle.
Staff at St Sampson's Church of England School, Cricklade, understand the benefits of strenuous playtime activity and have just completed phase one of a major investment in outdoor play equipment.
Head teacher at the school in Bath Road, Andrew Henstridge, said: "At this school we want to provide a fun, safe learning environment that enables every child and member of staff to achieve their full potential. We know this outdoor playground will help us do that."
Mr Henstridge explained that the children highlighted the need for new and varied playground equipment to occupy them at lunch and break times and as the school is working towards achieving 'Healthy Schools Status' challenging outdoor play equipment was an obvious choice.
FSSA - Friends of St Sampson's Association - began fund raising and the children were given the task of choosing what they wanted to buy with the money.
The final choice was a timber trail designed and created by Playforce - an award-winning local company that has a reputation for providing exciting playground equipment for schools that develops children's physical, imaginative, social, behavioural and emotional skills at the same time as being excellent fun to use.
"It's a great addition to school life!" said Mr Henstridge. "The children talk about it all the time saying how fantastic it is and how much they are enjoying it.
"At the moment we have a timber trail including a balance weaver, burma bridge, swinging logs and a rope walk, ultimately we want to fill in the gaps in the outdoor playground and then extend it. The Playforce consultant designed it in three phases so we could have an outdoor play area whilst raising money to pay for the rest.
