A small school with a big award – New Playforce Playground Equipment for Newbigging Primary School in Angus, Scotland
After an anxious three month wait, a letter arrived at Newbigging Primary School saying “they had been successful in their ‘Awards For All’ grant application and they had been awarded £10,000” – a fantastic achievement for such a small school (their application had been helped by the involvement of Lorraine Grant their budget manager).
Newbigging is a small primary school with only 35 pupils and they never believed that they could afford an adventure trail until they heard about Awards For All.
When Playforce’s Scottish dedicated, School Grounds Consultant Kalitza Thomson arrived at Newbigging Primary School in Angus she found a lovely large space, with an old fashioned and outdated steel climbing frame, to be the only piece of playground equipment the children had for their playtimes.
Working through the consulation process with Head Teacher, Pam Wallace, and school secretary, Ann Bruce, Playforce set about designing a timber trail that would promote physical activity and also encourage the children to be healthy.
The one piece of equipment that the children were desperate to have were the monkey bars.
The timber trail was designed to include a balance weaver to promote balance and co-operation skills and can be used by children in co-operation role play, a wobble walkway with rubber step posts , a burma bridge; a climbing wall traverse; rock and roll log; swinging logs; trapeze swing and their longed for monkey bars for upper body strength.
Before their grant application was submitted Kalitza, received a call from Ann to say that they had managed to raise £400 themselves and wanted to add more play equipment to their design by incorporating stepping trees to the trail – something that the parents, children and staff had worked extremely hard for!
The head teacher Pam Wallace said “ the Timber Trail is ‘absolutely wonderful’ and praised the Playforce installers saying that they were’ the best workmen that we have ever had in the school”
The children in P6 said “the playground used to be plain but not now. The boys don’t play football so much, and the boys and girls all play together on the trail. We help the nursery children to play on all the pieces of equipment and they love it!’
Pam and the rest of the staff are delighted with the outcome – a wonderful timber trail with all weather surfacing which will allow the children to play on the Playforce playground equipment safely all year round. Newbigging and Playforce are looking forward to working together again in the very near future as they have been so impressed by the process that they are already looking to extend their timber trail!
