New playgrounds and outdoor classrooms are coming to Brookings, but these are no ordinary jungle gyms. These were built with help from students at the South Dakota State architecture program.
These new pieces of equipment have been in the works for half a year, and now the vision is to put them in the ground at Brookings schools.
Jeremiah Bergstrom is a landscape architecture professor at SDSU. He said there are goals to design an effective outdoor learning space.
“To build social skills, to learn to do more things when they work together than they can do on their own, and this idea of collaboration in play, as well as independent play,” Bergstrom said.
That means places to climb, places to hide, places to find nature, and equipment designed for multiple people.
“A swing in and of itself is just a swing for a single individual," Bergstrom said. "But if you have a swing with multiple seats or you have a climbing object that’s more fun with two or three people on it than it is with one it encourages that social aspect of play and is more active than it is a passive play.”
For the college students though, Bergstrom said it taps into both their classroom and life experiences.
“Their words were like, it’s interesting because we have to think like three-and five-year-olds again," Bergstrom said. "Usually, when we’re designing, we’re designing for adults. We don’t always design for children, or specifically for children. They had to step back from it and think, okay, what would it be like – what would it feel like – to be in these places as a child? As a three-to-five-year-old person.”
The project was made in collaboration between SDSU and the local school district.