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Design A Park
New activity
Participants are invited to imagine the park of their dreams! In small groups, they place movable pieces on a grid, iterating on their plan together to create a plan for a community park.
Open Activity
How-to Video
Implementation Guide
Provides extensive background information, facilitation outline, materials shopping list, extended supporting media suggestions, correlations to national standards, and more.
Teacher's Guide
Provides classroom connections, key concepts, connections to science standards, and additional resources.
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Rating
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Participants Enjoyed the ActivityParticipants Learned from This ActivityActivity Instructions Were Clear and Easy to FollowWould Recommend
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Reviews
Great Group activity
My Mission Club (Grades 3-5) enjoyed this cooperative activity
The kids really loved this one!
I used this activity for a library program that included two other activities from the Playful Building curriculum (Levers at Play and Team Machine). This event had students as young as Kindergarten up to 6th graders. The parents were present and also participated in all the activities. We had about 12 people total participating and the activity took about 30 minutes.
I forgot to buy large graph paper in a timely manner, but had the ability to print onto paper I had on hand that was 12” x 18”, so I printed a grid onto that size paper, making sure the grid was the same scale as the “Park Features”. Each person was given one sheet of 12 x18 paper and each family was given a packet with the printable “Park Features.” The kids were allowed to team up with their parents or other kids to increase the size of their park. We yarn, beads, and glue that we had on hand, so this activity didn’t cost us anything.
Even though we had younger students, I gave the instructions provided for ages 9 and up. The parents helped keep track of the points, but let the kids make the decisions on what elements to put in the park. This is an extremely well thought out activity guide! Once the kids found out that they could earn points by adding elements that would be beneficial, they really started thinking and designing like engineers. When planning this event, I wasn’t’ sure that this activity would hold the kids attention, but most would have spent longer than 30 minutes making park improvements. They really had fun with this activity!
I liked the idea of using yarn for paths and beads for lights, but the glue didn’t dry quickly enough and the kids had a hard time getting their park designs home in one piece. The beads were worse than the yarn, so maybe using a hole punch to punch out little yellow circles for lights would work better if they projects are going to be transported.
Overall, the three activities (Team Machine, Design a Park, and Levers at Play) made a great library event that last about 60 minutes total. I made sure to have a selection of books on simple machines and other STEM related titles for the kids to check out after the event was finished.