The St Gallen area has an huge number of public parks. There are three within about a hundred yards of our apartment (all good for A!), and these are not just concrete leftovers from the 1970s, these are well maintained, well thought-out and designed areas. The photo here depicts an adventure playground right next to a school (we saw one of the classes involved in learning a kind of cross-training learning exercise using the equipment), it has two play houses, two ripple-effect slides, three swings, a spiders-web rope climbing frame, a death-slide and a sand-pit. Totally awesome. What I like about it too is the lack of over-zealous Health & Safety precautions: The photographed playhouse is a good six feet off the ground, so kids using it can experience real danger - something I craved as a child. This lack of 'H&S gone mad' translates across the board, at nursery the kids are not wrapped in cotton wool but allowed to explore freely, and the parks here are not closed off to other members of the public as in the UK, and parents seem happy to allow and able to trust their kids to roam freely.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Parks
The St Gallen area has an huge number of public parks. There are three within about a hundred yards of our apartment (all good for A!), and these are not just concrete leftovers from the 1970s, these are well maintained, well thought-out and designed areas. The photo here depicts an adventure playground right next to a school (we saw one of the classes involved in learning a kind of cross-training learning exercise using the equipment), it has two play houses, two ripple-effect slides, three swings, a spiders-web rope climbing frame, a death-slide and a sand-pit. Totally awesome. What I like about it too is the lack of over-zealous Health & Safety precautions: The photographed playhouse is a good six feet off the ground, so kids using it can experience real danger - something I craved as a child. This lack of 'H&S gone mad' translates across the board, at nursery the kids are not wrapped in cotton wool but allowed to explore freely, and the parks here are not closed off to other members of the public as in the UK, and parents seem happy to allow and able to trust their kids to roam freely.
