We love playgrounds!

Randy Bina, Bismarck Parks and Recreation District’s Executive Director, and Dave Mayer, the park district’s Operations Director, recently visited a Bismarck classroom to hear about playground design ideas from third graders.

A project entitled Dream It, Build It! is an inquiry based challenge for the third graders in Renae Ely’s classroom at Liberty Elementary School.  Ms. Ely’s students were given a complex problem to design an all-inclusive playground for their school.  This project is based on third grade standards in math, science, listening and speaking, and writing. The students worked on area and perimeter in math, force and motion in science, engineering by designing 3-D models, speaking and listening through their oral presentations and persuasive writing.

This project gave the students an opportunity to apply skills they learn in school to a personally relevant and real-world situation which involved collaboration, critical thinking and creativity.  The steps of the project included researching playground equipment and design, creating a scale map, building a 3-D model, creating a digital presentation and preparing a multi-media product.

Experts from the community, including Randy Bina and Dave Mayer from Bismarck Parks & Recreation District, were invited to the classroom to share their expertise in playground design and to give feedback to the children for next steps in their projects.  The children presented their projects to a public audience of Bismarck Public School administrators, library media specialists, instructional coaches and community experts. The children’s next step is to raise enough money to add an inclusive swing and other equipment to the Liberty playground.

Thanks for inviting Bismarck Parks and Recreation District to your classroom, Liberty third graders!