Calmar Elementary School

There’s a bit new addition to the playground at Calmar Elementary School! The school has added a great new inclusive playground. The playground features a ramped main structure, with a Burke Cruiser glider. There is also a sensory seat within the main playground tower, offering a variety of sensory panels and objects and offering a bit of a secluded area for sitting.

The main tower has 5 slides off different sections, including one really tall curly slide! Accessory pieces at this playground include a big rope structure, a wave-style merry-go-round, and musical flowers!

We noticed that though the main structure is ramped, the ramp ends in woodchips and there is no paved path leading to this new playground. It would be great to see this part of the playground updated to improve access to the new features!

Two other pieces of equipment stood out to me at this park – one is the bridge that connects onto the tall tower – it has rubbery grips built into its surface, which is an excellent feature for winter! We also discovered a cool marble game on the ramped part of the main structure – my girls and a couple of other kids who were at the park collaborated for quite a while to try to figure out if there was a way to move the marbles to different locations! We hadn’t seen this particular maze ever before!

The school’s previous playground, based in rubber is still on site, as is a much older “gymnastics” style playground. There are benches on site, but very few trees for shade. When we visit Calmar we always make a point to visit the Calmar Bakery on main street, for delicious donuts, cinnamon buns or cookies!