Daycare completes playground improvements

Improvements at the Queens Daycare Association has left greener grass, a sandbox full of sand, a shaded area for children to drive their cars and more.

“I think we have one of the best playgrounds of any centre around,” commented Queens Early Childhood Program Coordinator, Donna Dexter.

The Queens Daycare Association received a $20,000 grant from the Department of Community Services last fall.

“One of the emphases of this grant was to make playgrounds for children more natural and looking at shades specifically,” she noted.

A shade percula was installed, so “they can use it to drive their little cars around,” said Dexter or they can set up pools or picnic tables underneath it.

They built a hill as well.

“We thought a little hill for sliding in the winter time and for slip and slide for the summer,” she added.

Although they wanted to put in some trees, the money did not stretch that far.

They installed a garden too.

The daycare is also waiting on a piece of equipment to come in, paid for by contributions from the Kinsmen and Lions Club, continued Dexter.

It will be a school bus, she added.

With construction workers are on site, the children seem to enjoy the blocks of wood they leave behind.

“One little guy came over to me one day and I said, are you going to build a house?” said Dexter with a laugh “but he plopped it on the ground and goes, no I’m surfing.”

Construction workers also installed a wheelchair ramp.

“That’s major for us, that’s something the daycare has wanted for many years just because of safety and also for accessibility,” she continued.

They also purchased two, four seated strollers from a daycare in Halifax “at less than a third of the catalogue price,” said Dexter.

“We do have another grant being approved by the province, we just have a little bit of red tape to clear up,” she said “and the would give us all new windows and central vac system to make sure the dust keeps under control and vacuum out or old vents because this buildings probably got 58 years of chalk dust,” in it.

With enrollment numbers good, Dexter encourages families to come up and have a look to find out if they are interested in using the daycare.