Educational Design
The Tiger Climbing Frame
Climbing frame project at Dog Kennel Hill School in South London.
The design was developed with a group of school pupils. Three meetings and a visit to a local adventure park were instrumental in fixing the brief for the project. The children all agreed that the climbing frame should be somewhere that all ages at the school could play together with different activities aimed at different age groups and devices to help interaction. They also were concerned that the area should have possible wheelchair access. The overriding concept behind the climbing frame however was that it should be possible to climb around the whole complex without having to touch the ground.
The central fort buildings are now surrounded by a forrest of tree trunks that can be climbed through on ropes and that add to the storytelling aspects of the area. Other features include sunken talking tubes for opening conversations with strangers.
The Tiger was installed in 2007
2 Responses to “The Tiger Climbing Frame”
Hello Paul,
Are you planning to build a frame yourself? Where’s it for?
My advise is to fit the frame to the potential users (age range and skills). It’s possible to add features that help with all sorts of development without them feeling like they’re being too worthy and educational. I put the talking tubes into the tiger to help encourage interaction between children that didn’t know each other.
The germans are world leaders in climbing frame design. Take a look at Richter Spielgerate. They’re great. One of the many fantastic things they offer is a pair of parabolic reflectors that enable two children to talk to each other over a distance by focusing the soundwaves of their voices. Amazing and nearly magic. I just found a link to make your own parabolic reflector on instructables.
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-build-a-strikeheliostatstrike-paraboli/
William
Hi guys,
Just read your article, clicked on the link it was relaly good. I had previously bought some accessories from the website in the link, they were ok, pretty expensive though.
Any more tips let me know
Jeanette