What is a climate adaptive school ground?

A climate playground provides an answer to various challenges that come with climate change.

For our school, it was important to consider the heat stress caused by abundant sunshine on a bare concrete surface.
Planting trees, native greenery and limiting concrete surface will provide shade and coolness over time.

In addition, air quality in and around our school is also important. Here too, more trees play an important role. They help to capture our CO2 emissions, retain it and thus help to filter the air. The series of lessons and projects by Airbezen and Clean Air Now from Greenpeace bring this story into the classroom. At the same time, we need to think about how we organize mobility around our school. There is still some work to be done here.

Water is essential to our story. The softening of our playground ensures that rainwater is collected, recovered and infiltrated. The children see this process happen, ask questions about it and consequently learn about it. We have also set up a water play area on the playground, where children get to work with water.

To teach our children the importance of biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem, they help take care of our playground. Through outdoor lessons and contact with greenery, they are given co-responsibility for their playground. The bee project ‘Bie Paulus’ at our school, which is run by a few parents, also brings the children straight to the essence of what a healthy ecosystem stands for.

Daring to make sustainable choices, daring to invest in the long term is what our story is also about. The high involvement of children, parents and teachers ensures a solid foundation. As a school, we have invested in a sustainable design with materials with a long lifespan. Our playground is never finished, but will continue to grow and flourish into a green play oasis where numerous children will have a wonderful school time in the years to come.

Being a playground for the neighborhood. That was also an outline of our story. For the neighborhood’s youth activities and local residents, we want to provide a place where they can come and relax. Smart opening is therefore a spearhead for our school.