Play in the Park!

9/29/2022

Play Across the City

Summer holidays are lovely, but they can also be long with little ones as you try and find ways to fill the days, so it's great to be able to get out and about in the fresh air, playing, moving, singing and talking. And if you can do all of this in your local park, then even better!

Thanks to the support of Active Black Country, Sports England and National Lottery, Rotary Club of Wolverhampton and Grantham Yorke, Wolves Play Café were able to deliver 12 stay and play sessions across the city this summer in Phoenix Park, Ward Street Park and West Park Wolverhampton.

In total, 260 under 7s and 150 caregivers of under 7s joined us and we loved every minute!

Wobble and balance! Practising our co-ordination, gross motor skills and most importantly having fun!

Such a lovely session. Great to be outdoors, in a safe environment for play. Good range of open ended play equipment to stimulate children's creative thinking. Mix of age groups and parents/ carers attended. Children enjoyed playing together and adults had a nice opportunity to chat with other adults too. Very welcoming hosts. Have recommended to other friends and their children." Satty, August 2022

Crawling through the tunnel at Ward Street Park, Ettingshall

This year, drawing on feedback from play friends who had come along to play before, we delivered these sessions as drop-in between 10.00 and 2.00pm through August 2022 so that there was a time to suit everyone's routine and schedule. For the final play session, with support from Active Black Country, we were able to partner with the Dr Bike team who brought along the opportunity to celebrate the location of the Commonwealth Games Cycling Trials at West Park including balance bikes for little ones and smoothie bikes for big ones!

Happy Stories

It's so important to us that play friends can tell us about their experiences at the sessions to help inform improvements for next time. We use easily accessible methods for children and speakers of English as a second language to feedback such as pictures of activities to choose favourites and having lots of chats as we play. Here are some of the things our play friends liked about the sessions:

I like…

I liked the ideas of singing the rhythms together
Great staff, very friendly
All the fun toys and activities
Meeting new people & other parents
My daughters love coming here and what they love most are the friendly organisers, you are dedicated professionals, and we can feel your love for kids!
Very friendly & love the singing
The singing + physical activities which are fun + help develop children
The open-ended play items

Feedback for future sessions includes:

‘Themed events would be good too like a Bear Hunt’
‘I want to thank you for what you already do. I would introduce some nature arts and crafts for the older children, sand and water play for hot days.’
‘Also incorporate the great ideas on the cards we take home into sessions would be amazing.'

Future Plans

Wolves Play Café and the local families of the parks are very grateful and pleased with the successful Play in the Parks programme this summer. We will be back playing in Ward Street Park in April 2022 with support from Grantham Yorke Trust and would love to play again at West Park and Phoenix Park by securing further funding to ensure accessible play sessions for young children in the city can continue in the spring and summer school holidays to August 2023.

This would mean little ones and their caregivers can come and play again, we can see how much you've grown and hear your stories, helping to create long-term positive impacts and outcomes for physical and mental wellbeing in Wolverhampton.

If you would like to support the project, we'd love to talk to you at info@wolvesplaycafe.org