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Thursday, March 26, 2009

Playground Alphabet


Vintage ABC climbers in East Rochester, Ohio, via the flickr photostream of scottamus.

The whole alphabet, anybody?

5 comments:

  1. Do you like it? For me is terrible. But of course interesting example. I found some times ago old playground in Lviv, Ukraine: http://picasaweb.google.pl/ania.rytter/07_08LwW#5098277711580798466

    www.pracowniak.pl

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  2. Hi Anna,
    It's not so much that I 'like' it, as it makes me think. I'm intrigued by the idea of using letters and typefaces in the landscape, and I think having a whole alphabet of climbers would be interesting!
    Thanks for your comment,
    arcady

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  3. Hi,
    I would like to build 3 letter climbers (A, B & C) in one of our school gardens. I'm thinking out of wood, but am open to other materials. Any suggestions on where to find examples or plans?
    Thanks so much!
    Lindsey

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  4. I'm interested how your project will turn out.

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  5. I'm experimenting a bit with Google Sketchup, a simple 3-dimensional modeling program (free, of course). It's pretty easy for the novice to download and start using, if you watch a 3 or 5 minute tutorial about the navigation/interface. The reason I'm telling you about this, is because my sister has been having some trouble with b's and d's. Well, she knows what side of the van she rides in, so I'm trying to connect the "b" with the fact that the belly hangs out on the same side of my mom's van that she sits on. So, I imported a 3D van into my 3D drawing, and then put a 30 foot tall "b" in there, right in front of the van. It would take a lot of wood to create a 30 foot tall "b," but with Google Sketchup, the whole alphabet is already available, in a number of fonts. If you have a projector or large screen, it would be even more fun for kids to be able to manipulate the letters themselves. Not as intimate as climbing on the thing, but many research studies point out that "thinking" through an activity also has a large benefit (so they could imagine themselves climbing on it). You could even put pictures of the kids into the drawing, and look at the letter from all angles "where's Donald? Is he on the 'b'?"
    Anyway, how is your search going?

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