We spent the afternoon at the Adventure Playground. On Mercer Island, this play area is a cordoned off area of Deane’s Children’s Park where kids can build structures in the woods. The park supplies hardhats, work gloves, toolboxes, nails and fasteners. The kids rummage for lumber, rope, fasteners, and anything else they can find in the space. You aren’t allowed to disassemble someone else’s previous structure/masterpiece. One dad even brought along some of his own tools. His boys went off climbing on a tree house that someone had built, so he was left alone to measure and saw and hammer to his heart’s content. I believe that may have been his intention all along.
We found a tree where someone had started building a platform, so the kids decided to add on to it. Alton nailed some 2×4’s to create stairs for smaller kids to climb up. Nikola wanted to create decorative railings. She measured off and started sawing a nice uniform branch, but gladly passed that task along to Shaynee. The platform needed some structural support, which became daddy’s job. Even when it began to rain, the woods provided enough cover that we didn’t need to go in, and we just kept building.
After a few hours, the kids had done enough building and spent the rest of the afternoon playing in the park. There are several climbing structures, a rock climbing wall, and a giant concrete dragon to play on.
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