London Road School is celebrating a new yard for its kindergarten students.
The space features turf play areas, a sensory path, music panels and a deluxe mud kitchen.
The school showed off the yard during a grand opening on Thursday, June 5.
Kindergarten teacher Sandra Ross said the project started in 2023.
"All of the waiting kind of went out the window as soon as we saw the kids on the playground," she said. "They're loving it. They're loving rolling in the turf, they're loving riding bikes over the bridges, they're loving hanging out on the benches."
Roughly $50,000 was raised for the yard, which included $12,000 from charity event Race to Erase.
This was the first time the event included a school.
Other donations came from sponsors, the community and parent council.
It was done in phases with phase one being a lot of prep work and the woodchips and the second phase included the turf and mud kitchen.
Some of the prep work included getting the ground ready and removing a shed and large basketball nets.
One part of the yard almost didn't make it into the original design.
Ross said because of the increase in costs from the time they raised to money to installation the mud kitchen almost didn't make it in.
"When we went to the people at Active Playground Equipment (APE) and said we would love to still have this but we're not able to work it into the funds right now Andrew Prins said why don't we donate it?" She said. "[It] was amazing, so again the community just came together."
She said it's popular with the kids.
"They're always making pies and muffins and cakes and everything you can imagine gets made in that mud kitchen," Ross said.
The installation was finished and students were able to use it in May.
The school is now looking into what they want to include for the next phase of the project.
