Fundraiser Launched For West Ridge Nature Preserve Play Area

CHICAGO, IL — Ask any family with young children about modern technology and they'll admit that screens play a huge role in their kids' lives. A group that describes itself as "parents, grandparents, neighbors, former schoolteachers and environmental stewards" has started a fundraiser to create a Nature Play Area to facilitate "unstructured creative play" in the West Ridge Nature Preserve on Chicago's Far North Side. The preserve includes a pond, wetland, savanna and oak woods, but the West Ridge Nature Preserve Park Advisory Council hopes to complete a play area in the preserve if enough money is raised.

In his weekly newsletter, Ald. Pat O'Connor encouraged his constituents to lend a hand to the project in any way they can:

1. Donate to the new play area through Crowdrise.
2. Suggest sponsors to us and/or ask for any possible sponsors.
3. Labor and materials needed:

• Create a digging pit surrounded by logs to hold in the contents (pea gravel, mulch?) and to sit on.
• Build a small wooden stage 6’ x 8’ x 8” with a round lip on the sides to prevent tripping
• Create curtains for the stage to stretch between two poles (poles will be installed by the CPD)
• Build or donate a chalkboard (sandwich type?) for children to write and draw on
• Create a sturdy and solid wooden entrance sign
• Build a kiosk similar to the one at the entrance of the preserve on Western for notices and information
• Build two sensory tables
• Donate sensory table materials (sand, pea stone, etc. and play tools)
• Donate mud kitchen materials for play
• Build Simple rustic stump benches

O'Connor said that the cost of materials for creating and building the play area can be covered. The alderman noted that details and instructions can be provided by contacting Arlene Brennan brennan200@yahoo.com.

Work on the new play area has already begun — on Earth Day in April, volunteers carted in wheelbarrows of wood chips to make a climbing hill for kids. They also cut "tree cookies" for stacking, set posts to help stabilize large stick structures and began weaving a big bird's nest out of vines and long branches.

As of July 17, the group had raised $1,920 of its $70,000 goal for the new space.

Image courtesy of West Ridge Nature Preserve Park Advisory Council.