Established in 1986, Little Rascals is a cross-community rural playgroup providing a high-quality educational service to pre-school children aged from two years and 10 months to four years across Limavady, Dungiven, Ballykelly and Glack. The group sought to enhance their outdoor playground by adding resources to different areas – replenishing the sandpit; establishing a mud kitchen; and purchasing new sit-and-ride toys. There are no other pre-school facilities within an eight mile radius, so the Committee didn’t hesitate in agreeing a grant of £1,000 as requested in the application.
Little Rascals contacted us later in the year to say “how delighted we were to receive this grant funding … All of the resources purchased will help develop our outdoor play area as part of a three year development plan. We are now in a position to be able to provide a bigger area where we can offer outdoor play in all weathers:
- Our sand had diminished over a period of time so we now have a full sand pit which can accommodate all 16 children at one time. Sand play has numerous benefits such as parallel play; building muscles (by digging and lifting); using new language (eg, heavy/light, damp/dry, soft/mould, hand/foot prints) – the opportunities are endless.
- All children engage in cooking in the mud kitchen and the grant funding allowed us to purchase resources such as children’s cookware so that they can pretend to bake/boil/stew/fry using all natural resources (dock leaves, twigs, pine cones, acorns, ice-cubes, etc).
- Our other bigger chalk boards are in different sites outdoors (construction, physical area, sit and ride on/garage).
- We have wanted to challenge some of the children who may not be able to manage the sit and ride-ons, and the circleline easy-rider will help promote further skills some children need.”
