New playground at Mission Place Kindergarten, Kaitaia

Climbing and sliding are as popular as ever in Mission Place Kindergarten's new playground. Photo / Peter Jackson

Kaitaia's Mission Place Kindergarten has long had a challenging and interesting playground, but the new version that was officially opened last month takes it to a whole new level.

Head teacher Sheryl Nelley said the playground had been in the planning for two years or more, and the result was everything everyone had hoped it would be.

The swings and sandpit had been retained from the old playground, she said, but just about everything else, including a large wooden "boat" that the children had clambered over and a "ghastly" yellow tunnel, had gone, making way for features including a concrete river, a hill, a climbing rope and new monkey bars, still as popular and educationally valuable as ever.

The children, Sheryl said, were still doing much the same things they had done before the transformation but in a much more interesting environment.

A lot of planting had also been done, the grounds now featuring two pōhutukawa trees, which she was confident would one day provide significant shade, and a small "fairy garden," just inside the gate, where the children could have tea parties and exercise their imaginations.

She hoped that Niwa's predictions of a warm, wet summer would prove correct in the interest of the lavender plants' survival.

A small mud pit had also been constructed, and would soon have water added, and a small whare had been built within the garden just inside the front gate.

A gardener had been employed, and the grounds would look even more impressive when they started, she added.

Meanwhile the kindergarten was thriving in other ways as well. Seventeen new children had enrolled after the Covid-19 lockdown ended, as people returned to the Far North from further afield, and the roll was now full, at 30 children each day.

"They're going to school regularly though, as they always have, so we will be looking for seven or maybe 10 new children in the New Year," Sheryl said. The minimum starting age was 2.

The children, she added, were benefiting enormously from the greater financial resources that were available now that Mission Place was part of the Northland Kindergarten Association, while the next big change would come on June 8, when an all-year model would be adopted, meaning the kindergarten would continue to open through school holidays, closing only for statutory holidays and a couple of weeks over Christmas/New Year.