To: Mr Mah Bow Tan
MP of Tampines GRC
From: Ang Yuen Ling, Chin Yi Shing, Eleanor Hor, Yuan Xiao Lei, Melvin Kek, Tan Heng Yeow
Students of PRSS, 2E8

Suggestions on the playground around Tampines area

The playgrounds around Tampines area are in quite a good condition. However, according to what we had observed lately, we found out that our playgrounds are not really meant for all children of different abilities to play with. Thus, this may cause inconvenience to some children who are really interested in playing.

We found some problems that we see in the playground we have.

Firstly, most of them have similar playing gadgets and are common, thus children are sick of playing them.

Secondly, the playgrounds around Tampines area are not suitable for those handicapped children and children with terminal illnesses. As these children have low immune system and get infected with germs and bacteria which are located all parts of the playground easily. These germs and bacteria come from the sweat of normal children, and the acidic rainfalls. Therefore, these children may get infected due to this problem found in the 'dirty' playgrounds and will result in children falling ill.

Thirdly, Singapore is an all-year summer season country. Thus, it might be too hot for those children that have terminal diseases to play under the sun. Some of these kids might want to stay a bit longer at the playgrounds to enjoy themselves, but this may worsen their current condition.

Fourthly, it is about the problems with the normal kids in the playground. Sometimes, some of these ignorant kids might tease the other kids that are either physically handicapped or with non-contagious terminal diseases. These ignorant kids might even not want to be friends with those kids that suffer illnesses. It will therefore create an emotional impact to those unfortunate children.

Lastly, some areas of the Tampines’ playgrounds could be found at other playgrounds. This will cause children to be not interested in the playground features and the children may not want to play with it.

According to the above problems observed, we have came up with a few suggestions for improvement.

Firstly, the playgrounds can be modify sheltered playgrounds and have a wash of these playgrounds monthly. This is to keep the minimum amount of germs and bacteria in these playgrounds. It can also reduce the amount of heat in these playgrounds to the minimum.

Secondly, the playgrounds should be improved by having more playground facilities for children to enjoy themselves. Apart from this, safety is another issue. They should have a safer playground environment for handicapped to play at. Incline plane can be added into the playground design and the platform of the playground can be wider so as to aid the disabled children to play when they are on their wheel-chair.

Thirdly, we can include more facilities to suit the needs of different types of children and not only built it for children with terminal diseases as children of different characters would be playing the playground. If the playground is for children with terminal diseases only, the playground might not interest them.

Fourthly, there should be a particular place to place their bags, but the safety of their belongings must be taken into consideration

Lastly, the playgrounds should have pictures or even posters that posed the impact of the unfortunate children when they met bullies that teased them a lot. These posters not only teach the kids in playground to be more respectful to such children, these also influence them to be responsible towards their friends.

We have also thought of some ideas to make the playground more appealing to the children of different abilities.

Firstly, the playground can be creative by having new playground facilities other than the normal types of choices. However, it must be a safe facility for the children that suffered terminal illness and the handicaps.

Secondly, the playground could have more attractive shapes and colors in the design of the playground to brighten the day of the unfortunates. They could even have a huge storybook(made of plastics) at the side of the playground for the children to read to build up their interest towards reading. This will create a new hobby to those children with terminal illnesses and handicaps.

Thirdly, we can build in fun but non-dangerous playing stuffs in the playground to suit those people.

Fourthly, we can add a mixture of colours and more vibrant colours to the playground to attract children to play.

Lastly, we can add more new and unfamiliar facilities to the playground, so that the children would want to try new things.

After observing the playgrounds and reaching out to the problems of the playground, we also find out some things to make the playground more accessible to the children with different abilities.

Firstly, we can also include other facilities to enable the children to play as much as they want without any restrictions for some children who are not able to play with one or more facilities.
Secondly, we suggest a special pathway or a bridge to lead to the playground easily so that it would be more accessible to the children of different abilities.

Thirdly, or the most importantly, we must have a neighbourhood playground that is below the HDB flats. This would allow the handicaps or the blinds to find their way to the playground.

Lastly, government could build smooth and easy paths along the way for the handicaps. As for the blinds, we suggest that they could make a blind building path for the blinds. For the children with non-contagious terminal illnesses, as some of these children are weak, we suggest that they could build a handle at the side of the sheltered pavement to prevent any serious falling. In this case, the unfortunates could be able to lead their ways to the playground more easily.

From all the suggestions and problems that we have listed out, we hope that you can consider our suggestions. Thank you for having the patience to read our letter. We seek for your reply.

totally in love with RAINBOWS;