A new addition has been completed at the Lucas and friends playground.
A communication board, which allows non-verbal children to communicate with their parents or care givers using pictures on a wall.
The playground partnered with Trendline Consulting, a local service provider for people who have developmental disabilities, to get the communication board installed at the playground.
Jennifer Fritsche of Robinson Construction said the board was added to help both kids and parents who wish to rely less on technology.
“People that have nonverbal issues usually use iPads and other forms of communication now,” Fritsche said. “It was brought to our attention at one point that a parent wished that they wouldn’t have to bring the iPad to the playground and had seen this idea somewhere else. So it was definitely something we wanted to try to incorporate and put at Lucas and friends. We want to give a big thank you to trendline, their knowledge and experience to put that together was really amazing, it was exciting to partner with them and. Give Lucas and friends an extra special touch. ”
The communication board is the latest in a series of small updates and improvements to the playground, which was first completed and opened in 2021.
The original idea for the playground came in 2016 when Lucas Fritsche, then a third grader at Perryville elementary school, noticed that his friends who used wheelchairs were not able to access all of the school’s playground equipment during recess. The original plan was to make improvements to the already existing playground at the school, the idea eventually turned into building a new handicapped accessible playground in the city.
The land was donated by the City of Perryville, and the committee partnered with Unlimited Play, a non-profit organization, to build the first phase of the playground, which has now been open for 5 years. Phase two of the playground, which included improvements and new equipment, was completed in 2023. The addition of the communication board is part of the upkeep and expansion the owners of the playground plan to continue doing.
“It’s been a few years since we opened phase two, it took us about eight years, and we raised a little over seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars for the project,” Fritsche said. “Now we’re just doing little small projects around the playground to continue to improve it. We still get a little bit of funding from a few places and so we’re utilizing that money as it comes in. And the communication board was something that we definitely wanted to do. It’s also our committee’s hope to maybe bring communication boards to some other playgrounds around town to utilize that additional assistance.”
Further small updates are in the works for the playground in the near future, but no official timeline for them have been settled on.
“We also are in the works of a small shading pavilion, but we’re wanting a little bit more seating, this seating will actually be within the playground of our fence,” she said. “It’ll give families somewhere to take small breaks and not have to get out of the playground fence to go to the pavilion that’s at the park. So that is in the works. We just don’t have an estimated time when it’ll be done yet.”
