Get Kids Moving with New Play Structure for Ecology Preserve

UPDATE: We've reached our goal! Thanks to you, we've raised $6,000 for a Spider Web feature for the KPNC playground. We are so thankful for every donation. With this support, we want to keep the momentum going and try to raise as much as we can before midnight! These additional funds will be used to enhance the Spider Web feature with an arachnid learning kiosk and to create a much-needed picnic area for the playground.

The Kreher Preserve & Nature Center (KPNC), an outreach program of the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, offers residents and visitors to the Auburn-Opelika area a 120-acre resource for green space and environmental education. One of the first of its kind in Alabama, the KPNC features a nature-based playground for children of all ages to enjoy.

Nature-based play and connections with nature have been found to improve children’s social skills, creative thinking, problem-solving abilities, and interpersonal relationships.

The KPNC playground offers children rich naturalistic play spaces full of mounds, ditches, logs, tunnels, fallen trees, boulders, and creative structures such as a beaver lodge, eagle's nest, tree house, and teepee.

To compliment the other structures in the play area, the KPNC would like to incorporate a “spider web” into the playground. The bouncy character of the secured rope web will offer children of all ages the opportunity to develop climbing skills. As they master the web, the climbing helps the children to develop their muscle strength and coordination, while building their self-confidence.

The spider web will be large in diameter to accommodate lots of children and secured to large wood posts that also serve as fun places for the children to sit. The angle of the web will allow smaller children to enjoy themselves in areas of the net closest to the ground and older children a greater challenge to balance and climb to the upper reaches. The estimated cost of the spider web is $6,000.

As the rate of childhood obesity rises and technology lures today's youth toward digital screens and away from the outdoors, the need for multi-sensory and physically imaginative playgrounds has become increasingly crucial. Help us develop another opportunity for children to enjoy the Kreher Preserve & Nature Center with a gift today.