If lockdown has taught us one thing, it’s that getting out and about is massively beneficial for kids and parents alike. Outdoor play is vital for children, both for physical activity and brain development. Playing outside and exploring new spaces encourages independence, imagination, teamwork and develops problem-solving skills, with the added bonus of being exciting and fun.
Below is a list of some of the best kids parks near Ringwood with some info about the play equipment and facilities at each one. We hope you enjoy checking out our recommendations!
172 Maroondah Hwy, Ringwood, VIC 3134
Ringwood Lake Park is a hidden gem in the middle of busy suburbia. The playground was recently redesigned with the beautiful new play equipment highlighting the natural environment surrounding it.
It is perfect for children of all abilities, as it includes an accessible playground, with wide, railed ramps to link play areas, a liberty swing and a floor level carousel designed to accommodate wheelchairs.
There are also lots of tall towers to climb and a plethora of slides of all different shapes and sizes. Additionally, Ringwood Lake Park includes a large water play area that imitates a winding river along the back of an eel sculpture, with minimal equipment encouraging independent, imaginative play.
Other great features include a separate toddler area, large sandpit, lots of natural shade from trees and beautiful animal sculptures both large and small integrated within the playground.
The park has lots of facilities too, including barbeques, toilets, a water tap and undercover picnic tables. It’s set within bushland, alongside a beautiful lake with ducks for the kids to watch, and it has a lovely, relaxing walking circuit which parents are sure to appreciate and might encourage a little one to nap.
50-60 Mullum Mullum Rd, Ringwood, VIC 3134
Mullum Mullum reserve is a great, multi-purpose area. It features two ovals, a playground a new pavilion and connects to the relaxing Mullum Mullum creek trail.
Mullum Mullum reserve is definitely one of the best kids parks near Ringwood. The playground includes multiple slides, swings, monkey bars, seesaws and chain bridges which are awesome for developing balance for littlies. There is ample shade from surrounding large trees, but you should be mindful of swings getting hot on sunny days.
Parents will appreciate the onsite parking, drinking water tap, barbeques and picnic tables and benches, and if your family includes members of the furry, four-legged kind, parts of the reserve are also dog off-leash areas!
308-332 Mitcham Rd, Mitcham, VIC 3132
Halliday Park is under a ten minute drive from Ringwood and is a large park which is popular for gatherings of families, extended families, friends and kids parties. It has a great fenced playground with equipment that caters to a range of ages. The playground includes a fun play tower, basket swing, rope climbing pyramid and even flying foxes.
The play areas for children are shaded well, with a combination of shade sails and natural shade from large trees. Additionally, there is a water play space and a large grassed area which is perfect for picnicking, ball games and running or crawling around as well as for practising tummy time.
Halliday Park also has plenty of great facilities, including toilets, undercover picnic spots and barbeques, with the added bonus of a kid-friendly short 500m walking track.
73-75 Wonga Road, Ringwood North VIC 3134
McAlpin Reserve is truly picturesque, with a gorgeous backdrop of established trees, grassy expanses and water. Children will love the pond, with its ducks and little bridge proving lots of entertainment and opportunities for pretend play.
The reserve also has a sizeable playground, with a range of structures to suit children of all ages. There are swings, slides, a rope pyramid for climbing and network of little towers connected by bridges.
The facilities at this Ringwood North kids park include drinking water taps, toilets, barbeques, benches and shaded table areas. Another great feature is that there are paved walking trails throughout the reserve that connect up with the lovely Montery Bush Park, making this spot a great choice when you have some extra time to explore two areas and a relaxing walk for parents and bubs.
1 King Street, Bayswater VIC 3153
As its name suggests, the eye-catching retired red train engine is the highlight of this kids park, complete with train tracks, a platform and a ticket booth which is brilliant for imaginative games.
Only ten minutes south-east of Ringwood, this kids park is well worth the visit. The main play area is the giant wooden castle structure, with the slow incline ramps being great for crawling toddlers. The park also includes a climbing wall, monkey bars, shaded sandpit, slides and a rope climbing structure. Animals are heavily featured in this playground as well, with lots of lizards, hippos and even an elephant!
Other great inclusions are the network of paths perfect for bike riding or scootering and netball hoops at various heights to accommodate different ages.
Bayswater train park has a range of facilities too, including toilets, picnic grounds and walking tracks. It is worth noting however that there is limited shade, so this park is better on cooler days.
1 King St, Bayswater Vic 3153
Just east of Ringwood, Wyreena Reserve is a multi-purpose area which includes a sensory playground, the Wyreena Community Arts Centre and Conservatory café.
The play space was specifically designed for children under 12 and contains a combination of traditional playground structures, creative spaces and natural elements to stimulate their senses. The majority of the play area is shaded by large trees.
It has excellent accessibility, with disabled parking spots and a full wheelchair accessible site, with paths linking different areas and a ramp up to a raised deck with many activities.
Wyreena Reserve includes traditional kid playground favourites like slides, swings and climbing nets while also incorporating nature play through water, sand, soil and tree nuts. Other great features that encourage imaginative play are the natural tunnels, birds nest lookout and giant spider’s web.
Facilities include park benches and tables, toilets and the added benefit of being adjacent to a café – ideal for tired parents and caregivers to get a caffeine or hot chocolate fix!
99 Victoria St, Doncaster East Vic 3019
Whilst a bit of a further drive from Ringwood, Ruffey Lake Park is an excellent destination, with three different playgrounds to cater to range of different aged children. The most exciting one is on the eastern side, with fun snake sculptures, plentiful climbing equipment and higher towers. As such, it’s better for slightly older children, and one of the smaller playgrounds would be better suited to toddlers.
With lots of large trees on the edges of the playgrounds, there is abundant natural shade, so this playground is a good choice year-round.
It has plenty of facilities including large covered picnic tables, barbeques and toilets, with a carpark to ensure your visit is stress-free!
We hope you give some of these great parks a try, and agree they should be on the list for the best kids park near Ringwood. We look forward to hearing all about your little one’s adventures when we see them next at Choklits!
This blog brings great excitement to share with you our finished Gathering Circle!
If you haven’t already, you can catch up on the first half of the journey here.
Our finished Gathering Circle is now proudly standing in our front entrance way. It is a symbol that visibly translates our commitment to honouring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. But more than that, it tells a story and represents our journey so far and the path ahead.
Before installation, there was a bit of work involved to prepare the space. After we’d cleared the area Tracey, our Choklits veteran, reflected on seeing the space underneath the ivy for the first time in years!
Once the space was ready, Simone (the incredible artist behind the paintings) joined us to guide our work with her creative talent. Here’s a look at how the installation went…
Once everything was “just so” and final adjustments had been made, we invited the children to cast their discerning eyes over our new space. Comments and observations included;
“Wow, there’s a goanna!”
“I love it!”
“Look, it’s Rainbow Snake!”
“The Australia’s my favourite”
With the stamp of approval it was offical, our Gathering Circle was complete!
So, what is Gathering Circle? Simone explained it this way:
“The Gathering Circle represents an unbroken circle and connected family; a place where people come to sit together, yarn and learn from their Elders”.
We sat together to share the first yarn. I could see the magic of this special place as Simone wove visions about her journey, her history and the story behind each piece.
The yarn behind each piece, as shared by Simone:
This piece incorporates the Aboriginal flag, a well-known symbol of Aboriginal people. The designer Harold Thomas says the colours of the flag represent the Aboriginal people of Australia, the red ochre colour of earth and a spiritual relation to the land and the sun, the giver of life and protector. You can find out more about the flag and its history here.
This piece represents the families that make up our Choklits Community. The green circles symbolise the family each child comes from. The shapes and lines connect the backgrounds, culture and places of each family.
This piece represents the children of Choklits, their families and the Choklits Educators all coming together as a Community. The Choklits purple colour interwoven throughout helps shows the connection and unity of our Community.
This piece is a sharing of the Wurundjeri land, which we learn and play on. Simone explained that ‘Wurun’ means ‘manna gum tree’ and ‘Jeri’ means ‘witchetty grub’.
Bunjil, the creator spirit of the five Kulin nations, is often talked about at Choklits and this piece displays beautifully our favourite eagle. The five spirits are;
– Boonwurrung (Boon-wur-rung)
– Dja Dja Wurrung (Jar-Jar-Wur-rung)
– Taungurung (Tung-ger-rung)
– Wathaurung (Wath-er-rung)
– Woiwurrung (Woy-wur-rung), commonly known as Wurundjeri.
You can find out more, watch and listen to the story at these two locations Bunjil – First Australians and Bunjil and Wah Story (as told through paper animation by children from Monash)
This piece depicts an often-told Dreamtime story of Rainbow Serpent. There are many versions of the story, depending on where and who tells them. This is the one Simone shared with me, and it comes from the Yorta Yorta mob.
“In the time of creation there was a calm over the vast, mist-covered land. Biami the Creator Spirit saw the old woman, Gumuk Winga, with her empty coolaman. She looked very hungry. Biami then told the old woman to go and search for some yams. So she then picked up her digging stick and set out across the land with her dog.
The old woman walked and walked a long way away and could not see any yams. As time went on she became very weary, walking slowly with her digging stick dragging along the earth. Day turned to night, she walked far under the moonlit sky, singing softly and hoping for some yams to appear. Biami waited for the old woman but could not see her anywhere. Biami called out to Gane, the great rainbow Snake, who was laying asleep beneath the earth. When Gane heard Biami calling out to him, he lifted his head and made his way to the surface of the earth. He lay there looking out over the dry land when Biami asked him to go and find the old woman and bring her back safely.
Gane then set off following the marks in the earth left by the old woman’s digging stick. His great body moved across the land pushing the earth into hills and valleys, leaving deep crevices in the earth. Beautiful colours from his body spread throughout, covering trees, plants, birds, butterflies and all other creatures.
Then Biami called out in a loud voice, and thunder cracked as lightning flashed across the sky and rain fell. It rained for days, filling up the deep crevices in the earth that were made from the rainbow snake’s body. Then the rain stopped and the mist cleared and the river Dungala was formed. This is the name used by the Yorta Yorta people. Others know it as the Murray River” – extracted from this webpage.
For this piece, Simone used symbols to tell a story. You can see kangaroo tracks going toward watering holes and goanna looking for food. The symbols highlight the way stories can be recorded to share culture and teach others. They represent Aboriginal culture and tradition.
The yellow pieces join the Gathering Circle together. They create the shape and connectors so that it’s an unbroken circle, which means and symbolises an unbroken family. This picture was taken before we installed our Gathering Circle, we laid out the different pieces to ensure the design would work perfectly with our entrance area.
After my yarn with Simone, I came away with the feeling of appreciation for the relationship we’d built and the insights shared, hurt for some of the things I’d learned, wonder at the stories Simone had inscribed onto each piece, and with lots more to find out.
I can’t wait to see the many more moments and opportunities our Gathering Circle will bring us at Choklits.
Simone’s last thoughts were “to be respectful”, a sentiment we share with the belief that we can make our thoughts and actions count for current and future generations.
This Choklits blog post authored by Dee Wasserfall, Choklits Child Care Pre-Kindergarten Room Leader.
PS- Choklits is a busy place so join the conversation on Facebook and follow us on Instagram for updates from in and around our great Ringwood community!
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Choklits Child Care, 319 Canterbury Road, Ringwood (opposite the Ringwood Golf Course near the Canterbury Road Eastlink offramp).
In early 2019, we were given an amazing opportunity to begin a community project here at Choklits. From collaboration to celebration, we hold our community participation in very high regard because we believe in, and see the advantages of, education for our early learners that extends well beyond our own grounds.
As you can probably guess, we were thrilled to continue growing and strengthening our involvement with the community.
This particular project involved EACH, a community group whose vision is for inclusion and health for all. The brief was to extend on our current practices around community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander perspectives. Our application was approved based on our pillars of growth and collaboration.
Then it was time to get creative…
A meeting with Choklits owner Jade, some of our educators and the team from EACH prompted discussion about the vision we wanted to achieve and how we could execute it. We identified that our teaching and learning was already visible and evident throughout the centre and learning program, but we wanted anyone who stepped foot in our front door to know that firstly, our centre valued Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and secondly, that culture was welcomed and recognised in all its forms.
Gathering our own ideas with the help of paint, flowers, leaves and pencils many themes emerged; sustainability and recycled materials, a link to the land and animals, the children we want to teach and empower, the custodians and the language of our land’s Traditional Owners (Wurundjeri/Woiwurrung) and the colours of the flags we have grown to know so well. There was talk of statues, gardens, murals and many other forms our vision could take.
The more we began to delve into our ideas, the clearer it became that we needed to further define the statement of our long-term vision for Choklits. Thankfully, we were able to draw on the wealth of resource provided by Nurragunnawali, an organisation developed by Reconciliation Australia to support schools and early learning services in Australia to develop environments that foster high levels of knowledge and pride in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and contributions. This platform gave us the tools to formalise our commitment through a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), which would help us to continue to authentically embed teaching and learning opportunities throughout the centre and to guide our project vision.
As we began forming our RAP working group (the team from Choklits involved in creating actions and documenting the RAP), the universe began aligning chance encounters, meetings and connections to help us in our journey.
While at a local community event, Knox Festival, one of our educators visited a stall hosted by one of the community organisations we had been researching. It just so happened that Elke, the CEO of Mullum Mullum Indigenous Gathering Place, struck up a conversation that led to Choklits and our current project. Elke said she had just the artist in mind to help bring our vision to life, and so we were introduced to local artist, Simone Thomson.
As we entered the crazy COVID-19 adventure that has dominated 2020, we got to know Simone through phone chats and emails and bounced a few ideas around. We spoke about our ideas and what we wanted to achieve, Simone just seemed to intuitively “get” what Choklits was all about. Ideas began to take form as our discussions turned to the creation of a gathering circle or totem poles as our entrance piece.
We brainstormed on the themes that where important to us, some of them included:
We passed these ideas onto Simone; whose brain began sparking with creative visions and dreams.
Meanwhile, we also began researching the materials we should to use. This part of the process brought an unexpected but valuable insight. After deciding to source logs of wood to use in the entrance piece, we arranged to meet a gentleman who had the logs we needed available.
Simone and educator, Dee, met to view the wood and had some interesting conversations that led to a massive discovery about the intent of our project. After some confronting comments and attitudes toward Aboriginal culture, the team and Simone reflected on how this interaction should fit in to our learning journey.
Simone put it best when she said that the best way forward was to “educate younger generations to stamp out those ways” and that actions like our upcoming project would “contribute to teaching respect for the oldest living culture on earth and inspire knowledge seeking little minds to accept”.
What a mission statement, encapsulating exactly what we want to achieve at Choklits! We decided more of our community should be invited to take an active part in our project.
Much to our surprise and delight, our call for wood was quickly answered by many families, educators, friends of families and past Chokliteers! Over the weeks, a small collection was gathered.
Slowly but surely, our vision was coming together!
With the thought of stretching our available funds and creating the best possible project, we reached out to our local Bunnings store to invite any donation towards the costs of supplies. Like us, Bunnings values opportunities to support local community and were very happy to help us with a donation which we soon put to good use. Thank you, Bunnings!
The educators involved in the Reconciliation Action Plan continued to collaborate and identified more important aspects of embedding Aboroginal and Torrers Strait Islander perspectives at Choklits and we shared these thoughts with Simone.
Once the pile of wood had grown (and those pesky but necessary COVID-19 restrictions had eased, briefly!), we invited Simone to visit the centre and see for herself, firsthand, what we at Choklits were all about. After we welcomed Simone into Choklits, she shared some insights into what she could see and feel about our community.
She noted that cultural respect was evident throughout the centre, every wall, every room, the children’s learning experiences, dolls, flags, artwork, posters and displays included. In watching the educators and children interact, she could see everyone’s enthusiasm.
We talked about how, if Simone felt welcome, other people who visit (whether identifying as Aboriginal or not) would too and understand how important this 60,000-year-old culture is.
“How amazing is that these little learners have the opportunity to be familiar and comfortable with understanding and respecting Indigenous culture? We (along with our valuable Community elders and partners) are so proud to play a part in creating sparks for life-long acceptance” Simone said.
The opportunity to take part in the Each Grant Project has led us to many valuable and rich learning moments; team brainstorming, community collaborations, the ongoing process of creating our Reconciliation Action Plan, attitudes and behaviour towards Aboriginal people (and from that, the tolerance, respect and acceptance we hoped to instil in future generations) and connections and partnerships with generous and knowledgeable people.
The journey toward the outcome of our entrance piece has provided rich and meaningful opportunities to connect with local organisations and people in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. Our learning hasn’t come from the finished product, but from the moments the journey has invited.
Currently, our wood logs are in Simone’s studio, at mercy to her creative mind and talented brush. We cannot wait to see what happens in the next step of our journey and invite all the learning and possibilities that this project continues to bring!
This Choklits blog post authored by Dee Wasserfall, Choklits Child Care Pre-Kindergarten Room Leader.
PS- Choklits is a busy place so join the conversation on Facebook and follow us on Instagram for updates from in and around our great Ringwood community!
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Choklits Child Care, 319 Canterbury Road, Ringwood (opposite the Ringwood Golf Course near the Canterbury Road Eastlink offramp).
