During the Children’s Day long weekend, we decided to visit Playeum’s Children’s Centre of Creativity which recently opened its doors at Gilman Barracks. If the name Playeum sounds familiar, it is because they have been on the scene with play-focused creative activities for kids for several years now. I’ve always enjoyed their events, like The Big Draw, and am excited that they have their own space now!
We couldn’t make it for the media preview but decided to go check out the space on our own after getting some good reviews from friends. Actually, once I heard that the kids get to build Lego cars and roll them down a huge slope, I knew we HAD to go visit. Noey has always been a huge car/train/any-kind-of-vehicle roller so I knew he would love it. The fact that there was Lego meant that the husband would deign to go too!
It was my first time to Gilman Barracks (would you believe it) and I thought it was such a lovely and serene space! We found the Playeum Centre quite easily, marked as it was with a colourful pink elephant at the door.
Welcome to The Art of Speed!
Stepping inside, we were attended to promptly, got registered and tagged, then off we went to play!
The current theme is “The Art of Speed” and the play experiences are designed to allow children to explore the essence of speed in different forms and in environments. Our attention was immediately drawn to the enormous slope that we saw in front of us. The children did not need any invitation — they headed straight for the tubs of Lego and started building.
Yes, Daddy was happy to build too!
This installation is part of the Create For Speed space, which has two sections for kids to experiment with zooming cars and ramps of different shapes and sizes. The huge slope aka The Community Ramp was the obvious draw. It was high. It was steep. And, most intriguingly, it had a sizeable gap that you car actually had to successfully jump across in order to reach the bottom of the slope.
It was interesting to see how my two two kids differed in their approaches. Noey quickly put together as functional a car as he could within as short a time as he could, since his main aim was to roll something down the slope. Mei on the other hand took ages to build her car, slowly looking for the pieces that she wanted (pink blocks!) and putting it all together. Unfortunately the initial result for both of them was the same. Their first attempts crashed and burned, veering dangerously off-course after being released, or doing the plunge of death into the gap.
L: Noey deep in concentration before sending his car down. R: Mei’s car doing the plunge of death…
I was pleased however that neither of them gave up. Noey can be prone to doing this, but he just picked up the pieces and his bruised pride and went right back to trying to build a better vehicle. They both learnt how to release their cars straight and well, and how to build more sturdy structures for their cars. Eventually their cars managed to clear the gap! They were so pleased and proud of their accomplishment!
These cars made it! (Yes, Papa got into in as well!)
One of the times the husband’s car tragi-comically got stuck on the ropes in the gap!
On the side of The Community Ramp were The Carpet Ramps. Here we found long strips of flexible tracks that we could bend as we pleased, and little cars we could use to test them out.
Mei and I spent some time here getting the little cars to do the loop-the-loop and jump over bumps and through rings. (Noey just couldn’t be torn away from The Community Ramp for any significant amount of time!) I enjoyed this section and got quite a bit of satisfaction from getting the angles right and seeing our little car race through the obstacles.
Messing about with the car and trying to get them to go where we wanted them to!
It wasn’t long before Mei’s attention was caught by the Play Maker Space. Because, CRAFT! (Need I say more?)
We found a space for ourselves at the table and after a quick discussion, we decided to make a butterfly — ie. pretty much Mei’s favourite thing to draw, make and be! I suggested this after seeing some thin tissue-like material which I thought would be appropriate for wings and Mei readily agreed. We helped ourselves to the recycled materials they had available and started work with straws, bottle caps, and some of that tissue-like material and plastic. It wasn’t that easy to work because we found only one decent pair of scissors on the table and we had only very thick masking tape and a glue gun to work with to get everything affixed. I would have appreciated UHU or white glue, a stapler and some normal sticky tape. But we made do and managed to pull it all together. My little girl was chuffed!
Hard at work… (Also known as playing with tape!)
Butterfly!
And she promptly ran off to The Dark Space to have to play with it.
Enjoying playing with shadows.
Before we left, the kids had to spend a little time in Vroom! which was essentially a soft play space for the littler ones. Both of mine, overaged as they were, couldn’t resist the lovely wooden toys. While the husband, well, he found the perfect place to slack off!
Having her now little mini race down the slopes.
Noey cannot resist any kind of vehicle!
Relak one corner.
They built a dog!
Entry to the centre costs $20 per child but after a full afternoon, I considered it money well-spent, especially seeing how engaged my kids were the whole time we were there. I’m so glad Playeum now has this permanent space and believe we would be back! They’ve organised events all through October to December, and on certain Saturdays, artists will be present to enhance their installation and engage the children, as well as lead workshops. I plan to schedule our next visit a little better to join some of the programmes.
Playeum Centre of Children’s Creativity
47 Malan Road
Gilman Barracks
#01-23
Singapore 109444
Web: www.playeum.com
Admission Charges: $20 per child (1-12 years), free for accompanying adult ($10 for additional accompanying adult)
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