Now, a special park for special children

CHENNAI: At 6 pm one recent evening, the gates of the Sensory park at Vishwas Special School, Kilpauk, were opened, and inaugurated for its 50 students with disabilities. It was a special evening for the children, their parents, and management, who had collectively worked for over a month to ideate the different elements in the park. The inauguration was a part of the school’s 6th Annual Day celebrations. Jaya Krishnaswamy, founder director, and P Jeyachandran, founder consultant, Madhuram Narayanan Centre for Exceptional Children, were the chief guests.

The school, started in 2011, provides intervention to 50 students, between 2 to 26 years, with intellectual and physical disabilities. Its premises includes an open space to move and play, but a part of the campus remained a marshy ground, out-of-bounds to its students, until recently. “When rain water got in and mosquitoes started breeding, many suggested that we landscape this area. But I decided to build a sensory park, with indigenous materials,” shared Shanta Pillai, chairman and director of the school.

Teachers trained in special education, physiotherapists, parents, and management pitched in ideas, and in a month, built the park. A path laid with pebbles, stones, grass, sponge, and sand, takes one through the area. The children can stop to ring the bells hanging from a tree, stamp and play on a slimy pit, jump across a rainbow-coloured tyre path, spot different shapes in a painting on one of the walls, touch and feel textures like ropes and stones placed on another wall, or crawl and find their way out of a tunnel.

“The tunnel is a great element to help create body awareness, since children with disabilities are often not sure if their bodies will fit into a space or not,” explained Jeyachandran. One end of the park had a garden with aromatic plants; and in the other corner a little house made of bamboo was built was children to climb in, sit or listen to the music that played inside, and walk out through a ramp. The most exciting part for the children was to stop and feed animals at the aquarium, birds, and rabbit cages.

As we headed out of the park, to watch the cultural programme that the students had prepared, Shanta explained, “The park is a part of our effort to help the children with all-round development, such as expressive language, receptive skills, independence in daily activities, and more. Each class of eight students will spend a day at the park every week, having fun, while developing sensory integration abilities.”