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seandcAt the same time I found the article on Roald Dahl, I also saw this article in the Department's old newspapers about a little after-school entertainment I used to go to. I went back into those papers on Friday and found this article on
At a park near you - Supervan
Dear Editor,
I would like the opportunity to tell your readers about Supervan, a mobile recreational arts and crafts van which travels throughout the City of Perth providing unique recreational opportunities at little or no cost.
Supervan provides support for various council and community events requiring specialist skills and equipment, as well as an advisory service to community groups and organisations requiring information and assistance with recreational arts and crafts activities. The programme, however, places particular importance on the recreational needs of children and senior citizens.
The service also recognises that due to the changing structure of the family unit and other social influences, many children are experiencing increased periods of unstructured, unsupervised leisure time. Supervan attempts to address this situation by providing children with the opportunity to spend their after-school hours in a creative and constructive manner.
The programme is designed to provide supervised, creative recreation and arts activities which encourage the active participation and involvement of primary school children aged between six and 12 years.
Four afternoons a week between 3.30pm and 5pm, Supervan arrives in selected parks throughout the city. Schools in a catchment area surrounding the park are notified of the programme’s operation and are asked to encourage students to attend.
Children quickly become avid Supervan fans – cold, wind and rain do nothing to daunt their enthusiasm. The van is equipped with a broad range of sporting equipment – cricket, teeball, tennis and several other sports can all be played. Board games such as Guess Who, Connect 4, Trivial Pursuit and UNO are also kept on hand.
Materials for art and craft activities are collected from a variety of sources, with organisations such as Cats Unrubbish being visited on a regular basis.
Two tertiary-trained art specialists plan and implement a different art and craft activity with the children each week. This requires some skill and imagination as the programme operates on a limited budget.
The afternoon is loosely structured into two halves. The first half is devoted to art and craft and the second to organised team and group games. However, the programme is flexible and often, from choice, children will opt to spend the entire afternoon involved in art and craft activities.
Teachers would no doubt be surprised at the enthusiasm with which the children freely immerse themselves in these activities. Overall, in the three years the programme has been operating, very few discipline problems have been experienced. Children for the most part are co-operative, helpful and interact well.
Suzanne Ronayne
City of Perth
Printed in WA Education News
Volume 8, Number 7, May 5 1988, page 2.
I went to Supervan for a couple of years since I was about seven or eight (according to Mum, I can remember going but not the actual year). The days it was in my neighbourhood, it parked in the big park/oval across the road from my school (in the opposite direction from my house), usually just beyond the little clubroom setup, so there was plenty of grass, a line of trees we all played between, and at the end of this a large steep-for-us-kids slope.
Mum also mentioned one time when Supervan rolled up to an “Ideal Garden” show she went to with Grandpa. I apparently went to Supervan rather than the show. Personally me-now is surprised that Mum went to one of these shows, I rather see her setting her own standards for what makes an “ideal garden”. Complete with over-glasses look. It wasn’t at Rowethorpe (the retirement village Grandpa lived in - I got this event confused with another fete/show), since Grandpa drove us. I don’t think it was that far away though, for the suburbs within the City of Perth on our side of the river were rather few. The “City of Perth” mentioned was the local municipality, not the whole city. That council split up sometime in the early 90s, and the suburbs on the southern side of the river became the Town of Victoria Park.
It was interesting to read the passage worrying about the amount of unstructured leisure time, considering I was just reading something the week before about concerns that these days children have their days too regimented, and have no time to simply chill out and do their own thing.
At a park near you - Supervan
Dear Editor,
I would like the opportunity to tell your readers about Supervan, a mobile recreational arts and crafts van which travels throughout the City of Perth providing unique recreational opportunities at little or no cost.
Supervan provides support for various council and community events requiring specialist skills and equipment, as well as an advisory service to community groups and organisations requiring information and assistance with recreational arts and crafts activities. The programme, however, places particular importance on the recreational needs of children and senior citizens.
The service also recognises that due to the changing structure of the family unit and other social influences, many children are experiencing increased periods of unstructured, unsupervised leisure time. Supervan attempts to address this situation by providing children with the opportunity to spend their after-school hours in a creative and constructive manner.
The programme is designed to provide supervised, creative recreation and arts activities which encourage the active participation and involvement of primary school children aged between six and 12 years.
Four afternoons a week between 3.30pm and 5pm, Supervan arrives in selected parks throughout the city. Schools in a catchment area surrounding the park are notified of the programme’s operation and are asked to encourage students to attend.
Children quickly become avid Supervan fans – cold, wind and rain do nothing to daunt their enthusiasm. The van is equipped with a broad range of sporting equipment – cricket, teeball, tennis and several other sports can all be played. Board games such as Guess Who, Connect 4, Trivial Pursuit and UNO are also kept on hand.
Materials for art and craft activities are collected from a variety of sources, with organisations such as Cats Unrubbish being visited on a regular basis.
Two tertiary-trained art specialists plan and implement a different art and craft activity with the children each week. This requires some skill and imagination as the programme operates on a limited budget.
The afternoon is loosely structured into two halves. The first half is devoted to art and craft and the second to organised team and group games. However, the programme is flexible and often, from choice, children will opt to spend the entire afternoon involved in art and craft activities.
Teachers would no doubt be surprised at the enthusiasm with which the children freely immerse themselves in these activities. Overall, in the three years the programme has been operating, very few discipline problems have been experienced. Children for the most part are co-operative, helpful and interact well.
Suzanne Ronayne
City of Perth
Printed in WA Education News
Volume 8, Number 7, May 5 1988, page 2.
I went to Supervan for a couple of years since I was about seven or eight (according to Mum, I can remember going but not the actual year). The days it was in my neighbourhood, it parked in the big park/oval across the road from my school (in the opposite direction from my house), usually just beyond the little clubroom setup, so there was plenty of grass, a line of trees we all played between, and at the end of this a large steep-for-us-kids slope.
Mum also mentioned one time when Supervan rolled up to an “Ideal Garden” show she went to with Grandpa. I apparently went to Supervan rather than the show. Personally me-now is surprised that Mum went to one of these shows, I rather see her setting her own standards for what makes an “ideal garden”. Complete with over-glasses look. It wasn’t at Rowethorpe (the retirement village Grandpa lived in - I got this event confused with another fete/show), since Grandpa drove us. I don’t think it was that far away though, for the suburbs within the City of Perth on our side of the river were rather few. The “City of Perth” mentioned was the local municipality, not the whole city. That council split up sometime in the early 90s, and the suburbs on the southern side of the river became the Town of Victoria Park.
It was interesting to read the passage worrying about the amount of unstructured leisure time, considering I was just reading something the week before about concerns that these days children have their days too regimented, and have no time to simply chill out and do their own thing.
