Little One @ Playground hop

It is a rare treat that I would bring Little One to explore neighbourhood playground. Usually, I would just bring her to a playground in our neighbourhood. Otherwise, it would be a playground in a park. Inspired by Ai from Sakura Haruka, she got me interested in other playgrounds in other neighbourhood.

It happened that all the relatives we visited in the first day of Chinese New Year are within Toa Payoh. We had set in our mind to visit the heritage dragon playground located in the region. When we stopped at the last stop, we realised we were so near Kim Keat Avenue that we decided to pay a visit to the Dinosaur Playground as well. 

Little did we know that these playgrounds are so near to one another. So in that afternoon, we did a playground hop from one to the other. See map below. We navigate using Street Directory app on our mobile.  

Make a guess which is Little One's favorite.

Dinosaur Playground

We found the Dinosaur Playground. This playground was introduced by Ai in her blog.  There were two dinosaurs sculptures and some dinosaur eggs. Next to them, there is a small slide in the form of Stegosaurus. 

Little One was interested in the slide while we the parents were more interested in the sculptures. We weren't the only one taking photos of the dinosaurs. LOL...

Castle Playground
This was featured in Ai's blog as well. The castle, though small, looked pretty awesome and I guessed it got Little One pretty excited as well. There were some kids playing here already. Comparing to the Dinosaur Playground, this play area is considered bigger to Little One.

Random Playground

This playground looked common so I called it a random playground. We labeled below our fear and our favorite in this playground. What I like about this playground is the 3 seater rocker, perfect from our family of 3 to play with. ha...

Dragon Playground
Welcome to the last stop! This playground is an icon of Toa Payoh. It is also an heritage playground.
Location: 28 Lorong 6 Toa Payoh

Notice how this playground is different from the rest that were mentioned above?
No modern plastic features, such as plastic slides
No soft ground padding.
Instead, it is on a raised platform full of sand.
The playground is made mainly of concrete and mosaic tiles.
Did I mention, the slides here were definitely faster?


This particular playground remains me of the one I used to play with - The Pelican and Tortoise playground with metal merry-go-round and a couple of swings with no safety gadgets attached at all. I think all the Pelican playground had been demolished some time ago. There is no chance for me to bring Little One to recap the memories I had with identical playground. Yet I am happy that we get to this dragon playground which was also designed by HDB's Mr Khor Ean Ghee.


True was that olden days playgrounds are more dangerous compared to modern playgrounds. Children are prone to cuts and grazes then. But we can't deny that such iconic playgrounds are more fun to play with. There is sand-play without the need to go to the beach. The slides are faster. (In other words, more fun) The only way to slow down is to 'squat and slide' or 'open your legs wide' to create fiction on both sides of slides to slow the whole process down. But one can't deny, accidents do happen regardless how safe the playground is made to be. If you look at a group of toddlers playing at playgrounds, you would know exactly what I mean. One slight neglect on supervision, accidents happen.

This is my first time to a iconic Dragon Playground. There were a few families here but we were the ones who spent the longest time here. Reason being, Little One loved this playground so much, she can't bear to leave.

This playground used to near former Blk 28 but the block was demolished. Take a look at how it used to look like here.

Tips: If you think you are going to spend quite some time down here. Get some cold drinks before coming. We got ours from Mac in SAFRA located just opposite the playground.

Designed by HDB's Mr Khor Ean Ghee, built in 1979. He designed the 1st theme animal themes, including dragon, pilican, giraffe and tortoise. 

PS: Did you know this dragon playground is not the earlier dragon design?
The earlier version has a longer spine, metal head and circular monkey bar and it was located in Toa Payoh Town Park.

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