Psychology Department's Linda Ray Intervention Center gets new playground

Still overjoyed with their remodeled playground more than a week after its unveiling, 3-year-old Gabriel and about 20 of his classmates at the University of Miami’s Linda Ray Intervention Center hardly noticed the group of adults visiting their special-needs school earlier this month.

A new wooden house and slide, a mural of a jungle scene with animals, and sporty new tricycles proved too much fun to compete for the attention of these energetic tykes.

But that didn’t bother visitor Noelia E. Moreno, the immediate past-president of the Latin Builders Association (LBA), which funded the playground’s makeover. She was just happy that the new play area “will help enrich the lives of children at the center for years to come.”

The new equipment replaced an older, aging playground at the Linda Ray Intervention Center, a UM Department of Psychology program that serves newborn to 3-year-old children who are developmentally delayed as a result of abuse, neglect, or prenatal exposure to drugs.

When UM contacted LBA’s Children and Families Foundation about the center’s need for a new playground, it was a perfect fit for the group's philanthropic mission, said Moreno.

After assessing the playground’s needs, volunteers from the LBA and Miami-based Link Construction Group arrived at the center one day during the Christmas recess and quickly got to work, leveling the playground’s foundation, repairing the chain-link fence and gate, spreading synthetic mulch, and replacing rotted wood.

The LBA donated new playground equipment, while LBA volunteers, who also came from Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, installed a mural painted by local artist Pedro J. Rubio on the fence surrounding the playground.

Volunteers completed the renovation in three days.

“When the playground opened on Tuesday after Christmas, I can’t begin to describe the reaction of the children,” saidLynne Katz, research assistant professor and director of the center. “They were pointing and pulling on the legs of their teachers. They knew something had changed. They’re so young, but they can still differentiate between new and old.”

The playground’s new toddler-size wooden schoolhouse is a favorite among the children, said assistant teacher Margarita Cartwright, who has worked at Linda Ray for 18 years.

Katz said the new playground is an ideal learning environment, teaching children how to work out problems of climbing over and under objects and cultivating social skills such as sharing.

A pressing need for the center now, Katz said, is to keep its last remaining transportation van on the road for the most needy children living the farthest from the center to get to and from school.

January 10, 2012