The Kenadi Jean Playground Destination located in Spearfish, South Dakota will include accessible play elements for children of all abilities. We advocate for a fully-inclusive play space and believe in creating exciting play opportunities which offer a range of challenges for children of all abilities, allowing them to play side-by-side.

Thank you to Jayna Watson for the original artist rendering, allowing us to visualize our dream. Our Advisory Board consisting of Phil Olsen, Matt Symonds, Jayna Watson, Marlys Feist, Dirk VanZee, Dave Dutton, Eric Hanson and Brian Baczwaski formed a Vision Committee and together with the Kenadi Jean Weis Foundation Executive Board devised a potential location. Thank you to Eirik Heikes of TerraSite Design for putting our vision on paper and creating a working land plan design.

We invite you to take look at our land plan draft which is already evolving and now includes the addition of Ollie’s Owl Nest Indoor Playground. We sincerely thank you for your continued love, support and volunteerism and look forward to embarking on this exciting new adventure together!

What do you remember most about playing at the park when you were a child? Now imagine how hard that might be for a child with disabilities.

Since its’ inception, it has been a goal of ours to create all-inclusive play spaces designed to serve the physical, social, sensory, cognitive, and emotional needs of children of all abilities in our community. Through personal experience we realize how difficult it can be for a person with special needs to access and enjoy the atmosphere a playground offers. We could not maneuver Kenadi’s wheelchair through the loose wood chips or unstable recycle tires, there were no swings to support her hypotonic body and her heat sensitivity resulted in not being able to participate in equal play.

Playgrounds are more than just areas where kids can go ‘run around’ outside for a while. They are a major part of development, and should be seen as vital to our community. Playgrounds are an ideal environment for supporting overall healthy development and getting outside to make new friends.

Children of all abilities and their families deserve these spaces that help to make brighter futures for all who enjoy them. It is our hope that one day, no one will ever know that there was a difference between a playground and an inclusive playground.

All-inclusive playgrounds are a thing of the future… they are a thing of the now… and it is our goal to bring them to our community!

Through Shane’s Inspiration, they have developed an understanding of inclusive play that we fully support.

An all-inclusive playground is designed to create play environments that serve the physical, social, sensory, cognitive, and emotional needs of children of all abilities in a community. It is a movement striving to develop ongoing and sustainable inclusive play experiences that meet the widest range of users and abilities in the same setting. It combines universal accessibility with thoughtfully-supported social interaction between children with and without disabilities through play. They are most successful when they utilize universal design to achieve highly-diverse physical accessibility with playful solutions that are developmentally appropriate for many different levels of need, and is done so in an engaging, sensory-rich environment. Inclusive play uses a “people-centered” approach to develop awareness and involvement of the community through the creation of inclusive play environments, on-going inclusive play experiences, and engaging educational programs. Inclusive play catalyzes social evolution through the development of understanding, acceptance, and the building of common ground between children of all abilities.