Every family has their local playground they love to frequent, and if you live next to one of these extra-special Toronto gems, lucky you!
If you don’t, these Toronto playgrounds are worth a special trip. When the sun is shining, seek them out for a fun and free day out with the kids.
1. Neshama Playground (Oriole Park)
photo: Shannon Kelly
Neshama Playground in Davisville features a cool, modern jungle gym for toddlers and kids and a wading pool and tiny flowing “river” for wee ones. There’s also a splash pad with huge bronze frogs “spitting” water and a gigantic dragonfly shower.
Read more about Neshama Playground.
2. Jamie Bell Adventure Playground (High Park)
photo: Shannon Kelly
The sprawling wood structure at High Park’s Jamie Bell Adventure Playground is like a medieval castle and maze, with narrow passageways, “hidden” winding staircases, and lookouts. Truly a play space that’s fun for all ages!
Read more about Jamie Bell Adventure Playground.
3. Dufferin Grove Park Sandpit Adventure Playground
photo: Shannon Kelly
This park near Bloor and Dufferin has a traditional, wooden-structure playground and a wading pool, but the most exciting feature is the giant sandpit for wannabe archaeologists, construction fanatics, and mud-lovers.
Kid’s shovels of all different sizes are lined against the fence and dump trucks, bulldozers, and excavators are strewn around for kids to share. There are logs for makeshift bridges and a water faucet and buckets for filling the reservoirs, moats, and winding rivers kids create.
Expect some happy and extremely muddy kids after a play date here! Bring a change of clothes!
Dufferin Grove Park, 875 Dufferin St. (south of Bloor St. W.), Toronto4. Kew Gardens Playground
photo: Cit of Toronto Parks, Forestry, and Recreation
In The Beaches, this castle-style playground is a smaller verson of High Park’s Jamie Bell Adventure Playground. Shielded by old-growth trees, it’s in one of the city’s most historic parks, dating to 1897. The playground has a wooden castle climbing structure with molded plastic slides and a wading pool.
Part of the reason we love Kew Gardens playground is its proximilty to the beach itself: a quick walk down to the boardwalk and you’ve got a long stretch of sand for building castles, collecting rocks, and playing in the water.
Kew Gardens, 2075 Queen St. E. (Queen x Woodbine), Toronto5. Corktown Common Playground
photo: samuel bietenholz
This futuristic-looking playground near the Distillery District is part of the 18-acre Corktown Common park and wetland area and the playground is designed to work with its natural surroundings, with boulders and stumps to climb and sit on, and a big hill that supports an extra-long, toboggan-style metal slide.
The surface is sand, with a faucet where kids can collect water for making perfectly packed sandcastles. There are also swings, a flying-saucer-like spinner, a spider-web climbing structure, a pavilion and covered picnic area and washrooms.
In summer, the star of the park is the adjacent rubberized-surface splash pad with arcing jets and an amazing view of downtown Toronto.
Corktown Common, foot of Bayview Ave. and Lower River St. (off King St. E.), Toronto6. Marie Curtis Park Playground
photo: Shannon Kelly
This Etobicoke park is extra-fun in summer when the amazing splash pad and wading pool areas are open and Mom and Dad can lounge under umbrellas in the Muskoka chairs. But the playground itself is a fun one at nearly any time of year, with a spider-web climber, and newer climbing structure, slides, spinner, and swings.
We really love its location, too, right next to the lakefront with a swimming beach, a big open field, and walking paths from the playground through the trees to the waterfront.
Marie Curtis Park, 2 Forty-Second St. (near Brown’s Line), Etobicoke7. Vermont Square Park Playground
In the Annex, Vermont Square Park has all the elements of a great outdoor play day: a sand and mudpie station, a wading pool, grassy areas for picnics, shady seating for grownups, and a huge pirate ship-themed play structure with tube slide, portholes, and “secret” passageways. And the entire playground is fenced in, so you won’t lose track of your little rapscallion. All combined it makes for hours of imaginative fun.
Vermont Square Park, 819 Palmerston Ave., TorontoREAD MORE LIKE THIS:
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