Arlington Playground Reviews for Early Walkers
- elaine
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 12 hours ago
Arlington and the surrounding towns have a lot of playgrounds, but sometimes it's hard to know if a playground is suitable for your toddler especially if they are in the mouthing phase (woodchips can be tough) or just learning to walk. I'm putting together an overview of the playgrounds in Arlington and ones I know about in surrounding towns that have been recently recommended by parents in the various community groups I'm in. If I've missed one that you love, please comment below and I'll try my best to include them in this post too. It takes a village, and I hope this resource makes you more confident in taking your little one outside to enjoy the spring. In the summer, I'll do another round up of splash pads, though it'd be great to get some more community engagement in our discord server or elsewhere to be able to ask "is the water on today?" in real time. (update, another enterprising parent in the moms of camberville facebook group has already made this a spreadsheet for camberville area )
Early Walker Playgrounds in Arlington
Hibbert Playground
This is primarily a tot-lot style playground with not a lot of equipment for bigger kids. It's mostly level (unlike the other playgrounds listed) but also mostly woodchips. It has 2 baby bucket swing seats and 2 strap swing seats for bigger kids, a tunnel to crawl through, a mini slide, a pretend play house, and large rock for climbing. This playground has good shade and is in a quiet residential area. There's no dedicated parking lot or bike racks, so it's street parking to access this playground.
Arlington Reservoir Playground
Arlington Reservoir playground has a slide built into a pour in place rubberdize hill side, make believe boat, smaller stand alone playstructure with a slide and no large openings for fall risk toddlers.
In the summer, the gate connecting the playground to the beach is locked (because the beach requires an admission feel, and you can only use the enterance/exist by the parking lot. This playground is also bike path accessible (by going through hurd field and then around the walking path of the beach with light gravel) and has bike parking.
Spy Pond Playground
This playground has 4 baby bucket swings (and 1 group basket swings for the daring toddlers) and 2 big kid strap swings, a small stair accessible slide (with no large fall gap openings) and a playhouse at ground level with musical elements (mostly in disrepair now, but somewhat usable). It offers good shade in the morning (because of the trees lining the bike path), is bike path accessible and has two bike racks, has a parking lot shared with the boat launch, and outside the playground is a small sandy area where you could dip your feet into spy pond.
As a part of the 2021 playground study, Arlington also has an accessibility checklist for all its playgrounds which gives an overview of what to find at each of the playgrounds. There is a huge overlap in accessibility friendliness and early walking (and stroller!) friendliness. This table does not include splash pads (there aren't that many in Arlington proper), so when it gets to be summer, I'll do another round up post for playground with water features :)
As of this writing, Poets Corner Playground has been closed due to safety concerns, Menotomy Parks Rock Playground is currently under construction (unlikely to reopen this year), Cutter Reinhart Playground has been torn down. Parallel Playground is open, Spy Pond Park is open, and Robbins Farm Park is open too.
Early Walker Playgrounds Outside of Arlington
Universal Playground in Cambridge - https://www.cambridgema.gov/Departments/citymanagersoffice/projectsandinitiatives/universaldesign
Universal Playground - Waltham https://www.city.waltham.ma.us/recreation-department/pages/universal-playground (not the best sight lines across the park for more independent walkers, but great for early walking and big kids). This playground has limited parking and no bike racks.
Arlington Park & Recreation Committee Side Note
As a small side note for Arlington residents, I became aware that the Park & Recreation commission does not have an official budget set aside to do playground repairs (there is a small budget for them to spend on maintenance across all parks and rec properties, but not enough to say replace broken equipment when it's reported), and so often playground work in town only comes up when the town can take advantage of capital investment projects which have to be new construction. This has the effect of a lot of new playgrounds going up and then falling into a state of disrepair before being taken out of commission earlier and closed across town, and may help explain why you see a fenced in playground or empty lot. If you are interested in trying to advocate for more budget going to playground maintenance and repair, let your town meeting member, finance committee member, and select board members know. :) The Park & Recreation Comittee is an enterprise fund, which means its budget in financed primarily through facilities rentals and classes, so the recent override budget outline did not include more money for this department. It also is likely why the prices for admission the Arlington reservoir and pavilion rental increased so drastically this year.
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