Build A Park - for upper elementary K12 students
Imagine your students designing their dream playground — not on paper, not in their heads, but on a real interactive map of their actual school grounds. That's exactly what Build a Park makes possible.
https://esriurl.com/buildapark
Build a Park is a free, browser-based web app designed especially for upper elementary students. It combines the intuitive fun of drag-and-drop design with the power of ArcGIS Online mapping technology. Students search for their school or a nearby park, zoom in, and then drag playground equipment icons directly onto the map — slides, swings, monkey bars, seesaws, gaga ball pits, koi ponds, and more. Each piece of equipment gets a short, editable label so students can personalize their designs. When they're done, they can take a screenshot of their finished park or save their design directly to ArcGIS Online as a professional web map.
Why This Matters in the Classroom
Geography and spatial thinking are foundational skills, yet they can be hard to make tangible for younger learners. Build a Park bridges that gap by connecting something students already love — playgrounds — with real geographic tools used by professionals every day.
When students place a swing set on the map, they're not just playing. They're making geodesign decisions about space, proximity, and layout. They're thinking about whether the sandbox should be near the benches so caregivers can supervise, or whether the basketball court needs enough buffer from the climbing wall. These are genuine design thinking and spatial reasoning challenges dressed up in a format that feels like play.
Classroom Activity Ideas
Grades 3–5: Design Your Dream Playground
Have students search for your school, zoom into the schoolyard, and design a new playground for the empty field out back. Ask them to write a short paragraph explaining their choices — why did they place equipment where they did? Who are they designing for?
Grades 4–6: Compare and Contrast
Assign students different parks in your city or town. Have each student design an "improved" version of their assigned park. Then compare designs as a class — what did different students prioritize? How does the neighborhood around a park influence what equipment belongs there?
Cross-Curricular: Math Integration
Challenge students to place exactly 10 pieces of equipment and estimate how much space their park takes up using the map scale. How many square meters might a slide need? How close is too close for two swings?
Saving and Sharing Work
One of Build a Park's most powerful features for teachers is the Save to ArcGIS Online function.
When students save their park, it creates a hosted feature layer and a web map in their ArcGIS Online account — the same format used by GIS professionals worldwide.
Their saved maps are automatically accessible in ArcGIS Map Viewer and National Geographic MapMaker, making it easy to share, present to the class, or submit as an assignment.
Students can also take a screenshot of their finished design, add a custom title, and download it as a PNG — perfect for a classroom gallery wall or a digital portfolio.
Getting Started
Build a Park runs entirely in a web browser — no installation, no plugins. To save a map, students need an ArcGIS Online account, but the screenshot feature works without signing in at all.
It's spatial thinking, design thinking, and digital citizenship — all wrapped up in a playground.
https://esriurl.com/buildapark
Note: This is not an Esri created or supported web app but an experimental, AI-generated webpage that helps students build. It uses several ArcGIS Online services and allows saving into ArcGIS Online.