Homai School
Circa Budget: $90,000
Manurewa, Auckland
Two Complete Playground Packages, built side by side on what used to be a stretch of concrete. Urban Bounce gives Homai’s tamariki a dedicated bounce park, while Junior Pour’n’Play adds a soft, wide-open surface for the school’s youngest learners right alongside it.
Why Complete Packages Made Sense:
- One price, everything included. No separate quotes for surfacing, fencing or installation to add up later.
- No design phase needed. Ready made packages mean a faster path from decision to install.
- One point of contact. A single team manages the whole build, start to finish.
- Flexible enough to split. Two packages let Homai fit the play space to its actual numbers, not the other way round.
From Concrete to Kete
Homai School sits in Manurewa, South Auckland, home to a vibrant multicultural community. Its roughly 400 ākonga are mostly Pacific tamariki spanning Samoan, Cook Island, Vanuatu, Tongan and wider Pacific families, alongside a strong Māori cohort and a growing Asian community. As deputy principal Krystal Woodard puts it, every child arrives with more than a school bag.
“Students in the classroom, they are our taonga, they come to us with culture, language, identity, family stories, talents and dreams,” says Woodard. “Our job is to help them fill their kete.“
Where a bare concrete yard once sat, Homai now has a genuine playspace built around that idea, giving tamariki somewhere to bounce, share, and belong.
Two Packages, Not One
Homai’s brief started simple: a bounce park for the whole school to enjoy. But once principal Christina Patea saw the options laid out, it became clear the site could do more for the school’s youngest tamariki too.
Rather than asking her to choose one space over the other, Creo shaped the project around both. Urban Bounce and Junior Pour’n’Play were designed and priced as two separate packages, sized to fit the space available and structured to work within Homai’s budget without compromising on either one.
Two packages gave the school room to spread play out naturally across the site, matched to how the school actually uses its grounds day to day.
Wide, Open, and Always in Use
Where a stretch of bare concrete once sat, Homai’s junior area is now a genuine playspace, transformed from a flat, empty surface into a wide, colourful zone built for movement. It is a change that goes well beyond function, giving the school a space its tamariki can genuinely call their own.
Both packages sit close to the junior classrooms, and it shows in how naturally they’re used. “It’s strategically placed for them, and they just run out of class and play on it,” says Woodard. “It’s also strategically placed for our junior class.”
The open layout of Junior Pour’n’Play does some of the teaching on its own. “The beauty of it is because it’s so wide and open,” Woodard says. “They just learn to take turns and share.”
Over on Urban Bounce, that same spirit of sharing shows up in the small moments. Tamariki have also folded both spaces into the rhythm of their day, using them in passing between classes and activities rather than only at set play times. Woodard calls it simply “play on the way.”
Take a look at the transformation, from bare concrete to a playspace built for play.
The Values Built Into the Space
Woodard ties the new playspace directly back to Homai’s values, WAKA — Whanaungatanga, Ako, Kaitiakitanga, and Aroha.
“Whanaungatanga is about relationships and connection,” she says. “We want our children to know who they are, where they come from, and how to connect respectfully with others.”
“Ako reminds us that learning goes both ways,” Woodard continues. “Our teachers teach our students, but our students also teach us. They bring their own knowledge, culture, language, and experiences into our classrooms.”
It’s Kaitiakitanga that Woodard connects most directly to the new build. “Kaitiakitanga teaches our children to care for what has been entrusted to them — themselves, each other, our school, and our environment,” she says. “This new playground is part of that. It teaches our children that they deserve beautiful spaces, and that they also have a responsibility to care for them.”
And then Aroha, which Woodard describes as the value underneath all the others. “Aroha is for everyone,” she says. “It is about kindness, empathy, care, and love. We want our children to learn how to understand their emotions, regulate themselves, show compassion, and support others. These are important foundation skills for life, not just for school.”
Happy Children, That’s the Main Thing
The two packages were installed while students were away, and Woodard remembers exactly what it was like when they came back. “I’m so glad we did it,” she says, “because when school started again, this is how they came to school. They walked in thinking, oh my gosh.“
For a school built around whānau, connection, and shared responsibility, a play space yard has become a place where those values play out every single day. As Woodard puts it, simply: “Happy children — yeah, well, that’s the main thing.”
A Heartfelt Thank You to Homai School
A big thank you to Homai School for welcoming the Creo team onto the grounds and letting us see this playspace in action. Special thanks to principal Christina Patea for backing the vision from the very first conversation, and to deputy principal Krystal Woodard for so generously sharing her time and her insight into what this space means for Homai’s tamariki.
Projects like this only come together through genuine partnership, and Homai’s openness throughout made all the difference. We’re proud to see two Complete Playground Packages doing exactly what they were built for, and grateful to the whole Homai community for trusting us with the job.
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