New Playground Ideas Nüdel Rover

Australia's Nüdel Rover – helping build playgrounds, build skills, build opportunities, for children around the world

"If children play more with the box than the toy, why don't we design toys more like boxes?"
Marcus Veerman, Founder and CEO, Playground Ideas

From the social enterprise responsible for the creation of the award winning original Nüdel Kart comes the new Nüdel Rover, a meticulously designed and compact cart, made from natural materials, that explodes into 140 pieces for deep creative play that will keep kids engaged and learning for hours.

"We know that Nüdel Kart significantly increases children's creativity, STEM and 21st Century skills, first principles thinking, self-regulation and growth mindset, leadership, confidence and agency. So, we wondered whether we could bring the same type of experience in a smaller more affordable package, for smaller groups of children. And so, the Nüdel Rover was born."

"While most toys are simply an invitation to complete a closed ended task, the Nüdel Rover allows children to use it in endless creative ways to maximise their development," Nüdel Rover co-creator Marcus Veerman said.

"Research shows that using tools like Nüdel Kart and Rover is like putting a child's foundational thinking in hyperdrive. Nüdels are about the application of knowledge, not just the retention of it. Information is everywhere, on tap. Finding information isn't the hard bit. Now we need young brains to be good at analysing and using that knowledge in creative and unique ways. This develops flexible, transferable skills and an openness to ambiguity. It creates plasticity in the way kids think."

The myriad of combinations in the Nüdel Kart and Nüdel Rover help build complex, connected structures in the brain equipping children for a fast-paced ever-changing modern world, however they decide to tackle it when their time comes.

Playground Ideas
In 2007, Marcus Veerman was living in Thailand when a local NGO asked if he would help them build a playground.
Throwing together a design and a crew of volunteers, he set to work, and before he had even finished that first playground, the headmaster of a neighbouring school asked if he could help them do the same. And so it began. Requests began pouring in and over the next two years a rag-tag gang of volunteers, artists, builders and makers built 40 playgrounds along the Thai-Burma border.

Marcus started posting photos of their work online which led to his inbox being flooded with emails asking for playground building assistance from other parts of Thailand, and then from around the world.

Returning to Australia Marcus stopped hammering nails and started hammering keyboards and the Playground Ideas website was born to facilitate DIY playgrounds across the globe without Marcus and his team having to be on the ground.

Making of the first Nüdel Kart
Research into how children learn across the fields of economics, psychology, child development, education and neuroscience illustrate the fact that play is the most powerful tool to give children what they need to thrive and was the stimulus for Marcus to design the first Nüdel Kart literally on the back of an envelope.

The original Nüdel Kart is made up of 340 pieces while the new Nüdel Rover is made up of 140 pieces. Each combines to make a mobile kart that comes completely apart when used. The pieces have an infinite number of combinations, all entirely dependent on the imagination of the children at play. Then it all packs away and is easily stored.
The pieces purposely don't look like anything familiar; their use is left to the child who holds it to decide. Every piece connects with every other piece; and together they have millions of uses giving children squillions of opportunities to imagine, explore, role play, practice, plan, create and ultimately, learn.

The Nüdel Kart is designed for larger groups, such as a whole school class or kindergarten. The Nüdel Rover has been specifically designed in a format and size so that allied health professionals can utilise it when working with smaller groups of children, making it ideal for educational occupational therapists, social workers and other health specialists working with children.

Nüdel Kart (pictured above)
340 versatile play pieces.
Designed for up to 30 kids to use at a time.
High quality, robust loose parts in a compact, mobile kart.
Durable, safe, non-toxic and maintainable for years of creativity.
Pack up in minutes.
Ages 3-12.

Nüdel Rover
140 versatile play pieces.
Designed for up to eight kids to use at a time.
High quality, robust loose parts in a compact, mobile kart.
Durable, safe, non-toxic and maintainable for years of creativity.

Pack up in minutes.
Ages 3-12.

What makes NK truly amazing is that every sale of a Nüdel Kart or Rover helps fund play projects for schools and communities around the world. Thanks to the generous support of individuals and corporations, Nüdel Karts have
been sent to Lesotho, Uganda, Lebanon and bushfire affected schools in regional Victoria, amongst a host of other locations.

Non-Profit social enterprise focused on play as a step forward, a step up Playground Ideas is a non-profit organisation that supports anyone, anywhere to build a stimulating space for play using only local materials, tools, and skills. Playground Ideas was founded with a goal to provide free designs, how-to
handbooks, and online support to empower communities around the world to build beautiful spaces for their children to play using only resources they can easily find locally.

Nüdel Kart is a social enterprise by non-profit, Playground Ideas. All profits from the sale of Nüdel Karts and Nüdel Rovers supports Playground Ideas in creating thousands of playgrounds around the world. As of 2021 Playground Ideas have supported more than 5000 projects, across 143 countries, impacting an estimated 2.5 million children.

More information is available at:
https://playgroundideas.org/
https://www.Nüdel kart.com/