Fitting out your playground with equipment, toys, structures and playground apparatus requires a focus on more than just play. Fun and active playgrounds should foster an environment for exploration, education, and self-discovery!
Develop a fun and active playground that caters to everything growing children need with The School Playground Company’s school playground design guide’s top 9 recommendations…
1. Active Play Equipment
Our active play range includes many opportunities for exploration, from climbing walls to trim trails to bespoke play structures. There is a world of options for developing a play space that provides a full active play education for schools.
With our modular and customisable approach to trim trail design, your schools can choose the elements you can fit in your playground spaces. The challenging design of the trim trail encourages balancing, jumping, swinging, and climbing. The structures focus on developing gross motor skills important for childhood development.
2. Sports Areas and Kids Gym Sets
Sports and gym equipment is a great way to integrate fitness into play outside of PE lessons. Providing a wide variety of sports and exercise options with Multi Use Games Areas (MUGAs) and multi gyms puts the power in students’ hands. Therefore, children are free to develop healthy habits with fun outdoor play and exercise at their own pace.
Our multi sport equipment and outdoor gym sets are developed with children’s safety in mind. For example, our sky stepper and ski slalom walker include unique safety stop features. This equipment therefore promotes cardiovascular fitness without putting undue pressure or strain on young muscles or joints.
3. Sensory Equipment
Although approaching play in a completely different way, sensory walls and tactile games are just as important as active playground structures. Rather than a focus on gross motor skills, our range of play panels and other outdoor sensory toys help develop fine motor skills.
Children engage with sensory equipment in a variety of ways, touching, turning, and feeling different textures, shapes, and colours. They also appreciate inventive methods of visual stimulation with mirror elements of our outdoor sensory walls and pay panels.
4. Fun and Active Playgrounds for all ages
We produce playtime equipment suited to children of all ages and abilities. This is why when designing your playground, accessibility and inclusivity should be a part of all decisions.
Mini trim trails provide the same fun challenges as the regular-sized trim trail equipment to EYFS children. This allows young children to develop gross motor skills at their own pace. The mini trails create a safe space for kids to get used to balancing, jumping, and climbing activities before graduating to larger adventure trim trail equipment. This provides children of all ages with options for active play exploration with suitable equipment first with less risk of injury.
5. Waterproof Shelter
We all know how unpredictable weather can be in the UK, but your students shouldn’t have to sacrifice play to avoid the rain! This is where our amazing range of waterproof shelters comes in.
Our gazebo range is very popular with schools. These structures utilise waterproofed roofs, optional decking or carpeting, and even windows and play panels able to be fitted to the sides. Playground gazebos can therefore create a fun and engaging wooden shelter for children to play, learn, and relax outside of the rain
Sail canopies are also a great playground feature that provides rain and sun cover for larger areas while maintaining an open space for play and learning out on the playground.
6. Playground Safety surfacing
Underpinning all of these elements must be a focus on safety. Active play equipment, sports areas, and other playground equipment can pose risks of falling or slipping that without proper safety surfacing considerations can be harmful.
This is why alongside our amazing playground equipment, The School Playground Company installs playground safety surfacing like rubber mulch, grass mats, and wet pour surfaces that are certified by British Standards to protect from reasonable falls and engineered with shock absorbent design.
Missing Anything on Your Fun and Active Playgrounds?
If your play area is lacking in any of these areas, now is the ideal time to embrace the variety available in outdoor play. You can fill in our contact form to book a call with our expert team. We are happy to discuss your options to get you closer to creating your perfect playground.
