Incorporating Fitness with Fun – Today’s Playground Equipment
by Jason Walter Marketing Manager at Creative Recreational SystemsWhen movement is concerned in children, it is absolutely
vital that parents consider assimilating sports and complex exercise in
playtime. The benefits of physically demanding exercise in children are near
endless and they help to not only produce short term advantages (quicker
bedtimes) but long term as well. Children also tend to learn by experiences and
the best way for that is through trial and error in the playgrounds.
For a long, while it was a rarity when a trip to the park or
playgrounds would render your children exhausted and content for the entirety
of the day, but these days the trend is on the way out. Just last week I heard
the two incredibly desired words from my four-year-old, “I’m tired”. Now, this
is incredibly uncommon coming from my sugar-rushed son whose idea of a
pre-bedtime meal is a massive bowl of Froot Loops. So hearing that he was
exhausted from his afternoon on the local church’s
playground equipment had a welcome reception from the missus and I. This is
perhaps largely due to the new play structures our local church had recently
installed. The artificially elevated hills where the slides were placed helped
tire him during his runs and the new modular climbing frames really pushed his
little body to the limits. So as his prematurely early bedtime approached, I
began thinking about the shift in the core design of playground equipment.
Manufacturers of playground structures have long toiled with
different ideas to incorporate into their products and recently, it seems the focus
has turned towards improving the fitness of children without compromising on
the fun one bit. Take the Ant Hill for instance. Our church has a slightly
modified version of this structure and once I’ve seen this in one play-space
already, it’s difficult not to see other variations of this in other
playgrounds around the area too. But the Ant Hill is a brilliant example of the
way manufacturers are now incorporating exercise into playtime. The simple
structure features a series of toughened walls which support “rock-climbing”
characteristics. So now, not only can children experience the thrill associated
with this play structure, but exhaust themselves during playtime in ways that
were reserved for ball or contact sports only. This helps drill the essential
cognitive and physical characteristics children require while growing from a
remarkably early age.
One might argue that church
playground equipment of this kind does bring a new level of dangers that
children may be exposed to, and these are all valid concerns. This is something
I wondered as well and hesitated when my son wanted a go, and one fall later I
figured that the foam padding used for the playground was a suitable
enough surface for children to withstand impacts on.
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Created on Aug 6th 2019 06:33. Viewed 531 times.