"Inside the Playspace" Playground Blog

Recommendations for increasing physical activity in the early years

Policy-makers
Invest in active living for children under five; ensure childcare policies mandate daily physical activity and adequately resource staff; target caregivers with incentives and messaging to get kids active and be active with them.

Public Health & Healthcare Professionals
Promote physical activity, active play, and reduced screen time as part of early years support programs for families.

Parents
Keep TVs out of bedrooms, institute screen time limits, and create opportunities for active outdoor play for kids and as a family.

Early Childhood Educators & Schools
Train and resource staff; offer a minimum of 90 minutes of daily active play time, indoors and outdoors, structured and unstructured.

Visit Active Playground Equipment to assist you in creating a playground area to encourage physical activity.

I remember when I was a kid, there was a big construction project on my street. A large construction crew was digging up the roadway, installing new sewers.

At about 5:00 PM, the workers left their gear, and took off for home.

As soon as we saw the last worker leave, my friends and I would jump on all the cool construction equipment, and play with the levers, and climb all over the cabs, buckets and everything else. This was way cooler than any piece of playground equipment.

Surprisingly, I never saw myself, or anyone of my friends get seriously injured. Sure, we would get the odd scrap and scuff, but this was all part of growing up, and learning our limitations while trying to negotiate the equipment.

Today, we as playground manufacturers are faced with many safety standards intended to prevent injury on the playground equipment. Many of these standards that we comply to are very positive, and are designed to protect children as a whole.

However, I wonder sometimes, if we as parents, and as lawmakers are so afraid of anyone getting a little scrape or scuff, that we make playgrounds so safe that kids dont want to play on them anymore. Are playground designs getting too boring?

Maybe kids would rather play on video game machines, just for the simple fact, that playgrounds in general are designed too boring for kids.

At Active Playground Equipment, we create fun and exciting equipment and challenges designed to visually attract kids, as well as stimulate and challenge them to want to play. All of our equipment is both challenging and CSA compliant to current CSA standards.