It’s National Playground Safety Week, which is a great time to focus on the maintenance of your playgrounds. Maintenance issues contribute to approximately one-third of playground injuries each year. To ensure safe play, keep your playground structures soundly inspected and fully functioning. See five easy steps to take in our infographic below.
Client: The City of Hawthorne, From Lot to Spot and the Trust for Public Land
Designers: SWA and Jonah Scholen, Landscape Structures custom playground designer
Goal: Convert an unused concrete space into a community-designed green space including playgrounds for children and recreation activities for all ages
Solution: The City of Hawthorne collaborated with SWA, their local playground consultant, RecWest Outdoor Products, and Jonah to create an aviation-themed playground design. The PlayBooster® and Netplex® playstructures encourage kids ages 5 to 12 to climb higher and higher until they reach the clouds, while 2- to 5-year-olds explore the twin-prop plane-themed playstructure.
Get more details about how the playground at Bicentennial Park encourages kids of all ages to go sky-high.
Are you looking for resources on trends affecting the playground industry? We can help! We’ve created whitepapers to help generate discussion about the importance of play in early childhood development, outdoor play during school hours, and balancing safety and challenge, and serve as a reference during future playground projects. Get details below about each of our whitepapers, and request a download today.
Shaped by Play: The Formative Role of Play and Playgrounds
Child’s play, we are learning, is not just fun and games. Children’s play behavior appears to be essential preparation for a successful adult life. We partnered with the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development to understand how behavior on school and community playgrounds contributes to whole-child development. This meta-study aggregates and analyzes key findings from some of the most influential studies on children and play.
Balancing Safety & Challenge in Playground Design
Playgrounds are a place where children can learn and grow through exploration and social interaction. However, that development can’t take place without age and developmentally appropriate challenges. Parental concern along with standards that have decreased design freedom are contributors to the lack of challenging opportunities in today’s play equipment. Finding a balance between challenge and safety is important to childhood development, and society can help determine a healthy median.
The Importance of Outdoor Play & Physical Activity During School Hours
Both outdoor physical activity and indoor classroom time are important for kids’ growth and development. School provides students with the education they need to have a successful career, and physical activity gives them a chance to stay healthy. Unfortunately, not all kids get their daily 60 minutes outside. School is a place where kids can supplement the lack of physical activity they get at home, and help kids become smarter, healthier and stronger.
Find more playground education resources including continuing education sessions and infographics at playlsi.com.
Centre – 2 to 5 years
Smart Play® playstructures pack a lot of activities into compact structures, taking kids from early crawling exploration on up to active climbing and social play to a challenging course for older children. This line helps span several critical periods of childhood development, making it ideal for childcare, early learning centers, neighborhood playgrounds and schools.
Motion – 2 to 5 years
Each Smart Play playstructure makes the most efficient use of materials to create a large number of activities. For example, cut-outs from panels are used to create activity components found elsewhere on the playstructure. And the compact size of these structures requires less space and surfacing materials than typical playgrounds resulting in a lower total investment. That means Smart Play playstructures are ideal for tight spaces and tight budgets, too.
Smart Play structures are preconfigured and designed with your choice of color. All at a smart price. Lots of Smart Play options are available for kids ages 6 months to 12 years:
Nook – 6 to 23 months
Venti® – 5 to 12 years
See Centre in action below, and visit playlsi.com for more details.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxVLX5A5m28]
We’re excited to expand the Smart Play® line of playstructures with designs especially for toddlers and preschoolers. Introduced in 2017, Loft delivers interactive elements to engage developing minds and bodies. And now, the Loft family has grown to include the Fire Station and Market Cafe to further encourage social and imaginative play for 2- to 5-year-olds.
With the Fire Station, kids can take control at the wheel, pet Sparky the friendly fire dog or slide down to their next adventure. There’s plenty more to keep them busy including an object find game, a bell and a gear shift, and a fun mirror that shows them how they’d look in uniform.
The Market Cafe lets little ones take turns placing meal orders, dining with friends and talking about healthy food choices. Among lots of activities, kids can make pictures in the image panel, bing-bong the apple bell and chat about food colors and tastes.
Double the fun by connecting any two of these Smart Play playstructures–Loft, Fire Station or Market Cafe–with an elevated crawl tunnel to enhance the imaginative fun and physical activity levels. Or connect all three to create the Centre for kids to explore and stay active.
Best of all, with guidance from the National Head Start Association and Too Small to Fail, developmentally appropriate activities including literacy prompts were incorporated throughout the designs to engage children and adults in language-rich conversations.
See Centre in action below, and go to playlsi.com for more details about the Smart Play line.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxVLX5A5m28]
Play shapes us. It helps build leaders, encourage collaboration, teach persistence, develop problem-solving skills and much more. That’s why we launched the Shaped by Play Scholarship in June. Our goal was to fund activities that help build the leaders of tomorrow.
We accepted nominations for the scholarship throughout the summer, and are excited to announce the winners! We were able to award 16 individuals a scholarship to participate in activities ranging from figure skating lessons to invention camp.
See the list of scholarship recipients below, and see how they’re planning to use the funds:
Stay tuned throughout the next year, as we check in with our Shaped by Play Scholarship recipients to learn about their experiences.
More than 1,000 park leaders, city planners, design professionals, and urban park advocates came to Minneapolis and Saint Paul from around the world for Greater & Greener 2017: Parks Connecting Cities, Cultures, & Generations. The five-day indoor and outdoor conference focused on the role of urban parks in creating healthy, resilient and economically competitive cities.
In addition to being a Gold Sponsor of the Conference, we hosted two events throughout the week. On Sunday, July 30, we welcomed 40 volunteers from around the world to construct a playground at Central Village Park in St. Paul. The volunteer’s finished building commercial playground equipment for kids ages 5 to 12, a Clubhouse for kids ages 2 to 5 and playground panels, which featured Too Small to Fail‘s Talking is Teaching creative content with parent-child conversation prompts to foster healthy language-rich interactions.
On Tuesday, Aug. 1, we hosted a mobile workshop that showcased the most imaginative playgrounds in Minneapolis. Attendees heard from the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board and community members about how the city encourages healthy outdoor activity, brings families together and builds community. Even more, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges joined the group at Powderhorn Park to share her commitment to cradle-to-K development and how the city is using the Talking is Teaching campaign to support early literacy in the city.
Last Saturday, nearly 150 principals representing the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) came together to build a playground at Stonehurst Hills Elementary School in Upper Darby, Penn. The community service day was part of the 2017 National Principals Conference held in Philadelphia.
140 principals preparing to make a difference at Stonehurst Elementary. #NPC17 @PlayLSI @AlNassrFC #KidsDeserveIt pic.twitter.com/bpYkxM9ixx
— National Assoc. of Elementary School Principals (@NAESP) July 8, 2017
The playground was designed for students ages 5 to 12, and features the new GeoPlex™ climbing panels as well as various ground-level climbers, overhead ladders, and bridges and balancing activities. In addition to building the school playground, principals landscaped, painted and participated in other beautification projects at the school.
It's always an honor to be a part of such a special give back initiative. #NPC17 @PlayLSI @Lifetouch @LifetouchMM2017 pic.twitter.com/oKDAQvhcqS
— Heather Dehn (@HeatherInga) July 8, 2017
@NAESPzone8 represents @PlayLSI in bldg playground at Stonehurst Hills El in Philly @TEPSAtalk #NPC17 @NAESP pic.twitter.com/NapSAnCmXV
— Mark Terry (@tepsamark) July 9, 2017
The nation's principals build a playground for Stonehurst Elementary today in Philadelphia! Thank you Landscape Structures! #NPC17 #naesp pic.twitter.com/VemCpCiZXn
— Eric Cardwell (@Cardwell16) July 8, 2017
As you can see from the tweets, principals had a blast during the build. This is the ninth year that we’ve partnered with NAESP to build a playground at a deserving elementary school. Learn more about the NAESP Annual Conference and save the date: July 9-11, 2018 in Orlando, Fla.
When principals come together to benefit all kids. Playground build at #NPC17 @PlayLSI @LifetouchMM2017 #PrincipalsinAction pic.twitter.com/cpsCDgdclN
— National Assoc. of Elementary School Principals (@NAESP) July 8, 2017
We are proud to be members of the City Parks Alliance, which supports the creation, revitalization and sustainability of urban parks and green spaces. Today, we’re happy to have Catherine Nagel, executive director at the City Parks Alliance, as our guest blogger discussing Greater & Greener 2017, which is being hosted in the Twin Cities July 29 through Aug. 2.
As more people are moving back to urban areas, the importance of close-to-home parks is increasing–perhaps most for children. For those who don’t have a backyard to play in, the local park serves myriad functions: a portal to experiencing the natural world, a community hub where families and neighbors get to know each other, and a place for outdoor learning to help build skills of all kinds through organized activities. But beyond their role in recreation and social well-being, city parks also help grow local economies, create new transportation options, combat crime, and reduce environmental impacts such as storm water runoff. Urban planners, elected officials and community advocates recognize these benefits and are taking a fresh look at parks as an important part of civic infrastructure.
Engaging youth in the outdoors can unleash their curiosity about nature, build confidence, and strengthen leadership skills, ultimately supporting careers in the sciences, recreation, conservation and elsewhere. Urban parks and park and recreation agencies are rich with opportunity to empower youth and help them succeed. At Greater & Greener 2017, our International Urban Parks Conference, we have created an entire track dedicated to the Parks and Youth Development. Speakers will focus on parks and programs that are providing close-to-home camping experiences, supporting new kinds of outdoor recreation, building literacy, strengthening advocacy around environmental and social change, and offering “green” job training and employment in the parks and recreation profession and related fields.
To help Greater & Greener, hosted by the Twin Cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, have a lasting impact beyond the sessions and knowledge sharing, Landscape Structures is sponsoring a Playground Build Volunteer Day to help kick off the conference. The brand new playstructure will be built in Central Village Park in Saint Paul, Minn., giving the community a place to recreate, socialize, and for the youth in the community to be #shapedbyplay!
Landscape Structures is also sponsoring The Mayors Forum at Greater & Greener, which will explore with city leaders what it means to create equitable cities and what role public spaces play in building inclusive, vibrant, and sustainable communities. Speakers include: Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, and Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland. Next City’s President, CEO and Publisher Tom Dallessio will moderate.
Urban parks are dynamic institutions that play a vital role in the social, economic and physical well-being of America’s cities and their residents. The full benefits of parks in urban communities are only now being fully understood and measured. For most Americans, their closest park is a city park, and city parks provide an essential foundation that supports the next generation to grow and thrive–from childhood to adulthood.
Earlier this year, we introduced Netplex™, a new net-based playstructure that challenges kids with an experience completely different from those offered by typical play structures. Climbing cables have been a popular playground material, and we’ve used them in many of our playstructures for more than 10 years. Now, using our patent-pending clamping system, Netplex takes a seemingly unbroken length of cable from the inner core of the playstructure to the outer posts and all the way around.
Netplex offers kids the challenge needed for healthy development into self-assured adults. The net-based playstructure challenges kids’ balance, motor planning and strategic thinking skills and gives the opportunity for graduated challenge—kids will stay low to the ground on more secure cables at first, and when they’ve mastered that they challenge themselves by going higher and engage new muscles.
Learn more about Netplex here, and see it in action in the video below.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/LXR-4KI9Nlw]