Educational playground designs: Enhancing play and learning by incorporating educational elements in playground equipment

Playgrounds offer learning and growth opportunities, not just fun and physical activity. Incorporate educational elements into your playground designs to foster cognitive, social and physical development. Explore some effective ways to infuse educational playground designs into your school, childcare or community playgrounds below.

Lower Huron Metropark playground overhead image

Themed Playground Structures

Consider incorporating educational playground design themes into the design of your playground environment. Whether it’s a nature-inspired structure or a space-themed play area, themed elements can spark children’s imagination and encourage imaginative play. Themed playground components like climbing walls resembling mountains and entire structures offer endless learning possibilities.

Alphabet and Number Panels

Integrate alphabet and number panels into your playground. These play panels, installed on walls or integrated into climbing structures, help children learn letters and numbers as they play. Encourage interactive learning by incorporating sensory elements, such as different textures and braille.

Musical Play Equipment

Including musical elements like our Rhapsody® Outdoor Musical Instruments in your playground can enhance auditory skills and creativity. Install a selection of chimes, metallophones and drums to engage children in musical exploration. These features encourage collaboration, rhythm recognition and the development of fine motor skills.

Science and Nature Zones

Create dedicated spaces where children can explore scientific concepts and nature. Incorporate planters for gardening, sensory paths for tactile experiences and weather stations to teach about climate. By encouraging hands-on learning, you can foster curiosity and a deeper understanding of the natural world.

Sensory Play Stations

Incorporate sensory play elements into your playground design. Sand play like fossil digs, water play areas, and interactive sensory walls stimulate children’s senses and promote cognitive development. Sensory play encourages problem-solving, fine motor skills and social interaction.

Storytelling and Reading Nooks

Designate areas for storytelling and reading within the playground. Install benches, small libraries or even mini amphitheaters where children can gather for storytime. We also love incorporating Talking is Teaching panels from Too Small to Fail into the playground design. Story trails along a walking path also encourage children and caregivers to talk, read and sing with each other. Encouraging literacy in a playful environment fosters a love for reading and language development.

Incorporating educational elements into your community, childcare and school playground designs create an enriching play space for children. Themed playstructures, alphabet panels and outdoor musical instruments are a few examples of how to infuse learning opportunities into the playground. Remember to consider age-appropriate designs and create an inclusive play environment that caters to children of all abilities. The combination of play and education will not only ignite children’s creativity and curiosity, but also provide a foundation for their lifelong love of learning.

The best of 2018

Centre

2018 has been an amazing year… filled with great products, projects and messages. See the best of 2018 in the form of our most read blog posts.

1. Spreading the message of inclusion
We’re working with Shane’s Inspiration to promote the animated short film, “Ian,” which aims to help children understand disability and spread the message of inclusion.

2. Bringing literacy to the playground
The Loft family has grown to include the Fire Station and Market Cafe with even more developmentally appropriate activities including literacy prompts.

3. How to design nature playground environments
Design a playground or outdoor learning environment that encourages kids (and their families) to be outside and reconnect with nature.

4. Five considerations for your toddler and preschool playground
To help you create a dream playground for your daycare or preschool that focuses on toddlers’ developmental needs in mind, we created a fun infographic.

5. Big fun comes in small packages
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.

Thank you for tuning in to Together We Play in 2018. We’re looking forward to an exciting year of play; tell us below what you’d like to see more of in 2019 and we’ll do our best to share it here.

Bringing literacy to the playground

Centre

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]

Guest Blog: Inspiring imaginative play through reading

In 2015, we collaborated with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (MNCPPC) in Prince George’s County, Md., to design a storybook-themed playground that encourages fun and learning. Today, we’re happy to have Brenda Iraola, landscape architect supervisor with MNCPPC, as our guest blogger discussing how she and her team created the literacy playground.

The idea for creating a literacy playground at Watkins Regional Park was genius because the theme was already based on the original storybook, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum written in 1899.  Throughout the design, I promote reading the book as much as possible. We used actual pages from the storybook and put them on sign posts at each of the six design areas within the playground—Dorothy’s Farm House, Munchkin Land, the Emerald Forest, the Emerald City of Oz, the Balloon Escape and the Ruby Red Shoes. Another designer on my team, Chris Colvin, had the idea to add language to the book-page signs that states “Read the story to find out what happens next.” We continually used this concept to encourage children to read the story so they could relate to the playground and find the fun in reading.

CutOuts

We inspired children to understand the original storybook by using real graphics from the book for the characters of Dorothy, Cowardly Lion, Tin Woodsman, Scarecrow and Toto. The images were reproduced onto play panels where holes were cut out to allow children to actually become the characters and create a photo opportunity. This is just one way we help bring the storybook to life for children. Additionally, the entry has a long Yellow Brick Road, which passes under a rainbow archway where children begin their play experience. The colors from the rainbow archway filter down onto the children on sunny days, and we hear them saying things like, “Look I am green and now I am red. I’m a rainbow!”

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One of the other designers, Rene Albacete, decided to add some funny reading opportunities throughout the play environment. Kids and their families find surprise text on Toto’s Doghouse that reads “Dear Dorothy, I took the shoes. Find your own way home.” We added names to the balloon escape play equipment to identify which balloon was from the Kansas State Fair. We even designed “OZ” into the rubber safety surfacing outside of the Emerald City of Oz castle. I also added educational reading opportunities like the Word Search game in which children can find all kinds of words relating to the Oz storybook. Some other reading opportunities include Aunt Em’s mailbox, Toto’s Doghouse, the Chicken Coop and the directional sign at the entrance that points visitors to the Yellow Brick Road or Ruby Red Shoes.

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A lot of parents and children who visit the playground say they are so excited about the space, and talked about going to the library to check out the book to read the full story. Parents say they are going to enjoy teaching their children that reading a book is fun in a day when so much information is prepared electronically.

Case Study: Teaching kids as they play

OverallWatkins

Client: Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (MNCPPC), Upper Marlboro, Md.

Designers: Brenda Iraola, landscape architect supervisor; Chris Colvin, landscape architect; and Rene Albacete, landscape architect

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Goal: Create a storybook playground design for Watkins Regional Park based on the original Oz storybook to encourage learning through play

Solution: Kids and families can experience Auntie Em and Uncle Henry’s Kansas farm, Dorothy’s house, Munchkin Land, the poppy field, the Emerald City and Dorothy’s attempt to get home via hot air balloon. Even more, Dorothy’s ruby slippers were adapted to be playground slides! The design also includes a unique experience for the children to become the characters of the storybook. Brenda and her team used play panels containing graphics of the drawn storybook characters—Dorothy and Toto, the Cowardly Lion, Tin Woodsman and the Scarecrow—with cut-outs for children’s faces to allow them to become a part of the story.

Read more about how the Wizard of Oz-themed playground at Watkins Regional Park has become the main attraction for visitors all over Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.