5 Tips to Help Get Affordable Playground Equipment
Back in the day, playgrounds looked like really clean junkyards. Swings were sanded wood bolted to rusty chains. A teeter-totter was merely a beam centered on a makeshift fulcrum. Children played, nursed their wounds and came back for more.
For many schools today, safety standards have required that these playgrounds be removed and for good reason. The problem is that budget cuts don’t allow for new playgrounds to be built. To us at School Daz, Inc., that’s a travesty. Here are a few ways school boards and parent teacher associations can get fun, affordable playground equipment.
1. Start Saving
As former educators, we know that’s easier said than done. But if your school can spare a dollar per student per day, a school of 200 students could afford a complete playground in one school year. While it may be difficult to decide where pinch pennies, remember that a playground serves the entire student body.
2. Get the Facts
Do some homework to get an idea of how much a playground will cost. Better yet, contact the dealer. We can’t speak for everyone, but School Daz, Inc. offers a free consultation. Let the representative look at your space and talk with you about what you would like to ideally see in your playground space. It never hurts to get a proposal and find out what your dream playground will cost. The numbers may surprise you. Who knows, you might be closer to a price point than you think .
3. Plead Your Case to the School Board
Playgrounds contribute to the promotion of physical heath in developing children. A playground is one of the best allies in the fight against obesity. But there are even more benefits to implementing a playground and recess into an elementary curriculum. A search on the benefits of recess should provide more than enough information, but there are a few articles to help get you started on building your case.
The Many Benefits of Recess” by Barbara Pytel
“The 3 R’s? A Fourth Is Crucial, Too: Recess” published in the New York Times
“ADHD: Medication or More Recess” by Barbara Pytel
4. Ask for Assistance
There are also philanthropist organizations or government programs that may have money to donate to your cause. A little research and time spent asking can go a long way to making your playground aspirations happen.
5. Work with a Designer
A good playground designer understands three things.
- What it takes to make a fun playground
- How to maximize space with minimal equipment
- What slight variations will keep the playground fun and safe but shave costs.
For example, transitioning from a 450 degree whirl slide to a 270 degree whirl slide can save money. The 180 degrees not only reduces the cost of the physical slide, but also lowers the height of the deck the slide would mount to. A lower deck and smaller slide requires less materials and cost less to produce. This is just one of the many tricks that a good designer can use to keep the play experience intact while chipping away at cost.
The most important thing when trying to find affordable playground equipment is to keep at it and work with someone who knows the industry – both the playground industry and the school system. Don’t give up. It can happen.
Use Your Imagination, It’s a Jungle Gym After All
To keep children active, we need to teach them how to have fun. With video games and other entertainment options becoming so lifelike, we need to teach our kids how to play and use their imaginations more than ever.
School Daz, Inc. specializes in developing playgrounds for elementary school children. Our entire website highlights the physical fitness benefits of our playgrounds.
But we also emphasize fun.
In this article, I’ve decided to throw out a few fun and creative play suggestions using some of our most common playground components. Hopefully this will give parents, teachers and supervisors some ideas on how to interact with children and encourage them to go back and play again and again.
1. Jungle gym
School Daz, Inc. does offer a jungle theme, but you can still have fun by making your own jungle gym on the playground. Pretend to be animals and walk on all fours across the entire playground. If that’s too cheesy and way out of your comfort level, be Tarzan and swing across the overhead climbers to get to a platform you can call home.
2. Tea Party
Invite the children to a tea party you are hosting at the top of a platform with a slide. Sounds a bit sedentary, right? Make it active by “running out of supplies,” and have the children go down the slide to get various real or imaginary items across the playground.
3. Lava Tag
This was one of my favorite games to play on the playground where I grew up. The game is set up like a normal game of a tag with one main exception. You can’t touch the ground or you become “it”. This is a great game for developing balance and really stretching the problem solving skills of children (and adults playing it for that matter).
4. H-O-R-S-E Obstacle Course
If you’ve ever played the game H-O-R-S-E on a basketball course you’ll know that you challenge the other person to make trick shots. If the person can’t make the trick shot, they take a letter (H, O and so forth). The first one to spell the word HORSE loses.
You can do the same thing on a playground by making it an obstacle course. For example, you have to hop to the slide and back on one foot. If both feet touch, you take a letter. Be careful to make sure all the challenges are fun and safe. Running backwards up a slide isn’t safe. Be creative and have fun, but be safe.
5. Playground Twister
The game is really simple and can be a lot of fun with several kids. Plan ahead and take a look at the colors on your playground. Then take the spinner from a game of Twister or make one ( a simple image search will show you exactly what I’m talking about). On the spinner, put all the colors you can find on the playground. Call out the colors and have the kids run and put that limb onto the right color. For example, if you have a blue slide, you’d call out “Right hand blue” and the kids would have to run to the slide and put their hand on it. The faster you can call out the number, the more they kids will have to run to each piece of the playground.
It’s okay to call playgrounds a jungle gym. It’s okay to be a little goofy. Kids appreciate interaction and imagination. Have fun.
Playground Replacement Provides Opportunities to Evaluate Safety
Whatever the reason for replacing your playground -be it changes in safety regulations or the “about time” mentality – updating your playground equipment provides ample opportunity for improvements to the safety of the structure.
The upgrade from your old equipment should give you some information on how the playground equipment was being used, how it was being misused and things you can do to create a safer and more rewarding play environment.
Let’s explore playground replacement and some basic things to consider as you move away from the old styles and into the new era of safe playgrounds.
The Age of Users:
If your playground features equipment that strenuous for the age group (i.e. too many climbers for young, underdeveloped muscles) injuries could result from children overexerting themselves. Conversely, if playground doesn’t offer enough challenge for the age group, kids will attempt to make it more challenging by engaging in stunts or other dangerous forms of horseplay.
The Materials Used
Softfall surfacing is nearly universal. Still, there is more you can do to protect your child than minimizing the impact of a fall. School Daz, Inc. has seven certifications from various domestic and international safety organizations that address everything from the durability of our structures to the cushion of the polymers used to cover those structures to the toxicity of the paints used to color the polymers that cover the structures on the playground.
We undergo these rigorous certifications to make certain every piece of equipment, nut and bolt promote safe play. When it’s time to find a builder, make sure they hold safety to the highest esteem.
The Design
Playgrounds are a place to play. The role of the designer is to create a world that promotes fun, activates the imagination and encourages high-impact physical activity. The best designers achieve all those needs but also develop playground layouts that assists in making the play experience safe.
One way the arrangement of play components can provide safety is through endless lines of sight. Prevention through supervision is the most important part of playground safety. Without a multiple lines of sight, a supervisor can not effectively watch all the action on a playground. During the design process, make sure your playground replacement has more than enough places for a supervisor to keep an eye on the entire play area.
The Installation
All the preparation in the world is moot without proper installation. Prior to design, landscapers and surveyors should assess the playground space to be conscious of anything that could provide even the slightest possibility of a hazard. The assembly of every playground should be completed by trained professionals who know how the playground pieces ought to fit together. After installation, every play structure should be inspected and tested before the first child steps foot in the space.
You should also make sure your playground company provides your school’s maintenance team with the proper spare parts and training on how to service any damage to the equipment. Makeshift or improvised fixes jeopardize the integrity of the play structure and more importantly, the children who use it.
School Daz, Inc. is willing to answer questions about safety, design, materials or anything else mentioned in this article. When you’re ready to replace your existing playground, give us a call toll free at 1-888-788-9504.
Death of the Dodgeball: Recess Equipment 2.0
Remember when a rubber ball was enough to play with before school, during recess and after school – every day? The nature of recess is changing. From jump ropes to hacky sacks to heart monitors, what children use on the playground is vastly different than when I was a kid.
The change in how children interact with playgrounds poses new challenges for playground designers and manufacturers. While we haven’t been able to recreate something as pure and simple as the rubber ball, we have been able to simple modifications to traditional recess equipment in order to make the playground experience more unique, more challenging and more rewarding.
Here are my top five favorite alterations to traditional playground equipment.
The 650 Degree Whirl Slide
It’s a traditional slide with a twist, well, one and three quarters to be exact. Growing up, we had a single, vertical slide on the playground. It was steel, it was straight and there was always a line to use it. The 650 Degree Whirl Slide still draws a crowd and why shouldn’t it? By adding a few twists and turns, we’ve been able to extend the ride.
The Tarzan Maze
Because monkey bars are sooo unidirectional, we developed the Tarzan Maze. This massive structure provides so many more options. In addition, several children can interact on this play component at the same time. Stepping stones in the middle of each trek allow children to rest or change direction. This might be the greatest advance in monkey bar technology.
The Hip Swiveller
This innovation really raises the beam. I mean beam. The Hip Swiveller combines a bridge, a balance beam and an obstacle course in to a single playground component. Guard rails keep the beam safe, much safer than the balance beams I used as a kid. Transforming the Hip Swiveller into a bridge crossing means kids will use it if they want to get from point A to point B in the most efficient manner possible. It’s a great spin a few classic elements that adds some excitement to the playground.
Double Pommel Walk
This is another variation of the bridge that I really enjoy. The Double Pommel Walk consists of two rows of stepping stones chained to the ground below and a support beam above. As the child begins to traverse the structure, the stones shift. The change in footing also separates the bridge requiring a little caution, a lot of balance and creates even more fun as they cross.
The Rock Tunnel Climber
There was a time when anyone wanting to climb onto the play structure he or she had three options. Ladders were boring, but not as boring as steps. Then there was the fireman’s pole, but those were only for the really excellent climbers. While those things still exist in our industry, we are advancing in how we develop climbing structures. One good example is the Rock Tunnel Climber. This play component is set up like giant, jagged steps. Underneath is a small opening that can be crawled under – a perfect escape route for a game of tag.
Innovations in how we improve recess equipment continue everyday. The greater the challenge to provide fun, the more pleasure we get developing exciting new twists on the classics. And hopefully, we’ll be able these play components become classics so that one day we can totally modify and improve them. Or maybe, we’ll get dodgeballs back into the mix. Until then, we’ll keep advancing, keep creating and keep the focus on fitness fun.
Treadmills Can’t Keep Pace with Outdoor Physical Education for Children
Play beats work. If you can agree with that, you can agree with this entire article.
When I was a kid, I did almost everything in my power to avoid household chores. I remember at the small, summer lake cottage we had, the wind would always blow sticks around the yard. We couldn’t mow the lawn until all the sticks were picked up.
It was May. There was a giant body of water. And I had water wings. The last thing I wanted to do was spend a morning picking up hundreds of little twigs.
“Make a game of it,” my mother always said.
A-ha.
It’s been well over twenty years since I’ve spent mornings picking up sticks, but that one lesson carries with me today.
“Make a game of it.”
The same can be said about physical education in children. Play beats work. Indoor options, like treadmills and other gym equipment, suffice in terms of improving physical health. But children need to develop more than just cardiovascular health. Outdoor physical education that includes play opens the imagination, improves communication between children and increases heart rate.
Play beats work. To take that a step further, playgrounds beat workouts.
The wonderful thing about playgrounds is that you don’t need to sacrifice physical fitness for fun. Playgrounds make a game of fitness. Unlike fitness machines, like treadmills, playgrounds offer opportunities to develop several fitness elements at once.
If a child has to climb a ladder and cross a bridge in order to go down a slide, that child just addressed all five fitness elements for developing children. Large muscle groups and hand-eye coordination were promoted through the climbing apparatus. Improved dexterity, balance and cardiovascular health were achieved as the child ran across the bridge. If fun matters in outdoor physical eduction, and I sincerely believe it does, then the slide satisfied the desire for fun. That’s everything you could ask for in a playground.
Maybe the biggest difference between outdoor playground education and indoor gym equipment is repeat use. Children enjoy playing. Providing a place to that can encourage physical activity but is inviting to use over and over again increases the likelihood children will go back outside and continue to stay engaged and involved.
So why is it our society has invested so many resources in developing physical education programs that don’t encourage fun and therefore don’t encourage repeat use? Perhaps we’re too caught up in the tangible metrics. Maybe we’re looking too closely at heart rates and not looking close enough at smiles. Or maybe, we’ve lost the kid in us.
Luckily, there are people who believe like I believe and make playgrounds with a healthy balance of fun and fitness. People who design playgrounds with a sense of working multiple areas of fitness at the same time rather than designing isolated circut programs. All you have to do is take one look at the School Daz, Inc. themed playgrounds and you’ll understand what I mean.
We don’t make children workout.
We make a game of it.
Playground Equipment for Schools: How Backyard Playgrounds Differ
It’s seems obvious that backyard playground sets differ from playground equipment for schools, but if you take a closer look, you’ll notice more differences than just size. Here are five key differences between backyard varieties and School Daz, Inc. school playground equipment.
Swings
Look at any School Daz, Inc. playground and you won’t see swings. At home, swings don’t pose a safety risk like they do in a school setting. Swings are a major liability when placed in elementary school settings. First, the child on the swing is not strapped in. There is no way to protect a child from falling off or being thrown from the structure. Second, those walking around the swings are one misstep from a kick to the head. Most backyard models keep the swings much lower to the ground to reduce fall heights. Also, fewer children around the backyard play structure minimizes the chance for a passerby to be injured.
Wood
Several big box home improvement stores still sell wooden playgrounds. For the do-it-yourself parent, wood serves as an excellent material for home use. Wood is easy to work with because it’s predictable, durable and uniform. For a school, wood is not a suitable building material for playgrounds. Splinters and the lack of interchangeable parts make maintaining a wooden playground a daunting tasks. Moreover, regulatory safe bodies like IPEMA continue to find wood treatments that contain potentially hazardous materials. Plastics and molded rubber are much safer, and therefore, the only option when building playgrounds for schools.
Line of Sight
Most backyard play structures look like a small, vertical fort with a slide on top of a platform. In several cases, the space underneath the platform is closed off or shielded on two or more of the sides. This is great for kids who want to have a special place in the backyard. It is not safe for a school environment. Without a clear and direct line of sight, playground supervisors cannot sufficiently monitor the children. School Daz, Inc. playground equipment keep the spaces as open as possible, allowing supervisors to shift around the playground area and maintain a close watch of the children they are supervising.
Softfall Materials
When I was a kid, playgrounds were steel beams driven into concrete. At home, grass stains from falling were a welcome reprieve from the bits of rubble that got lodged in my knees. To this day, grass still offers a nice, natural cushion for backyard playgrounds. However, elementary school playgrounds typically have taller structures, meaning the grassy ground may break more than a fall.
A Full Spectrum of Physical Development
School Daz, Inc. carefully constructs playgrounds that address the key elements of physical fitness in developing youth. Balance, cardiovascular health, dexterity, hand-eye coordination and large muscle group development are each addressed by certain playground components. Backyard playgrounds do a fair job of working a few of these important development areas, but few maximize each area like playground equipment for schools can. A lot of this has to do with the sheer number of playground components in an elementary school playground, but school playground companies like School Daz, Inc. make sure each playground design features and highlights these physical fitness elements.
What’s important to remember when considering building a new playground for your local elementary school is that there are companies, like School Daz, Inc., that specialize in the design, financing and installation of playground equipment for schools. The expertise in this field goes a long way to insure the safest and most rewarding experience for your children.
Kids Playgrounds are an Oasis for Safety and Well Being
City streets are unsatisfactory playgrounds for children because of the danger, because most good games are against the law, because they are too hot in summer, and because in crowded sections of the city they are apt to be schools of crime. Neither do small back yards nor ornamental grass plots meet the needs of any but the very small children. Older children who would play vigorous games must have places especially set aside for them; and, since play is a fundamental need, playgrounds should be provided for every child as much as schools. This means that they must be distributed over the cities in such a way as to be within walking distance of every boy and girl, as most children can not afford to pay carfare – Theodore Roosevelt, 1907.
Riding the petticoat tails of the suffrage movement, kids playgrounds were built to give children a safe place to play. Before playgrounds were ordered built in the 1900s, most children played in the middle of the street or in alleys – alleys of dense and often violent immigrant neighborhoods.
A century later, kids playgrounds still protect children. The external threats of overcrowded and disease ridden alleys or untamed traffic may have diminished, but there is an even greater internal threat that kids playgrounds fend off – isolation. Advances in video game technology and the proliferation of entertainment options easily lure children indoors to sit alone in front of a screen. Greater demands for high standardized test scores remove recess from the curriculum and force children to silently sit in a desk for the full school day. Throw in a sedentary lifestyle combined with a poor diet and you could argue the internal threats of today could have a more wide-reaching effect than those of yesteryear.
Kids playgrounds offer an escape from the isolation. Imagination breaks free from the confines of two-dimensional game play. Perspectives come from experiences rather than rhetoric and repetition. Social interaction happens with eye contact and speech instead of keyboards. All these benefits coexist among the dynamic chaos of physical play.
While some political officials may not understand the positive impact of playgrounds, school officials do. Here are some quick things schools can do to make turn a playground from a meeting place to a haven for kids.
- Choose a design that focuses on open space with lots of play events (an industry term meaning things for kids to interact with). Space encourages running from new experience to new experience while a variety of play events keeps the play experience fresh every time.
- Focus on fitness. As playground design changed over the decades, many schools found success with playgrounds that added creative elements. The shift in focus today leans towards physical fitness. By offering play events such as bridges and climbers, you can combine the creative aspects of playgrounds with healthy and challenging equipment.
- Build with safe materials. At the very least any manufacturer of your playground materials should be a member of the International Play Equipment Manufacturer’s Association (IPEMA). This includes the plastic of the individual play components and softfall materials.
It’s been 100 years since Teddy Roosevelt stated the importance of playgrounds. In that time, playgrounds have changed, but kids have not. Make sure you school or kids playgrounds provide the same retreat. If your school could use a new playground, contact School Daz, Inc. today and let’s build fun for our future generation.
Designing Playgrounds for Kids Not Child’s Play
Designing a playground for kids requires the same considerations as any other architectural structure – a fact often overlooked by individuals dreaming up playground ideas. Let’s explore a few factors which makes designing school playgrounds for kids unique, challenging and highly rewarding.
Space
Just like residential or commercial lots, every playground occupies a predetermined space. The space often limits or caters to specific playground components. One of my favorite playground components is the Tarzan maze. This playground components provides children several swinging options which creates a new play experience each time and encourages repetitive use. For all of its benefits, the Tarzan maze takes up a large chunk of playground real estate. Not only is the structure 8′ × 8′, but it requires a larger boundary area to accommodate for swinging children.
Open space offers an array of options for playground design. At School Daz, Inc. we value open space for its physical fitness traits. Just as musicians use silence to flow between notes or artists use white space to draw the eye to certain parts of a painting, open space gives the playground fluidity and directs students to different playground components within the structure. By elongating the distance between elements, children are required to travel further to reach the next component. For children, that means running from place to place. This running from component to component builds cardiovascular endurance.
Maximizing fun by utilizing the space poses a challenge for any designer, but it also enables designers to be imaginative in how he or she incorporates the landscape, boundaries and open area into the playground design.
Safety
Playgrounds for kids have gotten much safer over the decades. Much of the increased playground safety comes from advances in building materials – no more steel poles embedded in concrete or sliver-giving ladders and swings. Design achieves a higher safety standards in a few ways.
Line of sight hold significant weight in creating a playground design. Supervision on the playground reduces the chances a child will get hurt by roughhousing or by not using the equipment properly. School Daz, Inc. designs playgrounds with multiple vantage points and lines of sight. A trained playground supervisor knows to move throughout the playground area, but increasing the line of sight and opening the space allows supervisors to view several areas at once.
Also, some playground components just aren’t safe. Tube slides or other obstructive components are not recommended because concealment blocks the line of sight. Also, at School Daz, Inc., we don’t generally install swings. This comes as a shock to most people since swings are one of the first things people think about when making a playground. But considering the height a child could fall from, the inability to restrain a child on a swing and the reckless nature in which people use the equipment (remember the underdog?!), swings simply pose too much risk for injury.
Fun
A boring playground offers as much practicality as an ice cream parlor in Antarctica. Playgrounds for kids must be designed with children in mind. Master Designer, Joe Deutsch, spent years teaching physical education to elementary children and has three of his own. Designing with fun in mind sets playground design apart from the analytical part of most architecture. The vivid imagination of children means a platform will be a watchtower today and a fire station tomorrow. Exploring the flexibility of playground layouts means providing children a place to let their imaginations run wild.
From the technical details and safety provisions to the fitness considerations and creative properties, School Daz, Inc. designs playgrounds for kids with kids’ best interests in mind. Contact us to discuss our design philosophy or better yet, see it in action by completing our design brief.
Playground Consulting Based on Solid Principals
Yes, I mean principals as in people.
Sales people drive commerce, but the stereotypical sales person conjures images of polyester suits, fake smiles and hidden objectives. When purchase decisions affect the lives of children, the last thing anyone wants is a slick salesperson without the childrens’ best interests in mind.
School Daz, Inc. hires retired educators and administrators to consult with school boards, current principals and parent-teacher associations about the design and installation of our school playgrounds. Here are three main reasons why utilizing principals is our principle.
Dedication
I’ve yet to meet an educator who chose teaching because of the money. I wish I could say I’ve yet to meet a sales person who chose sales for something other than the money. Once a teacher, always a teacher. We choose principals as playground consultants because they genuinely care about the well being of children. Principals work harder to piece together the most enjoyable playground experience for children and make the numbers work for school boards and parent-teacher associations.
As retired educators and administrators, these principals have more time to dedicate to each project, choose to go to work everyday and don’t rely on commissions – the paycheck becomes a bonus. Satisfied children remain the focus.
Experience
Imagine if every car salesmen worked on an the assembly line for 35 years or every realtor spent 10 years roofing, 10 years framing and 15 years contracting. He or she would be an expert in not just the product, but the process. Experienced educators and administrators make excellent playground consultants because they understand the nuances of a school system, how it functions and how to keep a project moving forward efficiently.
Follow Through
Many traditional sales people admit their favorite part of the job is closing the deal. Since administrators care more about the children than the dotted line, their favorite part of the consultation process is when they see children using the equipment. This change in philosophy translates to a project being treated with the care and concern it deserves from start to finish.
Then there’s that experience thing I mentioned earlier. You can’t run a classroom, let alone a school, without organizational skills, management skills, perseverance and hard work. Our educators and administrators may be out of the school systems, but these skills don’t disappear. Neither does the compassion for children.
School Daz, Inc. invites you to explore the website to learn more about our company, our philosophies and what matters to us. If you’re considering purchasing a playground, contact our master designer and former elementary teacher, Dr. Joe Deutsch.
If you know any retired administrators or educators that would like to give back to his or her school and community, contact us. We love to meet people who love to put little people first.
