Designing Early Childhood Playgrounds

Designing a playground for early age kids involves more than choosing age-appropriate equipment. It’s important to design a whole play environment that helps them develop the skills they need and enjoy their playtime.  Whether you are designing for daycare centers or preschools, keeping a few key developmental needs in mind can help ensure that your playground design provides both skills development and fun.

Interaction

Simple interactions with both equipment and environment can give kids experience with how the physical world works. Provide opportunities to push, pull, dig, build, roll, collect, or spill things. Try to include items that have multiple uses and/or settings that the children can alter by themselves to encourage hands-on discovery.

Sensory Engagement

Appeal to children’s senses.  Think beyond brightly colored equipment.  Engage touch, hearing and smell in addition to sight. Textured surfaces and natural materials can provide a range of different tactile experiences. Incorporating trees, gardens, and other natural features adds sensory appeal and encourages movement as well.

Challenge

Consider the importance of risk and challenge. Children are built for adventure. They test their limits through play and repeat skills in order to master them. Provide graduated levels of developmentally appropriate challenges that nurture children’s natural curiosity and taste for adventure, allow them to try out their problem-solving and creative thinking skills, and build confidence.

Imagination

Encourage imagination. Young children have an active imagination and naturally engage in creative play. Playgrounds that include structures like forts, tunnels, and other components that facilitate storytelling and dramatic play allow children to express their creativity, invent scenarios, and act out their imaginary worlds.

Independence

Support individual exploration and discovery.  Playground structures designed to allow opportunities for children to control the environment and select their level of risk without sacrificing safety build confidence and encourage independence.

If you need help designing a playground for your school or daycare center, contact Premier Park & Play at 617-244-3317 or email premierparkplay@verizon.net. 

FUNDRAISING FOR YOUR SCHOOL PLAYGROUND

Are you planning to build a new playground for your school and wondering how you will pay for it? Fundraising may seem like the most daunting part of your playground project but it doesn’t have to be. These days there are many options from the time-honored bake sale to affiliate programs.  Consider a mix of traditional fundraisers, partnerships with businesses and parks departments, as well as grants.

Outdoor musical instruments at Angel Montessori School Playground

Here are a few ideas:

• Events. Go beyond the bake sale! Try something different:  a dog wash instead of a car wash, a silent auction plus picnic on your proposed playground site, a play-themed walk-a-thon.
• Buy a brick. Invite people to buy a piece of the playground – a sandbox, swing, trail, brick, or bench — to honor a loved one.
• Grants. Learn where to find grant money. There are catalogs of grant sources available online and even at the library.
• Partner with local businesses. Give your local car dealer, hair salon, or coffee shop a chance to show how community-minded they are. Display their names on a permanent sign.
• Affiliate programs. Programs like the popular Amazon Smile let shoppers select a charity to receive a small percentage of the purchase price of eligible items.
• Grocery store loyalty programs. Many grocery chains, such as the New England based Stop & Shop, let you assign the points from your loyalty cards to a school rewards program.

Premier Park & Play has built elementary school and Montessori school playgrounds in the New England region, especially Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut. We have lots of experience helping schools with fundraising for playground construction. We offer free consulting to help you find the right funding sources for your project and to help you develop your fundraising campaign. Contact us at 617-244-3317 or email premierparkplay@verizon.net.

Playground Equipment For Schools

The playground is often the place where school kids develop socials skills and learn valuable lessons about teamwork, trust, patience and following rules. That’s why Premier Park and Park provides not only playground equipment for schools, but also offers lots of advice and project management services in the design and construction of the playground.

One of our customers is Milestones Day School of Waltham, MA. Premier Park and Play provided playground design services in addition to supplying and installing playground equipment by Meglio Unionland. As the School’s Executive Director puts it: “The elaborate play structure design was a huge social project. Doug Knotts gave us the parameters and a plethora of playground components to pick from. Students voted on which structures they liked best and ultimately which ones were included in our playground. The final design was a collaboration between Doug and the Milestones staff.”

At Rockport-Camden Elementary School of Rockport, Maine, Premier Park and Play representative, Doug Knotts, again provided assistance in the design of the playground and playground equipment. He facilitated a "design the playground day" during which both students and parents were involved in the design of the playground. After the design process, Doug carefully planned the construction process which was finely executed by experience builders who completed the whole playground in two days! 

“We found Doug Knotts, to be professional, knowledgeable and incredibly easy to work with from the first meeting where we discussed our needs, to the final completion of the playground project. The many parents volunteers involved in the construction of the playground commented on how they enjoyed working with the builders. Our K-4 elementary students love the playground. I highly recommend for any school considering to replace or add on a playground to consider contacting Premier Park and Play."

From traditional playground equipment such as slides and jungle gyms to fantasy themed playground castles – and even larger than life outdoor musical instruments – Premier Park and Play can help you design, source and install the playground equipment that’s just right for you. We are committed to putting both the customer and safety first, making sure that all the playground systems we install are compliant with ASTM, CPSC and ADAAG regulations. To find out how we can help you design the perfect playground to meet your needs, contact us today.