How to Build a Good Playground

For a child who is supervised in the home, school, and school bus between them, the local playground is the farthest they will be able to stray from grown-up influence. Yes, the grownups are watching, but over their phones or books on the benches at the sides. Built at a scale for smaller bodies, with enough distance from the benches to have unsupervised conversations with other children, the playground is the first site of radicalization and community building for children. Because they serve such an important role in a child’s individual and social development, it is especially disappointing when playgrounds are poorly designed. A well-designed playground takes on three responsibilities: facilitating the development of vital social and motor skills, providing an experience that is accessible to children with various physical capabilities, and creating potential for imaginative play. 

Accessibility is the most basic (and perhaps most obvious) requirement for a well-designed playground. The goal is to design a playground that can be used by children with various physical and mental disabilities as well as children of different ages and sizes. Some accessibility features are more commonplace these days- recall the accessible/adaptive swings with back support and safety bars that have started appearing at most swing sets in the Northeast. There are plenty of variations on typical playground equipment that are wheelchair-accessible, including see-saws, merry-go-rounds, and even ziplines. Parks that are built with two playground structures at a reasonable distance from one another, one at a smaller scale for younger children, are also employing an important safety tool to broaden the appeal of the playground to a larger range of ages. Simple but often-overlooked ways to make a playground more accessible is to add ramps, transfer stations, and lots of rest areas with shade, benches, and tables. Stationary structures–that is, elements on a playground that don’t require climbing, sliding, or any physical movement at all–do appear at the average playground, but their execution is often subpar. Does anybody actually use the xylophones that are missing a mallet? Is that fun for more than sixty seconds? Examples of successful stationary structures include tic-tac-toe, sprinklers and water canals, finger mazes, steering wheels, sensory tables, talk tubes, and sandboxes.

When done well, stationary equipment will appeal to all children regardless of mobility. Children with very limited mobility deserve to take part in the community building that playing on a playground with other children has to offer. If there are no structures they can use that are fun, functional, and easily integrated into imaginative games, they lose out on that experience. The local playground carries the responsibility of teaching children gross and fine motor skills. It is possible to maximize that impact by designing a playground with lots of variation in equipment. For example, children develop balance skills through spinning structures like tire swings, merry-go-rounds, and sit ‘n spins. Balance beams and pebble paths also help with balance. Rock walls are great for both gross motor skills, like stepping and reaching, as well as fine motor skills like grabbing. Crawling through playground tubes helps kids develop core strength. Monkey bars teach coordination. Playgrounds that incorporate a variety of structures are successful in helping children develop a variety of skills.

Physical movement skills are not all a playground is good for. The playground is where children learn how to play with other children, share with other children, and develop their creative minds to design imaginative games. Playgrounds are meant to be played on. Their design must take into account the way children actually use them. Much of the time, playgrounds serve as a set for imaginary play. The fun in a slide doesn’t often come from just sliding. The fun is constructed: there’s lava at the bottom, you’re walking the plank, it’s a secret spy tunnel. The jungle gym could be a rocket ship, or a school, or a house, a shop, a secret lair. Playground designers should consider all of the possible imaginative uses for their construction. Parks with multiple play structures spread out across the area have room for multiple pirate ships sailing the same sea. The more tools you give to a child, the more room they have to think outside the box.