Playgrounds offer kids fresh air, friends, exercise and fun. But faulty equipment, unsafe surfaces and poor adult supervision can lead to injuries. Look for a safe playground with impact-absorbing surfaces, such as wood chips, sand or shredded rubber. Hard surfaces like asphalt or concrete cause more serious injuries. Children should be guided to age-appropriate areas. Survey the playground for visible hazards and keep children away from equipment that they are too small or big for.
Safety Surfaces
Playgrounds should be all about friendship and fun, but kids will fall from time to time. They need something soft and thick to cushion their falls so minor injuries don’t turn into major catastrophes. There are many 안전놀이터 surface options available, but these five are among the best. All are ADA accessible, slip-resistant and can be customized with color or theme to match the playground equipment. Poured in Place (PIP) rubber is a popular choice for its shock absorbing qualities and aesthetics. It comes in a variety of colors and can be made into inlaid shapes that add a playful purpose to the space. PIP is also an option for splash pads, spray parks and other wet playgrounds.
Climbing Equipment
Climbing equipment offers kids a great workout while building upper body strength, coordination and confidence. It also helps kids develop cognitive abilities like balancing and timing. Climbers and monkey bars have the highest incidence of playground injuries so they need to be monitored carefully. Check that the surface under and around these structures is maintained at a depth proportional to their height (i.e., 12-inches of mulch, pea gravel or sand for equipment 8-feet and higher).
Kids should wear sturdy shoes with closed toes when using climbing equipment. It’s also a good idea for kids to tie their long hair back, as it can get caught on equipment. Make sure harnesses have fixed-size leg loops or adjustable ones to fit over a pair of pants.
Slides
Playground slides provide a fun and exciting confidence-building thrill for children. Slides are typically made of plastic or metal and may be straight or wavy. Children climb to the top of the slide, sit down and slide down the chute. Slides pose entanglement and entrapment risks, so regular inspection and playground maintenance are essential to mitigate these hazards.
Many playground injuries occur when young children go down a slide on an adult’s lap, which can lead to broken legs (supracondylar fracture of the humerus). Also, children often travel down the slide head first or standing up, which increases the risk for injury. Reviewing rules such as sitting down and sliding feet-first can eliminate these dangers. Parents should also check the slide surface to ensure it is not hot from the sun before allowing their child to use it.
Proper Openings
Children can get snagged or trapped on equipment, or become choked in ropes. Check for potential entrapment hazards including open “S” hooks on swings, protrusions or equipment components that can catch on clothing or strings and strangle a child and any openings on equipment that are too large for a head to fit through, which can cause entrapment and death.
Ensure that there is enough surfacing and proper fall zones under all equipment and that the surfacing is rated for the height of the equipment. Also look for equipment with excessive gaps, sharp points that can cut a child or abrasion areas and that the use zone in front of and behind equipment less than 30″ tall is not shared with anything that exceeds this height such as standing rocking equipment or merry go rounds.
Adult Supervision
Young kids (and sometimes even older ones) are impulsive and cannot gauge distances on their own. Providing adequate adult supervision is the most important part of a safe playground. Supervision should be constant, and any controllable distractions should be avoided to prevent the adult from losing focus on monitoring children on the playground. In addition, a no cell phone policy for those who supervise children on the playground can help to ensure that adults are actively engaged in supervising.
It is also necessary to divide the playground into surveillance zones so that one adult can oversee certain areas while another oversees other areas. This is especially useful if two different age groups are playing at the same time. It is also beneficial for one supervisor to have a way to communicate with other adults in the event of an emergency.
Final Thought
Playgrounds are great for children’s physical, social and thinking development. But they can be dangerous if equipment is rusty, dirty or hot. Look for ground surfaces that are soft and padded (such as wood chips or mulch, sand or safety-tested rubber). Avoid hard surfaces like asphalt and concrete.
