Things to consider when planning an outdoor play area for children.

In my “other job”, I work with families and children, for a small charity. 

We currently are working on a possible project that may be coming to fruition in the next year or so, and it has taken me beyond my own knowledge and looking into all sorts of things that we will need in order to make the project work and be what we want and need it to be. 

It involves a lot of planning and looking at what we can provide for the families we work with, surveys of what people want and would like to see provided and also what we can afford financially and also what is practical for the space we have available. 

We are looking at providing an outdoor play area for the children, within that project, and that’s a whole new area we may expand into. We currently are very lucky to have an indoor soft play area, and a large indoor space for children to play in, but we consider outdoor play a vital thing that children should have access to if they can, and so within our remit, we are looking at facilitating that. 

There is a lot of think about and a long list of must haves and must do’s that we need to consider before we even start and I have a lot on my mind, thinking about everything involved. 

Size of the area we would like to make an outside play space?

Safety, proximity to the road and the general public, and how we make it safe, but accessible to the children?

Noise and our neighbors in the area? When we would use the area and how many children could use it at a time?

Keeping it dry when the weather is inclement? (we live in the UK, this is a major factor we need to consider) 

What kind of surface materials we would use? There are many types of play area surfacing, available and what we want the area to look like – it needs to look really good and appeal to the children and be safe to use, but also work well and be practical and functional too. 

Longevity and ease of maintenance?

Cost of installation and also upkeep. 

We have all sorts of ideas and plans, and our next step is to look at what is actually feasible, and start the process of planning and looking to get it in place. 

Some ideas from Soft Surfaces UK that we are considering…

I love my job. When I started, I had no idea that designing and planning a kids play area would be something I would be looking at, it feels so grown up, but fun at the same time. It will be fun to see what we finally have put in place, and I have a funny feeling it won’t be just the kids that love it and want to spend time using it… 😉

*this post is a collaborative post*