to think playgrounds have got too fancy!?

[undercovamutha]

We have just come back from visiting a large park a few miles away. It has a big playground, and is one of only a few large parks in the (smallish) city we live near.

It has NO toddler/baby swings, a slide that only a 6+yo could climb up to (no steps, just a complex tunnel thing), no roundabout, no seesaw.

It does however have a big construction that seems to be a climbing frame (no idea how anyone under about 10 could attempt it), a kind of inverted slide that you have to straddle to slide down, a big tyre swing thing, and (hallelujah!) some normal swings.

This kind of thing seems to be the norm in a lot of parks these days, but seems to be more about the aesthetics than actually providing what the kids need/can use.

I'm probably showing my age, but waht's wrong with some swings, a slide and (simple) climbing frame, a seesaw, and a roundabout?

We have the opposite here! A new housing estate with a few small play areas, with five or six pieces of equipment all designed for toddlers. What about the older children?

But I often wonder about the lack of standard stuff, swing, slide etc. There are no slides in any of the parks around here, except for the tiny ones for tiny people.

You'll find playgrounds specialise for only one narrow age group nowadays; it drives me crazy! There's a playground in town for the under 10s, and another for the older children. What am I supposed to do if my 8yo+10yo want one playground and the 2yo+6yo want the other playground? The two playgrounds are out of sight from each other, naturally!

A park near us has no swings. Another park has no roundabout, seesaw OR slide! Just don't understand it. Surely its not complicated for them to buy the core things?

Most of the parks we go to seem to be aimed at older children (huge slides that you can only get to by climbing a rope), dd1 has low muscle tone and gets very upset because she loves slides but cant climb rope to get up to them , trips to the park often end with tears.

I agree - several playgrounds we use have been "updated" recently. They seem to have removed the classic stuff - big slide, roundabout, swings.
Some of the new things are good fun to start with, but don't look as if they will last - for example big xylophone with hammers on wires which soon get removed, water pump that never works etc. etc.
Our local one has a slide, but no easy way up to it, so tiny toddlers can't use it.

The one in the next town is fantastic, they've spent a lot of money, it's really popular. Why they decided not to put some toilets nearby at the same time, I don't know. There are small children weeing in bushes all over the place.

please be gentle with me - this is my first ever post but i couldn't let this one go unanswered. i do playgrounds for a job when i am not on maternity leave.
dont know about other local authorities but we got given government money over the last 2 yrs and it was only to be used to build stuff for the teen/ junior age range. it seems someone higher up in govt. decided the 7-14 ages weren't getting enough outdoor exercise so we get the cash and get told to get on with it. meaning that we have loads of shiny new stuff for older kids but needed to find the cash locally if we wanted any new toddler stuff (roundabouts, small swings, see saw's etc) the climbing frame mentioned in the op sounds like an item aimed at teens. the actual design of the kit is very scientific, we often get guff info packs telling us specifically what muscle groups will be exercised, calories used in climbing it, how it is designed to encourage co-operation and interaction with the users etc. they are all also meant to be self limiting - If you arent strong enough to climb up it, then you arent strong enough to use/ fall off it safely. i will add also we always send questionnaires to the local schools to let the kids choose what bits they want from an age appropriate range, so the park designers rarely decide what goes in anyway. i'd have a big whinge to your local councillor about lack of toddler facilities in the area. hopefuly they will listen. we do try to design for varying ages within one park, but it will only get put in if we can get the money.

welcome to mn fireblade .

Our parks are pretty good but at least I now know who to pester if they need re-vamping.

Look up the newspaper archives for the ultra modern one they tried to build in Sunderland recently (I know it made the Daily Mail)

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/8675878.stm has a pretty rubbish picture of it but it was the first I could find - basically it was designed to let the kids exercise their imaginations or something and it went down about as well as a... concrete block (think it lasted 2 days before we had the mandatory gloomy looking mum and kid with frown and folded arms photo in the local paper with the story how said kid had tripped and hurt their knee on the park). Think they decided to rip it up within about a month of having it down.

We're lucky round here (I don't live in Sunderland anymore but hometown so keep an eye on the local news) in that pretty much at about 1 mile intervals we have parks, green areas and play areas, and even the new build housing estate has a mix of littly parks and biggie areas with basketball hoops and things dotted around corners on the estate. It's one of the really impressive things I've found about Nottingham/Nottinghamshire to be honest - they DO have a lot of nice good quality greenspaces and parks in the area.

fireblademum - it's good to hear that someone's taking notice of older children.

We have a shiny new playground in our town which was overrun by teens when it first opened, simply because it was the only place in town with interesting and large equipment.

It still seems a shame to me that so many roundabouts were taken away due to 'elf and safety.

Newly renovated park near us is very toddler friendly although there are only two toddler swings. it's got wooden planes, trains, toddler seesaws and those upside down spinny cups. It's even got two climbing frames with slides. One for toddlers and one for bigger kids.
I think yours was just badly planned.

Our local park has one toddler swing and 2 flat swings, the middle of a broken roundabout and a picnic table spread out over a field sized space so you can't supervise two children on the (only!) two swings. Now that's shite.... Here...cms.redbridge.gov.uk/images/rayparkplay_web.jpg ..only without the equipment, this is the imagined imagine they put on the web! Gives an idea of the size of it for 3 swings plus lots of broken tarmac where things used tobe. SUrely our park is some national record for shiteness?

In our very small Shropshire town we have a park with an enclosed toddler area with a small climbing frame/slide,a bigger climbing frane/scrambling net/slide.2 sorts of swings,a sort of tube to shout down with things like steering wheels and twirly blocks,a seesaw and a roundabout.Outside the fence is a skete ramp,a big slide,some bigger swings and an obstacle course.I would say the whole area has something for every child from 15 months to 15 years.I didnt realise we were so lucky.There are tennis courts and a football pitch too.

in london our park facilities are actually very good, lots of them have things for mixed ages. going to other towns i've seen them so much worse but wondered if its because more people have gardens there so seen less important to invest? is a shame though for the local people. having nothing around for toddlers is pretty ridiculous

That's a cool job fireblademum.

I have to say, our park has just been revamped and they've got it just right IMO. Some great stuff for older kids and littlies.

However in the nearest city ( next county over) all the parks are rubbish! They are always really age limited. There is one that sounds just like yours and you see toddlers staring forlornly up at it at the equipment all the time.

werewolf - you may be pleased to know that elf and safety gone mad is metamorphosing into something more sensible called 'managing risk in play' acknowledging that if a playground is 'too' safe the older kids will just go off and play with traffic in order to get kicks / challenge their boundaries. hence we now have some fantastic scary big climbing frames. we also make a point of putting in hang out shelters and chill zones in the teen areas. it seems to reduce anti social behaviour.
if we do find any injuries relating to one bit of kit, we always check youtube.....

That sounds great, fireblademum. Much more realistic and, hopefully, more fun.

Do you ride a bike, by any chance, looking at your name?

sure do!
currently sharing cbr600 with DH. smug cos i get into my leathers after birth of DD.
my bike had to go so we could afford DD. :(

According to my brother who is a landscape architect, the latest trend is for 'natural' playgrounds. They use water, pebbles, plants, places to build dens, and (shock horror) mud, as well as more conventional play equipment. In other words the sort of waste ground/wild places that most kids would choose to play if grown-ups weren't so paranoid about nasty things happening

The playgrounds when I was a gel were definately more interesting, and I feel sorry for today's youngsters who never got to sample the delights of the witches hat, the roundabouts, the enourmously high slides, the proper swings that you could go really high on, those things with a horses head on the front that you sat in a row and and went backwards and forwards, and the other shuttle type thing, that went high as well as backwards and forwards.
However, I can't understand why I never heard of anyone who came to grief on them, as they were amazingly dangerous - that's why they were so much fun, and why modern equipment is so boring.
This probably means nothing to most of you out there, but I hope it triggers a memory with someone!

I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that our playgrounds have been updated - because it's not going to happen again for a while:

news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_8890000/newsid_8898300/8898310.stm