An Energetic Active Play Area Promoting Physical Development
We created a fantastic, new active play area to bring a burst of energy to the playground at Preston Grange Primary School in Ribbleton, Lancashire.
Meeting with the school’s Headteacher, Cheryl Taylor, we were tasked with designing an open-ended, central activity zone that would make best use of the space available to promote active play at playtimes and facilitate outdoor physical challenges during PE lessons.
We achieved this through the design of a multi-faceted, giant “Activity Square”, which we installed directly onto the playground alongside the school’s field and woodland area.
This clever creation makes use of the playground surfacing as an active challenge in itself, along with a carefully chosen selection of items from our super range of Trim Trail Equipment.
We created the Square with our top-quality Playturf Deluxe Artificial Grass, which we installed onto the playground to provide a maintenance-free, all-weather surface around the equipment. It’s a beautifully tactile surface for floor-based activities in itself and it helps to prevent injuries from any trips or falls when children are playing on the equipment.
We installed the Trim Trail equipment in an exciting starburst formation on the artificial grass. This is a brilliant way of keeping the area open-ended - with no obvious entry or exit points the children can join and leave the zone as they wish and climb to a level that they feel comfortable with - building their strength and confidence as they go and becoming more adventurous as they take on different challenges and learn to assess and manage risks for themselves.
In the centre of the “star” is a set of our Climbing Poles, each with colourful climbing holds to help children balance and make their way up and across. Our poles are there to challenge the children’s climbing ability to help develop their upper and lower body strength.
They also work on hand strength and fine motor skills and coordination as children reach, grab and grasp to climb.
Shooting out from the centre of the “star”, we installed:
- A Rope Swing Traverse
- A Net Traverse
- A Parallel Rope Traverse
- A Swinging Log Traverse
- 4 Inclined Balance Beams
Each of these items are made from our beautiful, play-grade timber and reinforced rope. They offer a range of crossing and balancing challenges for a holistic approach to physical development, improving upper body and hand strength as the children grip and lower body strength as they navigate the course.
As well as developing strength, the combination allows children to develop balance, coordination and core stability and gross motor skills. Using their hands works fine motor skills while the bigger climbing movements work on gross motor development.
To complete the area as a truly multi-purpose activity base, we surrounded it entirely with our colourful Fun Fitness Trail Playground Marking. It has a clearly marked start and finish and is designed to take the children at Preston Grange along an enticing yet challenging course, a series of floor-based physical activities that sees them running, jumping, hopping, skipping and balancing their way all around the edge of the Square.
It promotes friendly competition and good sportsmanship, and the children are clearly enjoying racing each other around it!
The new Adventure Fitness Package at Preston Grange Primary has been the main focus of attention at playtimes - it’s open-ended nature is great for lighting up the children’s imaginations and they can turn it into whatever they want it to be - a space station, a battleship, a real-life video game platform, a superhero’s base or an Olympic assault course - anything goes! It is proving to be a brilliant, readily accessible resource for PE lessons.
No time is wasted for set-up, clearing away or maintaining the space - it’s big enough to engage a whole class and it’s ready and waiting to go!
If you would like to develop the outdoor space at your school or nursery to create a curriculum-focused, active outdoor learning and play environment, please do not hesitate to Contact Us Here. We offer a free, expert, no-obligation playground consultation service. You can view our full range of outstanding Active Playground Equipment Here.
