Building a Playground for a Public Park
Kids both enjoy and need exercise, such as joining an amateur sports team or going to the park for fresh air and exertion, and for this reason, city managers will often expand and add features to public parks where families can visit to have a good time and exercise out in the fresh air. Adults can walk the trails or chat on the park benches or even have picnics, while the kids can ride bicycles on the paved paths and can get exercise playing on the playground equipment there. This is fun and games from the perspective of guests, and for construction crews and city managers, this is simply business, and crews can be hired to install commercial playground equipment such as a commercial sandbox, a climbing playground, a bike rack for bicycles, outdoor basketball hoops, slides, and more. How much exercise do kids need today, and what can crews keep in mind before launching their construction project?
Children and Exercise
It is no secret that kids need exercise to develop muscles, keep body fat under control, and even to stimulate mental development and give them a chance for fun. The bad news is that kids today often do not even get the amount of exercise that they need today, but a local, attractive park with commercial playground equipment can help reverse trends of obesity. What is the problem? Often, kids today are using electronic screens indoors instead of going outside to play. As research done by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows, kids aged 8-18 will spend, on average, 4.5 hours per day on screens such as television, handheld game consoles, and mobile phones, and that is time not spent exerting themselves. Two out of three parents are concerned that their kids are spending too much time on these screens, and it has even been demonstrated that kids who don’t get the chance to develop motor skills will face a lifetime of relatively limited brainpower. Finally, all these numbers contrast unfavorably with the time when these kids’ parents were young. Today, research has shown that kids spend an average of four hours outside playing per week, but when their parents were young, they spend around 8.2 hours per week outside. It is clear that today’s kids are not getting out enough, but any parent can encourage their kids to exercise more and take them to the park, where the equipment and other kids offer all kinds of fun.
Building a Park and Commercial Playground Equipment
City managers can develop parks and add new equipment and features if enough local citizens express an interest in adding such public features, and a region in a city or town can be made more attractive and popular if parks and equipment can be found. Often, home buyers consider local attractions when looking for a house, such as employment opportunities or shopping centers, and for families looking for a new home, the presence of a large, attractive park can serve as one of these factors. Creating or upgrading a park can act as beautification of an area, from grassy fields to trees to ponds.
Installing commercial playground equipment means adding a number of common playground items such as swing sets, slides, basketball hoops, and larger equipment that may resemble an obstacle course for kids. Such playground setups can be based on a theme to make it more memorable and fun for kids, such as a Wild West theme with kid-sized frontier town buildings, or the park may have an outer space theme, with rocket ship-like slides, a false Moon surface, or cartoon alien visuals. Commercial playground equipment can also involve hardware meant for special needs guests, such as handicap accessible areas or swings for disabled children, to make a playground more inclusive for various families who visit a park. This can make a positive impression on guests and add to the number of families who visit.
Adding park equipment may mean clearing off and flattening land, and adding concrete frames for sand boxes or mulch or pebble areas, and setting up permanent swing sets, slides, merry-go-rounds, and more, and various footpaths can lead to and from the park equipment. Benches can be set up so parents may sit while supervising their kids.