Your school’s wooden playground equipment should foster and encourage social skills, curiosity, imagination and physical development. Your school playground should be a carefully designed, safe place for your children to interact with each other.
At Red Monkey Play, we love wooden playground equipment. Teachers are constantly asking our team ‘what are the advantages of wooden playground equipment over other materials?’. That’s why we wanted to share all the great benefits that wooden playground equipment can bring to your school.
Natural Playground Equipment for a Natural Surrounding
Visual appearance of your playground design is important. A well designed and constructed playground should look attractive, we consider how natural materials will complement each other in your school landscape.
Wooden playground equipment will fit perfectly into a natural woodland area with sand, wood chips, rocks and trails. When your children engage in role play games, it is important they can fully immerse themselves into their surroundings. Maintaining a natural theme throughout the playground lets your children connect more with nature, learn about their environment and incorporate this into their role play activities.
Wooden pirate ships are one of our favourite wooden role play features that give children the freedom to let their imaginations run free. Combing active story-telling with nature allows children learn about their surroundings and environment from a young age.
Range of Products and Designs
We understand the importance of choice, children run from one playground equipment to another as their imaginations take over. Using wooden timber in your playground means the possibilities of design are endless. The versatile functionality means we can create bespoke playground equipment that meets your needs, no matter what shape or size. Using natural structures allows us to take advantage of the natural shape of the wood, creating original designs that give a truly natural feel.
Encourage social learning in your playground by using wooden reading chairs and benches. It is important to combine natural learning and social skills together, sharing large chairs and benches helps develop reading and literacy whilst embracing their outdoor environment. These wooden playground features are also a great way to encourage sharing and making friends.
Wooden Playground Equipment Lasts Longer
At Red Monkey Play we deliver high quality playground designs, taking care of installation and maintenance. We design and manufacture all our playground equipment, using the highest quality natural materials. Timber playground equipment is designed to withhold all outdoor weather such as heavy rain, snow and ice. We manufacture the finest playground equipment that has been treated to ensure a low moisture traction, this means you can leave your playground equipment uncovered and it be sure that it wont rot.
Every playground we design and install comes with maintenance services, regularly checking the quality and treating the timber to ensure a low moisture level.
We often service playgrounds with metal playground equipment and encounter rusting, damaged structures. The aging process of metal playground equipment is escalated when exposed to outdoor weather, as opposed to treated timber that lasts much longer. Rusting broken metal is extremely dangerous in a playground, we highly recommend avoiding these types of structures in your school or nursery.
Environmentally Friendly Playground Equipment
Schools and nurseries should keep the importance of their environment at the fore-front of their mind. Government regulations such as Ofsted, heavily reward those institutions that promote eco-friendly play. Offering the best eco-friendly playground is becoming more popular as the recycling momentum takes hold. We use timber that is renewable, recyclable and sustainably sourced. This brings environmentally-friendly solutions to your playground design.
You should understand that children are able to turn any piece of nature into a play piece, allowing their senses to explore the nature around them. That’s why offering a fully natural playscape is crucial to fostering their sense development and play skills.
Improve Mental Health
It goes without saying that physical exercise improves physical health. Outdoor play, physical exercise and natural playground equipment has a further positive impact on mental health.
Outdoor playground equipment encourages game play amongst students. This helps improve confidence and social skills such as sharing and friend making.
A considerable amount of research shows how being outdoors improves wellness and reduces the symptoms of depression. Being outdoors in a natural environment, exposes children to sunlight; providing them with essential vitamin D they need for growth.
Encourage Behaviour Developments
Letting your children get messy with outdoor sensory play equipment like sand boxes and water walls quickly gets their imagination going. These natural play features allow the children to immerse themselves in the activity and release energy.
These natural play areas improve creativity as it allows your children to have ‘messy play’, this is something children get excited about and is heavily associated with outdoor play.
Giving your children the time to get messy and release their bursts of energy at breaktimes helps improve engagement in many areas of their school day. Outdoor, natural play will improve your children’s behaviour and attention when learning indoors.
Improve Social Skill Development and Inclusion
You may find that not all children are able to cope with noisy, hectic playgrounds. This may be due to a physical or mental learning disability or a personal preference.
It is important to offer a range of social spaces in your playground that encourage sharing and social development. Wooden playscapes and sensory areas allow your children to escape with nature and explore their environment comfortably.
At Red Monkey Play, we focus on creating playgrounds and environments that develop crucial skills, encourage learning and reaching goals. We capture children’s imaginations and attention through exciting playground equipment, whilst maintaining a safe, natural and environmentally friendly playground.
Discover more and explore our wide range of wet poor playground surfaces, from small tables to role play pirate ships. Get in touch today to find out how we can restore fun into your playground.
