The Benefits of a Playground With Slide
A playground with slide can provide kids with an exciting, challenging, and fun experience. They help develop balance and coordination, promote social skills and increase physical strength.
Playground slides come in several different styles, from straight and fast to winding tunnels. Kids can try out a few of these styles to find their favorite.
Fun for All Ages
Kids of all ages love the feeling they get when sliding down a playground slide. playground with slide It’s a thrill-seeking experience that encourages confidence and exploration.
In order to successfully scale a playground structure and reach the slide, children develop essential balance and coordination skills. Additionally, they must properly position themselves before descending the slide in order to avoid injury or falling off the structure.
While slides offer a great experience on their own, they can also be enhanced with other types of play equipment. For example, a wave slide offers children a unique experience as they race down the chute while feeling the wind in their hair.
Other types of playground slides include spirals, which feature a more than 360-degree spin before the child reaches the ground. Another popular choice is a component slide, which is located on a larger structure such as a jungle gym and allows kids to gain access through an entry ladder or stairway that leads to the structure’s slide. There are even tower slides, which add a new element of fun to a traditional playground design.
Encourages Social Interaction
Kids love to play, and when they’re playing on a playground with a slide, it inspires them to interact with other kids. This interaction encourages social development and can help kids become more comfortable with meeting new people. It can also be therapeutic for children who are dealing with emotional distress from child abuse, family disruptions or the experience of a natural disaster or war.
Almost every classic playground activity can boost kid’s developmental skills, but slides are especially beneficial because they stimulate multiple senses. The stair-climbing involved to reach the top of a slide can build coordination and balance, while sliding down creates increased vestibular involvement, which improves proprioception – an awareness of one’s position in space and against gravity.
Some types of playground slides can even foster friendly competition. If a playground has double-entry slides or a set with multiple sliding paths, kids can engage in racing down the slides to see who can get down the fastest. This type of collaborative play can teach kids to respect each other’s personal space and help them develop empathy.
Engages Sense of Sight
Children love slides because they offer an adrenaline rush playground with slide and a sense of freedom that many other playground elements can’t match. They’re also a great way to test their leg and arm strength, as well as their spatial awareness while waiting for their turn.
While adults tend to focus on the singular purpose of play equipment like a slide, children are boundlessly creative and will find ways to use playground components for purposes that they weren’t designed for. This type of multipurpose play is essential for the development of cognitive skills.
Providing accessible playground equipment that engages multiple senses allows all children to enjoy the fun and social interaction it provides. For example, color delineations between different areas of a playground help blind or low-vision children navigate the space. Moreover, the ability to see other children using the same piece of equipment encourages intergenerational play and fosters close family relationships. Additionally, making sure that restrooms are within sight of the playground helps to ensure accessibility for all families. Inclusion of both able-bodied and mobility-disabled children is crucial for the growth and happiness of all children.
Encourages Decision-Making
Whether climbing to the top of a single or double slide, negotiating through an entire line of kids or making sure they’re clear at the bottom, using a playground slide encourages decision-making. Choosing how to climb the ladder requires coordination and balance. Choosing which way to go down the slide requires planning and anticipation. Kids also decide how fast to go down the slide, developing an understanding of speed that will translate to other activities.
Emotionally, the decision to try a new challenge like climbing up the slide or going down the winding tunnel teaches kids not to give up when they meet a difficulty. Kids who successfully complete the challenge develop a sense of accomplishment and self-confidence that will translate to other play and life skills.
In addition to standard plastic slides, we offer a variety of specialty playground equipment. Roller slides add a unique sensory experience for kids while providing inclusive play opportunities for kids with mobility issues. We can even customize your playground to include a ramp to make it wheelchair accessible.
Encourages Physical Activity
A playground with slide is a great way to encourage kids of all ages to get some exercise. The thrill of sliding down a structure is exciting for all children, regardless of their ability to swing across monkey bars or climb specific equipment. Slides are also less intimidating to kids who may be too young or nervous to climb up more significant structures, as they can practice climbing and then sliding down without having to do so in a very high position.
Climbing up to a slide promotes upper body and core strength, as well as fine coordination and balance. In addition, the action of going down the slide requires both leg and arm strength. Using a slide over and over again also exercises the vestibular system, which helps to control balance and movement.
Playgrounds with slides are associated with significantly more MVPA than playgrounds that lack them. This is because kids can explore more of their environment when they have a chance to slide down structures. They must also practice spatial awareness and social skills to avoid bumping into each other while playing and wait for their turn if the equipment is busy.
