Natural playgrounds refer to outdoor play spaces that integrate natural elements with natural play equipment to create a nature-based experience.
Natural playgrounds are designed to facilitate creative and imaginative play, encourage exploration, and get kids away from the screens and into the outdoors. The playground design takes in many factors to produce the best and most effective play space for kids to enjoy the great outdoors.
The Many Benefits Natural Playgrounds
- Natural Playgrounds provide stimulating environments for children which allow them to explore, use their imaginations, and learn about their surroundings in a fun and creative way.
- Like traditional playgrounds, natural playgrounds have all the swinging, sliding, and climbing that keep children mentally and physically active, but add many elements that add to the overall experience.
- Natural Playgrounds provide an escape from every day, a place to use their imaginations, explore, take risks, and make discoveries in a natural setting that is unlike anything else.
- The use of natural materials such as sand, water, logs, rocks, existing vegetation, and vegetation that can be grown on-site can provide more tactile, auditory, and visual stimulation for children.
- Natural Playgrounds encourage creative, cooperative, and imaginative play.
- Being outdoors and surrounded by nature has many benefits to physical and mental well-being, including facilitating stronger immune systems and providing enhanced concentration and stress relief.
- Natural Playgrounds can also encourage a caretaker attitude in children, from picking up sticks to noticing plants and animals, to simply being aware of their surroundings, children come away from these playgrounds with a newfound awareness.
- Natural Playgrounds can also be significantly cheaper to build and maintain than traditional playgrounds, and secondly, they are more eco-friendly.
- Lastly, Natural Playgrounds can also serve as a great gathering place the entire community can enjoy.
Natural playgrounds in can come in all shapes and sizes but generally consist of elements such as living plants, earth mounds, logs, sand, and water play, climbing trees and rock piles, and open-ended play materials. Natural playgrounds encourage kids to use their imagination and think outside of the box when it comes to playing, sparking creativity, and developing problem-solving skills.
In addition, they provide space to move freely, so children can fully enjoy the benefits of outdoor play, such as improved physical and cognitive development. Not only that, but natural playgrounds in canada and usa can help to connect us with nature and build an appreciation and understanding of the environment.
