Planning Your Play Area

STEP 4 - Selecting Your Equipment

Here comes the good part: you get to choose your equipment! After meeting with our professional design consultants, you can pick the products that will work best in your play environment. There are a lot of choices, Do you want playground equipment that stands out, or one that blends into the surrounding environment?

Linked Fitness Structures

Large, linked structures challenge upper body skills, coordination, and stamina. Linked structures serve particularly well because the linkage of various items supports the play goals of children at this age: chase games, social experimentation, and "showing off.

Overhead Elements

Choose from a wide variety of overhead elements which can be installed as freestanding structures or can be designed into complex superstructures.

Slides

Slides provide an exhilarating experience, and are often the excitement that encourages children to climb. The variety of slides we offer gives appropriate sliding options for all ages. All our slides are high quality double wall construction.

Roofs

GF Play offers several roof styles to create a variety of looks. Don’t see what you want in a roofline? Let us help you design a custom roof for your project.

Bridges and Tubes

Connectors between decks serve the dual purposes of providing a play experience as well as creating needed space between decks and the climbers on them. A unique feature of certain of our standard bridges and ramps allows GF Play to connect decks of different heights.

Climbers

A ladder, by any other name and regardless of shape, is still a ladder, but our climbers go way beyond the conventional ladder in variety and type of muscle groups targeted.

Swings

Swings have long been a favorite on playgrounds. Studies show that swings encourage language and peer-teaching experiences. Swing seats should be matched to the user group and swingsets placed to the rear or edge of the play area for maximum safety.

Play Houses

As one of the most important types of play in the early years, dramatic play should be supported in the outdoor environment. While dramatic play will occur wherever there are healthy preschoolers, a proper play environment can do much to encourage the best kinds of dramatic play. We believe there are at least three important components to environments that support dramatic play:

  • Built elements (child-size playhouses and vehicles) with appropriate enclosure
  • Contiguous placement of the built elements along a complex trike track
  • Various loose parts like trikes, dramatic play props, parachutes, and large blocks like our Inter+Blocks

Villages and Vehicles

Villages embellish dramatic play areas and trike tracks with many optional facades and support elements. Vehicles that encourage dramatic play provide a sense of the magical world of childhood. Children become the players in dramas as bold as life itself.

Signage

GF Play provides signs to support trike play (traffic signs), encourage safe play (no-trike signs, hazard barrier signs, suggested age use signs), and to present the written word in relevant contexts for children (Store, Gas Station, etc.). Foreign language signs support multi-cultural programs. Signs are available in other languages to provide support for multi-cultural program goals. Custom signs are also available.

Construction Play with Loose Parts

If play environments are the primary classrooms for young children, then loose parts are their best textbooks. The most important aspect of your outdoor learning environment, in our opinion, is the provision of safe and appropriate loose parts. Without loose parts, children face environments that are static and adult-driven. With them, children learn to take initiative, create, share, build, plan, demolish, and start over. We are committed to providing every play environment with safe, durable, and functional loose parts.

SAFETY NOTICE:
All loose parts should be used on a suitable surface and require adequate room in case of falls from children’s constructions. Never allow children to throw loose construction materials.

Inter+Blocks SuperSet

Includes the basic set plus three new pieces to extend their usefulness and flexibility: A steering wheel block, a double sized block and an "L" shaped block (corner block). The larger blocks add stability to taller structures and provide more construction possibilities. The steering wheel block gives an inexpensive and flexible way to encourage dramatic play.

Portable Play Tunnels

Portable play tunnels are too heavy for tots and preschoolers to move, but allow the teacher to re-arrange the space to provide novelty and to create new play opportunities. They are available in two lengths, 30" and 42", and come with a floor.

Kid Stackers

Kid Stackers are another option for loose parts and include unique plastic ramps, semi-circles and "tires". Ridges allow stacking and interlocking. Some parts are large enough to require several children to cooperate in their lifting and use. Others can be handled by a single child. All are colorful and durable. The seven-piece set comes with four pegs to help stabilize the possible constructions. Plastic "tires" may be ordered separately and come in sets of two.

Post and Panels

Our Post and Panel System allows children to create enclosures and mazes with these simple plastic panels. Children, acting independently, slide the panels into place on a nine-post grid system, creating small enclosures (still visible to adults) or large enclosures for more players. The panels are available in two color schemes: natural (green and tan) or primary (red/yellow/blue).

Sand Boxes and Activity Walls

Many adults prefer to do without sand altogether, but if you watch a group of kids in a sand pile, you’ll see the play value. Besides soothing emotions and providing rich tactile experiences, it is a vital "loose part", fostering construction play, dramatic play, language experience, and experimentation with physical properties. Oh yeah — It’s also fun!

We provide a number of sandbox sizes and elements to extend the play value of sand. We also provide fitted covers to reduce animal litter and other debris. *Due to wide variations in sand throughout the U.S., GF Play does not provide sand for sandboxes unless specifically indicated. We offer several variations of sand activity walls, including 4’ and 8’ wide magnetic walls with movable troughs, tubes, and splash blocks.

Music Curricula

Children of all ages enjoy exploring sound and music. In the preschool years, exploration is the primary benefit of exposure to musical instruments. Later, children learn to enjoy both hearing and making music. These new products promote listening, language, math, and science skills. Many instruments have roots in other cultures, and thus can assist in multi-cultural studies.

Art Studio

Our Art Studio provides an integrated structure dedicated to outdoor art with several painting and drawing surfaces. The basic version includes a polytone countertop, a clear lexan easel with storage bin, and 45" wide drawing board, all under a rotationally molded roof. All features are ADA accessible.

Literacy Supports

Children build their own understanding of words, what they mean, and how to use them to get things. This happens through exposure to language-rich environments. Your playground can be such an environment with a little planning and commitment. The freedom of the outdoors stimulates speech, particularly among children who are shy in cramped indoor settings. The features on these two pages bring the printed word to the outdoor setting in meaningful ways, and encourage oral language.

Science Curricula – Nature Features

The desire to provide natural elements to children is "second nature" to us. We offer several product packages that create specific centers where the natural environment is the focus. Of course, the packages are highly customizable, and various features from each can be combined to create the exact "Second Nature" center right for you.

Contemplation StationsTM contain features that can be added to any preschool or elementary playground to provide a quiet place formeditation or relaxation. They can include gazebos, walkways, entry points, benches, documentation panels, and landscaping materials provided locally (based on local plant supplies).

NaturalabsTM are science centers specifically developed to expose children to basic scientific processes and principles (observation, measurement, comparison, charting). Naturalabs may contain the following elements:

  • Weather Stations
  • Growing Boxes
  • Bamboo Planters
  • Boulders (selected for size, height, and round edges)
  • Cedar Benches
  • Tree Stumps
  • Tree Stump Bird Baths
  • Wind Chimes
  • Bird Houses
  • Hummingbird Feeders
  • Butterfly Houses
  • Tree Ring Tables
  • Tree Slices
  • Gardening Elements

Rock Streams

Rock Streams add a compelling nature feature to children’s play nvironments. They can be long or short, wide or narrow, and can be simple or complex. Real running water can be added by using our water play pump and a water source (provided by client). Rock streams can serve to connect areas or divide them, and will be a focus not only for children’s play but also for adult aesthetic appeal.

Weather Stations

We offer several versions of our Weather Station to take advantage of the outdoor environment’s seasonal and hourly changes in temperature, wind, precipitation, and sunlight. The preschool version comes in Basic and Deluxe models. Both provide clear screens to allow dramatic play possibilities and interaction. Both provide interactive knobs for children to select weather patterns based on observation of current conditions.

Weather Stations for older children let children chart changes in weather throughout a week or a month. Both Basic and Deluxe models provide wind direction and speed indicators plus temperature and precipitation gauges.

Gardening & Natural Science

GF Play is committed to the inclusion of maintainable natural elements in educational play environments. Our commitment stems from a growing concern that children are shut off from the world of nature due to our increasing urbanization and focus on "class time". Plants and natural settings add life to sterile playgrounds, and expose children to natural science principles. Good playgrounds find a balance between built (man-made) and natural features.

Science/Math Curricula

Sandventure CentersTM consist of special sandboxes, tools, and features to introduce children to mathematics and archeology. The Paleontology Kit is available for advanced elementary school curricula. The basic element of a Sandventure CenterTM is a MathMagicTM sandbox. Available in 8’, 10’, 12’, and 16’ sizes, these sandboxes add "X" and "Y" coordinates to allow children to locate buried materials using a grid formula. For example, in the illustration above, one child has buried a "fossil" at coordinate B-7. Another child, given just the coordinate, can locate ‘B’ along one side of the sandbox, and ‘7’ along the connecting side of the sandbox. Voila! A little digging will uncover the buried treasure, and the participants will experience real mathematical and archaeological processes in a new and exciting way!

Our standard Fossil Replicas set includes six fossil replicas. Deluxe set includes an additional four fossil replicas. Typical sets include Dinosaur Egg, Shark Tooth, and Saber Tooth Tiger Skull.

Animal Trax are available in two distinctly different sets. Animal Imprints allow children to make prints in sand with realistic scale footprints. Animal Stencils allow children to paint animal tracks on sidewalks or other smooth surfaces. Each plate is 5" x 5".

Storage

Storage is one of the most overlooked features of play environments, and one of the most important. Just as the best way to store materials in the classroom is near the area of use, outdoor storage should be near the areas where materials are to be used. Our storage buildings come standard with shelving on three sides of the building. These shelves conveniently store the variety of loose parts we provide. Our buildings also provide pegs for draping jump ropes or smocks, special bins for balls, and racks for storing brooms and other long-handled items. These handy features are all designed to keep the floor space clear.