When traveling around I have been surprised at the lack of, if you like, communal playground areas. By this I mean playgrounds that are all together, young and older kids can run around the same area.
Obviously you don’t want a fourteen year old running into a four year old, they would knock them for six, but we could have one end for the bigger kids and one end for the smaller ones.
When I was a kid, many moons ago, there was such a place like this in a town near where I lived, the actual playground, had a big hedge around it, there where picnic benches in there, so all the family could sit and have something to eat, swings for the little ones where at one end, with slides, climbing frames and roundabouts, that none of the bigger kids wanted to play on. At the other end was where the older kids had larger pieces of equipment, swings their size, bigger climbing frames and things that the younger kids could not really play on. (more…)
In the United States over the past few years, there has been a lot more housing developments being built. The one thing that really grabs people with these new places, is the closeness and community feeling they give.
What does not seem to enter into the equation though, is the fact that all the play areas for the children seem to be the same, and have looked the same for the past fifteen years. Do they have just one person that designs the play areas for children, do the same thing all over the country, then go abroad, look at what they have, move it around a bit and then do exactly the same thing. Is there only one company producing swings, slides, roundabouts and funny looking things as climbing frames? (more…)
It is likely that wherever you are in the world, there will be a playground game, or derivative of, which has been played by children in playgrounds all over the world.
One such game is Duck Duck Goose, where children sit in a circle facing one another, and one is appointed ‘it’. ‘It’ walks around the circle touching people on the head and saying out loud whether they are a duck or a goose. When a goose is picked, that child gets up and chases ‘it’ around the circle and tries to get to the empty seat first, whoever is left standing becomes (or remains) ‘it’ and has to select a new set of ducks and a goose.
After a nice day in the sun, walking through the local park and sitting for awhile on a bench, I suddenly noticed how many people, were leaving and not picking up their rubbish.
At this point a friend came over to speak to me, we had the usual greeting, then he turned away from me and said, ‘ What do you think about all that, then mate ?‘
To which I replied, ‘Do you mean the empty cans, bottles and crisp packets and things, that have just been left, by your friends and you ?’
When traveling around I have been surprised at the lack of, if you like, communal playground areas. By this I mean playgrounds that are all together, young and older kids can run around the same area.
After a nice day in the sun, walking through the local park and sitting for awhile on a bench, I suddenly noticed how many people, were leaving and not picking up their rubbish.
