From playground safety to unstructured play, IPEMA featured in Play & Playground Magazine

Managing Risk with Your Playground: A Checklist for Safety

For years, playground designers have worked to design spaces with a wide variety of engaging and exciting equipment and surfacing materials that can be configured to challenge and motivate children of varied ages and abilities. The facts are clear: playgrounds are fun and provide tremendous learning opportunities for kids and parents alike. Playground safety has also improved significantly over the past 30 years. This is from the combination of risk/reward analysis, and with a better understanding of surfacing materials, the input from dedicated industry experts, advocates, and parent activists that have embraced product certification programs for public play equipment and surfacing materials.

In this article, IPEMA’s marketing committee chair Brian Johnson discusses the importance of having a good balance between play and safety. Click here to read the full article and checklist.

Keeping Play Unstructured This Summer

School’s out, play’s on! The theme of the summer issue of Play & Playground Magazine is nature play, and the topic of structured versus free play. With summer here and more time for play, it’s important to remind everyone about the research that shows how unstructured, outdoor play fosters developmental benefits, including physical, emotional, social and cognitive skills.

In this article, we explore those benefits, including self-confidence and taking risks, as well as cognitive and physical benefits. Not to mention, outdoor free play allows children to put down devices and get fresh air in nature! Finally, while school is out, recess shouldn’t be forgotten. We also explore some of the findings from our 2018 survey on recess.

Click here to read the article and pick up your copy of Play & Playground Magazine today!