Author: jamie carter

Wooden play equipment is one of the most enduring features in any form of child’s play items. Even as a host of different materials and technologies enter the market, there is something about the natural look, feel and quality of wood that keeps it relevant to each new generation. It’s certainly a beloved choice for us here at Garden Play, with many of our play items made from wood at least in part, if not fully. Wooden equipment is durable and visually appealing, but if the equipment is not taken care of appropriately then it may soon lose some of that appeal. Proper care and maintenance limits the wear and tear for many years to come, so here are some helpful ways you can maintain wooden play equipment to ensure lasting quality:

Regular Cleaning

According to experts, the proper maintenance of wooden equipment involves cleaning the surfaces fairly regularly. In addition to dirt from children playing on these items, rain, dust and insects can contribute or the dirt and unwanted debris that needs regular cleaning. All it takes is a light once-over with a slightly damp cloth to clean away most marks, as well other mess such as spider webs. If you want to preserve the finish and add shine, you can also use a wood polish after the light clean.

The Right Coating

To keep your fittings as good as new, you could apply a fresh coat of paint annually. This is particularly necessary if the equipment is exposed to direct sunlight, dust and rain. Painting protects the wood from rotting due to the exposure to moisture, as well as preventing the surfaces from being scratched.

Smooth Rough Edges

One of the causes of damage, both to wooden play equipment and potentially to those using it, is the splintering of uneven edges. Rough and dented wooden items are easily damaged, so it is recommended that you regularly sand down any rough areas. Smooth surfaces are safe, durable and reduce any injury risk for young ones.

Tighten Loose Bolts/Screws

With continuous use and as children grow, some parts of the play fitting may experience weakness at various joints, particularly items like a swing set that come under regular strain. Therefore, you should check these points regularly and tighten the bolts and screws at potential points of weakness. Loose joints may cause friction between different materials which may eventually lead to the complete breakdown of the fittings. Additionally, any rusty nails and screws should be replaced instead of being neglected until they reach breaking point.

Repair Chips/Holes

Make use of wood putty in patching up any holes or gouges in your wooden fittings. Wood putty has a way of preserving older wooden equipment as if it was new. Look for any rotten parts of the wood or parts that have been damaged by consistent use and apply putty. Sand down any damaged parts, use putty to fill the hole and once it is dry you can sand it down to the same texture as the wood and paint over with protective coating.

Wooden play equipment is reliable, affordable and durable, able to provide a beautiful play feature for the duration of a childhood. However, to keep it at its peak level, it will require maintenance for the lustre to continue. Cleaning, sanding and painting are some of the basic practical methods that can be used, so with minimal ongoing attention you should be able to get the very best from your equipment.

Creativity is underpinned by the ability to use our imaginations, inventiveness, resourcefulness and vision. It can often seem like creativity is an inborn characteristic that some people are blessed with, while others struggle with any sort of creative vision. But creativity is much more than inventing or art or a certain ability. Some children seem to naturally get lost in the wonder of their imaginations, others need prompting. Whatever your child’s talents and abilities, there are many ways you can encourage their creativity. Here are ten ideas that you can get started with:

1) Limit time spent using electronics

Keep TV and computer games to a minimum. Some television programs help us to learn more about the world, and can be really enjoyable to watch and discuss as a family. But watching TV for several hours per day is not a healthy habit. This is because it encourages children to zone out and stop thinking for themselves. Taking part in regular outdoor activity is more beneficial for a child’s physical development and prevents them from being at risk of obesity.

2) Display their artwork

Children are very proud of the pieces of artwork that they award to parents and other relatives. Show that you value their creative efforts by hanging their drawings and paintings in your home. You could even frame the pieces that your children are most proud of and display them prominently for all your visitors to appreciate.

3) Energise imaginative play

There’s nothing that kids love more than playing pretend. Stock up on props and fancy dress costumes. You should store the fancy dress items in a large chest or trunk that’s made just for that purpose and enables them to be swept away by their imaginations as soon as they open it. Use charity shops, car boot sales and seasonal sales to stock up.

4) Read to your children regularly

Read to young children on a regular basis, until they’re old enough to want to read chapter books on their own. Make the moment feel enchanted by dimming the lights and getting snuggled up with lots of pillows and blankets. If your children have a favourite story that they ask to hear over and over, you should encourage your children to draw the characters and scenes as they envision them.

5) Encourage them to tell stories

You don’t need a beautifully illustrated book or a video to appeal to your children’s imaginations. When parents and children take turns telling their own stories it helps them to form a strong connection and boosts children’s creative development. Storytelling can be done anywhere. Try it during a walk through your local park. You could turn all the things in the surrounding area in to exciting characters in the story.

6) Make art

Provide your children with plenty of varied opportunities to embrace their creative side. Make sure you have the necessary supplies for them to paint, sculpt, draw, mould and build. Giving children free rein over their work is very important. These tactile experiences will help them to think innovatively in a range of ways.

7) Use natural materials

Using natural or generic materials keeps children connected to the natural world and reminds them of its capabilities. Elements of nature can really inspire the imagination – as can open ended toys like building blocks or sandpits, which offer endless possibilities.

8) Big Box

Toys don’t always have to be shop-bought, and often, they’re more exciting when children have helped to make them. Find an extra-large cardboard box and set it up in an open area of your home. Allow your child to turn it in to anything they want. It could be a house, a cave, a fire engine, a racing car or even a time capsule. Help them to cut out some windows and allow them to decorate the box using paints, pens, crayons and craft supplies.

Whether these activities are enjoyed independently or together, they’ll have your child’s imagination running wild. Engaging in imaginative play can do a lot to boost the cognitive functioning of young and inquisitive minds, making it the best use of children’s leisure time. Here at Garden Play, there’s nothing that excites us more than seeing children becoming creative and resourceful enough to put their own ideas in to motion.

A good sensory garden is one that incorporates and stimulates all five of the natural sensory faculties. Each of the sense activate our brain and help us to learn in different ways, but building a garden that caters to the different sense isn’t as complicated or technical as it can be made to seem. Here at Garden Play, as well as supplying quality garden equipment for children, we also love seeing gardens that involve visual appeal, sounds, natural smells, textures and even some things you can taste. Here are some tips on how to create your sensory garden:

Consider What You Want

Before you create the garden, you should consider in what ways you want to incorporate sensory elements into your garden. Some may already be present, others may need to be added, so it’s worth thinking about whether you want to transform the whole garden, or do you just want to focus on a particular area? Who are you creating the sensory garden for and how are you planning to maintain it? These questions are critical to your next steps.

Create Visual Appeal

A garden has the potential to offer all sorts of different appeal in terms of sight, whether it’s in the colours of the plants and flowers, the shapes of their leaves, the patterns of light and shade they create, not to mention the array of wildlife they can attract. Incorporating shrubs, trees, flower beds, fruit and veg patches, a bird feeding table; each of these offer visual appeal in different ways. You also include visually appealing fences, footpaths and benches, as well as garden ornaments, all of which can help a child’s visual learning and understanding.

Appeal to the Sense of Touch

Touch involves the feeling of different textures, which in a garden can involve taking into account smoothness or roughness, spiky or sticky, wet or dry, and host of different options that can be explored in the sensory experience. Including these aspects can be useful for safety awareness of natural elements they should and shouldn’t touch.

Incorporate Fragrance

Although plants are a garden’s most familiar natural sources of fragrance, you can also explore other interesting smells. For instance damp wood carvings, freshly mown grass or even the wet leaves in the garden. Mix different scents from strongly fragrant to mild, for instance, sweet pea and chocolate cosmos with vanilla and chocolate smell.

Incorporate Natural Sounds

A garden can provide a range of sounds, from chirping birds to buzzing bees, rain drops on wet leaves and the rustling of dry leaves. You can develop a garden ‘percussion section’ that will offer a variety of distinct sounds; water features that accentuate garden sounds, while back to bird life, you could teach your child to recognise different bird calls.

Have Tasty Treats Growing

For taste, you could obviously incorporate fruits or vegetables as your first port of call, whether it is in a little fruit and veg patch, or by planting larger features such as fruit trees and raspberry bushes. This sensory element also offers useful safety information, as you teach your children which kinds of plants and fruits are safely edible.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this short guide and that it’s sparked a few ideas. Creating a holistic sensory garden can be fun and interesting, bringing something new to learn from the properties of plants, wildlife and senses they activate.

Children need safe play spaces, both indoor and outdoor. These play spaces should bring out the best in them and ensure they are comfortable to learn and explore their environment, and if their favourite play space can be found in their own garden, all the better. To keep them looking to their garden as an exciting and engaging space as they grow up, it helps to have a variety of play elements involved. Here at Garden Play, we`ve put together this guide with the view to offering tips that will help you make a garden play space limitless in the fun it provides.

Imaginative Play

To spark the imagination and creativity of your children, you can help to create a play space that embraces fairy stories, superheroes and other adventurous stories. Whether it’s through the presence of a playhouse, an area for their toys and costumes, or utilising any trees or bushes in your garden as a magical forest, there’s many options.

Messy Sensory Play

There are many ways to activate your child’s brain through play. Sensory play elements unlock a variety of learning experiences, and can be achieved by introducing elements like sand and water play. By feeling the texture of different soils, whether splashing around with water or modelling using sand or clay, brain receptors are activated as they learn the craft. You can place tubs with small holes in to run water through. Simple spades, scoops and tubs can help them in fashioning small castles and other items as they play with their sandbox.

Active Play

A garden slide, a swing set, a bounce element in the form of a trampoline or space hopper; these are some of the best active play equipment items for your outdoor space. Not only can they provide fun play for children of all ages, but they also provide them with exercise at the same time. Each activity helps to build up and strengthen a child’s agility, core strength and overall general fitness.

If you want to ensure your children keep playing for hours, you can also introduce equipment like balls, hoops, bean bags and skipping ropes. To go a step further with combining garden play with physical development, an item like a balance beam is another piece of equipment that can be built in your garden, helping to develop gymnastic ability and strength whilst also offering lots of fun.

Audio-visual Play

To enhance a child’s creativity, there are many audio-visual play elements that you can introduce into your outdoor space. Toy musical instruments, art supplies such as paint and chalk, as well as problem-solving puzzles and plastic building bricks; these are just a few exciting examples. All of these features can aid in activating a child’s brain to be more creative and active while choosing the right tools and costumes for the task in hand. The introduction of drums and small chalkboards come in handy as your children practice new and fun art forms.

Quiet Play & Secret Spaces

Building hammocks, Wendy houses, forts, animal dens and tepees are all ways to bring about the feel of a ‘secret’ playing room. With young children, it’s possible to have them under close supervision, while they enjoy the illusion of being in their own private world. You can be watching them from nearby while they’re in their own cosy den, interacting with their teddy bears, action figures and/or dolls.

It can also be great to teach your children about how to handle and appreciate all of the elements present in your garden. This can range from looking out for insects to watering flowers. Showing them how to plant flowers, and tend to them as they grow, can be a great way to teach them values like patience, investment and enjoy themselves at the same time as they learn.

By creating all or even some of these outdoor play elements, your child will come to love your garden as an exciting and engaging area where they also learn a host of new things. We hope you enjoy the journey!

A lot of research has been done on the advantages of spending time outdoors, especially for kids. Playing or interacting with others in an outdoor setting has been shown to be highly effective in a child’s development, something that we’re passionate about here at Garden Play. There’s a range of benefits on offer, from lowering stress levels, regulating a healthy BMI and even having potential to help with conditions such as ADHD.

Here are some helpful tips on how to encourage your children to play outside, an especially helpful tool in a generation that is often distracted by digital gadgets like smartphones and computers:

Tip 1: Create a Safe Space

Creating a garden play space that is safe is a really key factor, ensuring that your children have the confidence to play outdoors without getting easily hurt. Whether through a physical border, or just an obvious area of focus such as a central piece of play equipment, it’s help to define an area in your back yard or garden that children feel is their own. Kids enjoy having a space where they can play without restrictions and close monitoring, a space where they can be themselves, and it may just keep your flower beds safe in the process!

Tip 2: Don’t Limit Imagination

It’s helpful to be more imaginative in encouraging the ways your children use their favourite toys. For instance, you can create games using their toys, maybe even introducing magical elements such as fairy tales and/or superheroes in the way you tell those stories. You can also make use of natural outdoor materials like logs and twigs to construct playing equipment, while bushes or trees around you garden could serve as exciting story features

Tip 3: Embrace Nature

The best way to teach your children to enjoy the outdoors is to model it by enjoying the outdoors yourself. Take the children hiking or cycling. Don’t just watch them, but walk or ride with them wherever possible. Even if you’re not able to engage in the physical activity, a passion for the outdoors will rub off on children and become something they are likely to emulate it.

Tip 4: Bring in the Sand

You may not have the time to go to the beach, but that shouldn’t stop you from bringing the sand to you! You can bring a sandbox to your garden, or alternatively you can improvise with something like a large tub that can be brought out for sand play times. Place some buckets and spades, or other playing equipment, on the sand and then encourage your children to get creative. It’s exciting to see what they come up with!

Tip 5: Don’t fear mud-pies!

Mud, and the mess that comes with it, is always a concern for outdoor play. Rather than teaching your children to fear or avoid it, it can be useful to set healthy boundaries for as and when to play with mud. Dressing your kids in old clothes is a must for this activity, but other than that you can let them explore nature and be creative. It can also be a great first introduction to gardening, what begins as a mud pie can soon progress to a garden trowel and planting their first flowers or vegetables. You could also invite their friends to come and enjoy the muddy adventure time, as children often enjoy the outdoors more when playing with other children.

Hopefully this guide has given you some fun ideas to get started with. Remember that children learn by emulating older figures around them, so encourage them to enjoy the outdoors by engaging in outdoor activities more. Teach your children to be responsible in an outdoor environment, so that they can take care of themselves and other children when they are outside. Take a look around our range of outdoor play items for even more ideas.

Summer is on its way! While it may be highly unpredictable on these shores, any day with sunshine is a chance to get out and spend time outdoors with your young ones, giving them the time to explore, learn and play. Here at Garden Play, we believe the garden is a great place to celebrate the best of nature, so here are some of the exciting and educational gardening projects that can you can return to at various points throughout the summer.

The Garden in the Glove

To find a project which helps children to study seeds, it doesn’t get much easier than an idea called Garden in the Glove. This educational exercise and enjoyment are perfect for budding young farmers, as well as for you since mess is minimal. Simply put some soil into an old garden glove, plant some seedlings, hang it up somewhere that it can be watered, and you’ll soon have plant life in the palm of your hand, pun intended!

Hanging Tomato Planter

The right tomato planter can make use of even a small space, such as a front porch or deck, to produce mouth-watering tomatoes in empty water bottles. By the end of your project, you could say that you trained your children regarding recycling and a plant’s life cycle in the same project. Score! Make sure to select the right tomato type for your hanging planter. Don’t go for a beefsteak or other large variety, as bigger tomatoes are more suited to large plants and produce heavy fruit. Your small planter is better suited to a bush-forming seed rather a vine-growing seed so that the plant can build girth rather than length.

Egg Carton Greenhouse

Little children will adore an Egg Carton Greenhouse project like the one available from Hazel & Company. That said, if you favour a DIY option you can easily take your household egg box, a little soil and some seedling, and create a learning and bonding encounter with the mini green thumbs in your home.

Whimsical Butterfly Feeder

Make magic and enjoyment for your children by creating a whimsical butterfly feeder. You will require a jar, some strand, some knot-tying know-how and the secret ingredient: butterfly food! Butterflies feed on nectar, so if you can get some nectar-rich plants involved, then you’ll soon see some beautiful butterfly varieties in your garden.

Painted Garden Markers

Any child that is old enough to hold a paintbrush could assist with this fun project: making painted backyard markers from pebbles. You could even theme it around your nearby fruit & veg patch; smiling strawberries, silly sprouts and concerned carrots. All you require is paint, rocks, and a sense of humour.

Multipurpose Homemade Sprinkler

What can be better than an outdoor project which serves a significant purpose in the backyard, but also offers hours of enjoyment for young ones? There are easy-to-follow instructions online helping you to put together a homemade sprinkler utilising a plastic vessel, some hose and tape. Genius!

The Earthworm House

Many kids adore looking for worms and bugs. While you may want to be careful about what they encounter on their search, you could limit the focus to one particular area, with a company like Green Kid Crafts providing the ideal project for accommodating the slimy fellows that your bug lovers find. What more can the child, or worms, ask for?

We hope these ideas have given you some interesting ideas to add some fun this summertime and we also offer a wide range of garden play equipment to help your children get the most out of their summer play.

Your garden is a wonderful play area for your children, but it can also be a place to provide a platform to learn. There is plenty to look at, from different leaf-shapes, to how big herbs can grow from small seeds. You can also invite your children into gardening exercises that could end up becoming ongoing projects that you could do together and which could develop a love for gardening within them.

Learning about planting

If you can set aside a garden bed, container or pot a child can call their own, it gives them a sense of ownership and investment. Bedding herbs are a great way for children to study planting and are ready to go straight into the ground, so there’s less work to do. You’ll need to prepare your child for the likelihood that the plant won’t grow as quickly as they want, but that can be a useful life lesson and make it even more exciting when growth comes.

Why not attempt herbs and vegetables too? They are also obtainable as small garden-ready plantlets. All your child has to do is jab a hole in the compost or soil, pop the herb or vegetable in, then compress the soil tightly around the shrub. Add another few, and they will have created their little plant or vegetable patch in a matter of seconds! Bedding flowers are also appropriate for planting in a pot if you have limited space.

Learning about soil

All plants rely on soil, and there is plenty to learn about in this area. There are plenty of different kinds of soil – chalky, clay, silty, sandy, loam, and peat. Some of these are familiar, but did you know, for instance, that loam is the mixture of silty, sandy and clay elements? If not, you do now!

So how do kids tell them apart? Finding out could be entertaining and a little messy! You could recognise the clay soil by taking a small amount and smearing it between your palms – as it forms into a ball; you may recognise its texture as clay. When you have sandy soil, it will feel gritty when you smear it between your hands. Silty soil will feel almost silky, while chalky soil will crumble between your fingers and might have bright white stones in it.

Is your soil alkaline or acid? Another fascinating thing regarding soil is that some are alkaline and some are acidic. Chalk, for instance, is extremely alkaline; and sand, rather acidic. Hence, testing your soil to see what you have got in your yard could be another enjoyable and educational exercise – although this level of depth may be best suited for older children and budding experts. A soil experimenting kit shows you how alkaline or acidic your soil is by offering you the pH reading. You simply dig up a small bit of soil and put it in – then await the answer!

The ‘magical soil’ experiment

To observe how the acidity of soil influences plants, there is a test you could carry out which ‘magically’ transforms the colour of hydrangea herbs from pink to blue. You simply purchase some hydrangea colorant and smear it to the herb’s soil, as required in the directions. It will just take a fairly short period for the flowers of the hydrangea to transform colour, showing your child that the hydrangea likes the faintly acidic soil.

These are just a few basic ideas on getting your kids excited about gardening. Here at Garden Play, we specialise more in garden equipment than garden planting, but we love seeing gardens enjoyed in a whole host of ways and we hope that this guide has been helpful.

Summer is a time of sheer delight for children; they’re free from the confines of the classroom for a few weeks, to run and play outdoors to their heart’s content. But the warmer season also brings with it plenty of hazards, as days become longer and significantly hotter, it’s key to make sure you take proper precautions to minimise the risk of injuries or heat-related illnesses. We’ve compiled some essential summer safety tips for parents to ensure that your children are successfully kept safe from harm all summer long.

• Sun protection

During the summer months, harmful UV rays are at their strongest so it’s important that you apply sunscreen at the start of each day. Children should be wearing at least factor 15, but if they have very pale skin then you’ll need sunscreen that’s a lot stronger. The sunscreen should be reapplied at intervals throughout the day, and this should be done straight away after your children have been playing with water or swimming.

The face, chest, neck, back and shoulders are especially prone to catching the sun, so these areas should be covered as much as possible. Opt for loose clothes, caps and sunglasses to protect your children’s eyes. You should try to limit your time spent directly under the sun, and sit under a shaded area instead. If you have young babies, keep them as cool as possible and invest in a parasol if you’re sitting outdoors.

• Staying hydrated

Make sure that you and your children are drinking enough fluids. During the summer months, our bodies need more water than usual to function properly, so you should make it a habit to stay hydrated. It’s a good idea to carry a big bottle of water with you on days out. Children may be having so much fun that they don’t realise that they’ve become dehydrated, so it’s our responsibility to monitor this as adults. Children burn more energy when they’re running about in the heat so you should keep their energy levels up with occasional sugary treats.

• Be alert for the symptoms of heat fatigue

Symptoms of heat exhaustion include rapid breathing, heavy sweating and a fast, weak pulse. Heat exhaustion can be a precursor of heatstroke, a much more serious condition that requires immediate medical attention. Make sure to remain vigilant and monitor those around you, especially the very young and the elderly, for signs of heat exhaustion. If any of the signs arise, be sure to remove the individual to a shaded or cool place and offer plenty of fluids until the symptoms subside. If there is no improvement, then be sure to seek medical attention.

• Treat sunburns correctly

While sunburns can be easily prevented with the conscientious application of sunscreen, accidents do sometimes happen. Severe sunburns are often identified by redness, headaches, fever and chills. In the case of a severe sunburn, be sure to apply aloe vera lotion or gel often. Do not touch blisters that may appear; these can be easily infected if popped. Blisters will naturally come and go as the sunburn heals.

• Take precautions in the garden

The garden will usually get a lot more care during summertime, when it is being used a lot more. From the appearance of barbeques and lawn mowers to fertiliser, rakes and other garden tools the summertime garden or yard can be a potentially hazardous place, especially for young children. Take care to ensure that all gardening and landscape supplies, barbeque grills and accessories are properly stored.

• Practice water safety

We all know that children should never be left unattended around water, even for a minute. Whether you’re at home, the beach or the local swimming pool, young children should always have an adult with them, as well as floats or armbands. Older children can be left to their own devices if they are confident swimmers, but should always be in the appropriate section of the pool for their ability with a lifeguard present. Children should be warned never to run around the poolside as slipping is one of the most common causes of injury.

By being vigilant and following these steps, you can be sure that your children’s safety is not being compromised in any way. It’s the responsible of every adult who’s present to help supervise the children and enforce a safe environment. Once you’re sure that this is being done, don’t forget to have fun!