As I mentioned in my outdoor gym ideas post we’re an active family who love being outdoors in all conditions, the kids love playing out in nature with sticks, mud, water, snow, you name it they’ll play with it!! So part of the renovation will include creating a children’s playground outside to keep the kids occupied, happy kids, happy life or whatever the saying it!!
In this posts I’ll look at some amazing children’s playground ideas I’ve found around the internet and also outline the kids play area we’re hoping to build (once we have a house we can live in)!
Like with the outdoor gym ideas I’m hoping to reuse a lot of material we’ve collect out in the garden. Last year I was lucky enough to have a neighbour who works as a council groundkeeper offer us a load of used playground equipment which he had removed from a kids playground the week before. I love to reuse old stuff so I jumped at the chance to take the children’s playground equipment off his hands as I knew we’d be able to use it in our garden at some point.
Our children’s playground idea
With 3 kids ranging from 3 to 9 years old we want to have a children’s playground that covers a lot of wishes & ages. They have a lot of interests in common like they all love to swing & jump on a trampoline but sometimes Emmott the youngest isn’t big enough to somethings while Mary-Rose loves to climb and Emmott & Eskil love a bit more rough ‘n’ tumble.
They all love to play with sand, water & mud as well as get creative building things with whatever they can find out in the garden.
We already have a playhouse which was one of the first things we got at the renovation in the hope in would allow us to work on the house while they played.
Our vision is a children’s playground a bit like a mini adventure trail built around a tree house with different levels to suit all ages. Attached to the treehouse might be a swing or swings and some sort of monkey bars for climbing and log cut offs as stepping stones. Then we’d like to have with some smaller “stations” where they can play with sand, mud & water.
This is probably not something we can build all in one go so it will be an ongoing project. I do have a large amount of scrap wood perfect for children’s playground ideas.
Here’s our children’s playground wishlist with photos:
Kids mud kitchen
This will give the kids freedom to be messy & play with mud, sand & water without worrying about having to tidy up (so much) afterwards.
Treehouse
No children’s garden playground is complete without a treehouse or sorts. We cut down a huge tree in the summer but the stump remains, we’re thinking that stump will be a great starting point for a treehouse which will be the “centerpiece” of the children’s playground. With a 3 year old in the household we don’t want the treehouse too high so something like the photos above should be good.
Swings
We have a number of bigger trees in the garden so I’m not sure if we’ll put swings on the tree or build a structure off the side of the treehouse. The kids love to swing all at the same time so it’ll probably end having to be 3 swings in a row!!
I really like the structure idea because it allows us to build in some climbing and maybe even a slide into the same structure a bit like the photo above on the right.
Climbing bars
As I mentioned, Mary-Rose (6) loves to climb so we’ll probably have climbing bars or hand grips up the side of the treehouse as well as a mini pull up bar at a lower level or rings.
Slide
We already have a nice metal slider so the idea will be to landscape that into the sloping ground or attach it to the side of the treehouse structure eventually. It’s a toddler slide and also works for older kids too as it’s long.
Balance / stepping stones
Our kids love to play “don’t touch the floor” and pretend the ground is lava or similar, trying to get from A to B without touching the ground. We have a load of old wood stumps from a tree that was cut down in our previous home with these it would be great to create balance stepping stones/logs!
And that’s just a few ideas we’ve had so far, I’m sure the kids will have even more ideas once we start to build!
Children’s playground inspiration
I’ve collected all these children’s playground ideas on Pinterest, but here are some of my favourites so far.
The reason I like these children’s playground ideas is they all involve a natural tree as part of the structure & are multipurpose combing multiple activities into one treehouse like climbing, slides and even swings.