playground equipment

Chin-up bars are playground equipment that were once ubiquitous on children’s playgrounds. They are still important in the adult equivalent of a playground, the Par course. A chin-up bar is simply a smooth horizontal metal bar, often a pipe, held solidly above ground by a wooden or metal frame. Typical installations include 2 or 3 different heights of bars for people of different heights. They are largely installed in schools, parks and gardens, as a kind of simple but efficient equipment for both recreation and exercise.

In its common usage, a person jumps up slightly to grab the bar in both hands so that the palms are facing away (pronation) and the feet hang freely in the air. The exerciser then pulls himself up to where his chin passes the top of the bar, slowly lowers himself to hanging by his arms, and repeats as many times as possible. This is referred to commonly as a pull-up.

The chin-up can also be performed using an inverse grip, where the palms of the hands are facing the participant (supination). This is what is commonly referred to as a chin-up. This type of grip usually places more emphasis on the intercostals and the biceps, whereas the traditional grip is more of an upper-back and latissimus dorsi exercise.

Further variations on chin-ups are possible by gripping with only a few fingers of one hand in order to increase resistance on the other arm. This type of exercise should be balanced evenly on both arms. One-armed chin-ups are also possible but are notoriously difficult to achieve. Training methods for one arm chinups involve exercises that emphasise concentric movements such as Frenchies (pausing during a chin up at the half way and 1/4 and 3/4 way points).

Chin-up bar counts are a part of the U.S. President’s Council on Physical Fitness program for evaluating the physical health of schoolchildren.

Children found other creative ways to use them, however, such as hanging by the knees, pulling oneself up to the top and sitting on them (more common with monkey bars variation), and so on.

Mats are a kind of largely used products in our daily life. They can be used on playground equipment, in kindergarten, in your rooms and so on. Except the decorative function, to make the environment safe is an important item in its functions. Safety mats are those products, which can cater to your need both in decoration and safety. In the markets, there are outdoor gym flooring safety mats, check shape safety mats,  bright color safety mats, garden check flooring safety mats, puzzle soft safety mats, numbered safety mats, alphabet table safety mats, double color garden safety mats, garden brick size safety mats, square appearance flooring safety mats and so on.

As we all know, kids like playing on playground. But as parents, do you realize the potential danger of the playground? It is estimated that there are over 200,000 children are injured in playground accidents.  So choosing proper safety mats become especially important.

Sand is not a ideal surface. Because kids playing on it can easily remove the sand from the needed area. Sand can also get into children’s eyes and cause irritation.

Wood fill or mulch is often used but this method requires continual maintenance and needs to be raked to prevent low spots. Once a low spot occurs, safety cushion the mulch provides is greatly reduced. Rubber mulch and pellets are a little better but also require constant maintenance to prevent dangerous low or bald spots.

Safety mats that are recommended for playground are rubber playground mats and tiles, as is named safety mats. You can get safety mats and tiles from 1″ to 4 1/4″ in thickness. How thick the safety mats exactly should be depends on how tall the devices are on the playground. These safety mats not only look great but most important, for they can greatly cut down the number of playground fall injuries and protect those precious little ones.

Another occasion where safety mats are largely used is in bathroom. As you know, the floor on the bathroom must be very slippery once it is wet. So it is very easy to slide down and to be a danger to the youth and old. Safety mats can greatly reduce these injures. They have several advantages. Firstly, safety mats are quickly drying, safety mats can dry up within 15-20 minutes on an average. Secondly, safety mats are absorbent: This is the prime purpose of the safety mats, and most shower mats fulfill this criterion adequately, except rubber mats. Thirdly, safety mats are fungus resistant: safety mats that dry faster will also resist fungus better. Rubber mats are most resistant, while bamboo mats follow closely. Cotton mats are not fungus resistant, and hence need to be washed frequently in hot water. Fourthly, safety mats should also be comfortable to the feet: This is another point to be noted.

What’s more, safety mats are also used in PE field. Such as yoga mats, jumping mats and so on. Anyhow, as be named, the most important point for safety mats is to ensure people’s safety in daily life and in doing sports.

I think most of us have played seesaws. It  is a kind of simple  playground equipment,  board with a long slim plank that is perched in the center so that the ends will move up and down when weight is put on the other end. A rider sits on each end and pushes their feet against the ground in their turn and then lifting end up into the air dropping the other end to the ground. Seesaws generally have handles in front rider sitting on each end for holding while the seesaw moves up and down. It is easy to build a seesaw; it is as simple as the steps explained below.

Following things are needed:
- Screws and bolts
- Sand and cement
- Water
- Padding
- Staples
- U-clamp and post anchors
- Covering material
- Metal tubing or 2″ X 8″ stock
- Metal U-frame or post stock
- Shovel, level, tape measure, hammer, pencil/paper, metal drill, staple gun and wood.

Step One:
First, a solid foundation must be constructed for the seesaw. The area of ground should be leveled about 20´x 20´ and two holes should be dug in the center which should be at least six feet deep and one foot wide. The tubes should be set into the holes. The peak of the tube should be kept about 3″ below the ground. Now the anchor has to be connected to allow perpendicular supports.

Step Two:
Now when the foundations have been finished, it is time to build the posts. It requires one-piece metal U-post system or simply two vertical posts joined by a metal pipe which should be bolted on the ends to a wooden of steel post system. The posts should be attached to the foundation. When the posts have been attached, the concrete, sand and water mix should be poured into the holes and around the posts. It has to be made sure that the posts are exactly on right angles to the surface. The concrete should be given 24 hours to set before attaching the posts to the foundation.

Step Three:
Now the length of the lever has to be decided. Wood or metal can be used but the lever needs to be wrapped with padding and if wood is selected, a metal strip has to be fastened to the base of the stock to provide firmness. Now the holes have to be bored for the seat on both ends.

Step Four:
This step requires the handles to be placed by drilling a hole in the level arm about the size of 18″ - 24″ from the end of the lever. Another hole has to be drilled in a 1″ x 2″ piece of stock. The vertical beam has to be now attached into the parallel lever and then the cross piece has to be added to the upright beam as a handle. At the both sides of the seesaw, a piece of foam covered with leather should be attached leather to serve as seats.

Step Five:
Lastly, the sharp edges of foundation, lever, handles etc should be sanded down. Now the seesaw can be painted using non-lead based paint.

The jungle gym, also known as monkey bars or climbing frame, is a piece of playground equipment made of many pieces of thin material, such as metal pipe or, in more current playgrounds, rope, on which children can climb, hang, or sit. The monkey bar designation was for the resemblance that playing children had to the rambunctious, climbing play of monkeys, though the term nowadays often refers specifically to a single row of overhead bars designed to be swung across.

The large, metal, cubic-shaped jungle gym was once common on playgrounds, but it led to injuries when children hit their heads on the bars or swung on them improperly, causing bruises, sprains, and fractures. It is more common now to find rope constructions similar in function, or wooden platforms with ladders and railings around the outer edges.
The first jungle gym was invented in 1920 and patented by lawyer Sebastian Hinton in Chicago. It was sold under the trademarked name Junglegym. The term “monkey bars” was first documented in 1955, though Hinton’s initial patent of 1920 appeals to the “monkey instinct” in claiming the benefits of climbing as exercise and play for children.Hinton’s chief goal, however, was to enable children to achieve an intuitive understanding of 3-dimensional space through a game in which numbers for the x,y, and z axes were called out and each child tried to be the first to grasp the indicated junction. Thus the abstraction of Cartesian coordinates could be grasped as a name of a tangible point in space.

One common type of jungle gym is a row of overhead bars, high enough for a child to hang from them but not so high as to cause serious injury in a fall. A child can “walk” hand-over-hand from one end to the other.

To reduce the risk of injury from falls, jungle gym areas often have a thick layer of wood chips or other impact-absorbing material covering the ground; the National Safety Council recommends that playgrounds have at least 12 inches (30 cm) of such material