How to make a playground with your own hands?
Children bring joy until they become overly active. It is impossible for them to forbid it, it remains only to channel the energy in a reasonable direction. The best way to do this is to equip a playground with your own hands.
Basic security requirements
Strange as it may sound, the key to security is the ability to change and improve the site. The fact is that children grow very quickly, and their priorities change even faster. What inspires and delights in 2 or 3 years, is not suitable in the senior preschool years. And schoolchildren look at such games with a slight shadow of their own superiority. If children are not satisfied with something, they will simply go to other places, and here no careful equipment of the site will help.
For this reason, it is recommended to choose exactly making their own hands. Such a step allows to satisfy the individual needs of the child or several children to the maximum. But although fantasy is very necessary in such a matter, protection cannot be ignored.
So, any descent from a hill, any place where kids will go down or jump, must be equipped with a rubber coating. Accurately sharp corners and burrs, raw wood are unacceptable.
All slides and swings must be securely fixed. If any structure is equipped with railings, they must be put correctly and carefully. It is categorically unacceptable equipment playground concrete curbs. To cover the steps you need to use only soft rubber elements. It is useful to look at the site as if abstractedly, with a childish look: are all potential dangers clearly visible at the appropriate age.
If children are inside gaming equipment and other items, adults should be able to easily help them without additional tools. It is categorically unacceptable situation in which water accumulates on the surface. She is obliged to drain from everywhere and dry quickly.This consideration directly affects the desired angles of inclination and forces us to abandon a number of constructive solutions. For your information: it is required to abandon the use of toxic paints of any kind.
Any welds should be smooth, even a small protrusion or depression in this place is dangerous. It is prohibited to use equipment and decorative structures, the angle or edge of which is not rounded off or rounded off with a radius of less than 0.3 cm. You can not fasten any parts you want so that you can disassemble them without using special tools. All closed structures are made with at least two mutually autonomous exits located on different sides. We must make sure that some output can not be blocked.
Both moving and stationary parts should be such that body parts, clothing and headgear cannot get stuck in them. The width of the railing is limited to 60-85 cm. If children less than 3 years old will play on the court, the barriers must be at least 70 cm high.
Do not make barriers such that they can be easily climbed or seated. Round passages in solid parts should have a diameter of 13 to 23 cm.
Immediately it should be said: it will be difficult to choose. The basic requirements are:
- free overview of the whole site from the part of the house where adults are most often present;
- removal from toilets, compost pits;
- minimal fertility (it is not necessary to allocate an area capable of producing a bountiful harvest).
The logical step is to place a corner for games near the walls or solid fences. Then it will be possible to use as much as possible the zone that usually disappears without work. Even more than that, you can optimally apply the territory for organizing games. Many children love the miniature climbing wall and rope ladders. It is useful to immediately provide positions for the placement of slate boards and other useful designs.
Reasonable question: how to choose the appropriate option for equipping the site. There is a great solution - you need to put certain attributes of children's leisure in different places and see what your child likes most. A very important point - the level of illumination. It must provide a balance: both the blackout and the blinding hot rays of the sun are unacceptable. It is recommended that approximately 65% of the site be put in the shade, the rest be placed where there is plenty of sunlight.
Usually the most lighted area is reserved for active games. If there are no ready sources of a shadow, it is necessary to put a canopy, a fungus or a large umbrella. But on the playground there should be no drafts. Such hardening experiments will not lead to anything good. In addition, you need to look to nearby there were no electrical appliances and electrical networks.
It is imperative that the space under the site is flat or has only a slight bias. Any abrupt transitions are categorically unacceptable, because such differences in relief create a great danger.
Attention: nearby there should not be dilapidated trees and bushes, and ideally, in general, trees are not allowed. Recommended options for surface treatment are as follows:
- sand (layer from 2 to 5 cm);
- the rubber crumb laid in bulk mats;
- chopped bark;
- lawn based on resistant varieties of grass.
Drawings and sizes
The quantitative parameters of the projects and schemes of the playground should be chosen very carefully. Very young children need a small area, where there will be only a sandbox, the simplest shells. Even the need for a miniature pool is not always there.It is much better to pay attention not to him, but to the lawn or the surface with a coating that allows you to freely lie on the ground.
All this is realizable in the space of 4 or 5 square meters. m But when assessing the required area, the size of the children's corner, it is necessary to pay attention to other circumstances. So, more or less attractive for the game will be only that platform, the value of which starts from 8 square meters. m. This is important even for very young children. At the same time, it is recommended to remove them from internal automobile passages and economic objects of 10-12 m.
When marking the device of the future children's corner in the drawing, it is not necessary to give preference to the classic rectangular variant. Areas of arbitrarily selected geometry are becoming increasingly popular. We must immediately consider how the play area will be combined with planning and decoration solutions near a private house. All tracks encircling the site or entering its territory must be made either straight or with the most smooth turns.
Purposeful combat with natural terrain is not recommended. It is much more reasonable to use the existing configuration of the area for their own purposes. So, steep slopes allow you to form steps to climb.
And the most convenient descent is logical to turn into a slope of a hill. Often, in drawings prepared by experienced designers and designers, the dug-in stones and fallen trees turn into game areas.
Manufacturing of basic structures
When the drawings are ready, and the dimensions are finally determined, it's time to get to work. And above all you need to do your own fencing. There is no need to form an impenetrable wall, it will be much better if the fence is relatively low and as aesthetic as possible. Designers even recommend using rich colors. If this condition is fulfilled, the type of material is not very significant.
As for the height of the barrier, it is necessary to keep a balance: it is bad when children can easily climb inside or outside, but it is also wrong when it is impossible for adults to look behind the fence. The optimal interval is from 70 to 100 cm. Experts recommend making a barrier out of a grid, which facilitates observation and reduces the sailing effect in comparison with monolithic blocks. Even if a relatively strong wind blows, the risk of the fence falling is reduced to zero; Yes, and in the collapse of its particular danger to the children there.It is advisable to use vertical connecting elements (posts, supports); leaving them in a horizontal plane beyond the size of the fence itself is fraught with injuries.
Children at the time of the game least think about what is in front of them. The only place where horizontally oriented elements can be used is the bottom of the barrier. Yes, and there they are needed solely to enhance the rigidity and block access of animals. The upper cut is necessarily made smooth with rounding. The ingenuity of even the little ones knows no obstacles, and any unevenness will almost inevitably turn into a wound.
It is necessary to arrange the details of the fence in increments of at least 0.1 m. In this case, the risk of head and other parts of the body is guaranteed to disappear. When selecting and mounting any material, it is required to check whether it will withstand the load.
Almost always, the fence on the children's corner is prepared from plastic, metal or wood. Plastic is the least practical because it has a small strength and breaks easily.
Wood is the easiest and most affordable option. For your information: in order for children to accurately approach the site, it is best to involve them in painting the fence and in decorating it with drawings.The catchy and unusual plots borrowed from cartoons, fairy tales and similar works will be quite attractive. If you have skills in welding, you can make a fence and from metal. But it is necessary to strictly observe the technology of painting the metal surface.
To decorate a playground in the yard or in the country, you can build an engine from wood with your own hands. Such a toy composition has been deservedly popular for many decades. And making it does not require special skills. It is recommended to take for work spruce or pine edged board. It is better to focus on two sizes at once: 4x10 and 2.5x15 cm. The optimal length for work is 6 m, but it is more convenient to transport three-meter boards.
The framework of the base is made of boards of smaller size. In order for the parts to press tight and hold on tight, trimming is required.
Important: before assembling this part, you must already have a finished drawing in your hands in order to eliminate errors. Connecting parts is best with wood screws, which are not subject to corrosion. In order for a steam locomotive not to lose its attractive appearance in the coming months, it is necessary to soak all preforms with antiseptic compounds.
Having prepared and mounted the vertical frame, they undertake the laying of the floor. The closure of the gaps is achieved using dobor. Boards scatter along. The sides of the booth are sewn up with a board of 2.5x15 cm, the length of which is 95 cm. Usually, to make one side, there are 8 full and 1 accelerated along the board, another half can be screwed on top.
Important: when the roof is sewn up in the booth, it is required to adjust the boards as tightly as possible, otherwise the rain will drive the children away. Window sills are made with armrests inside and outside. The overall width is 5 cm. Additional window reinforcement implies mounting a pair of racks from the inside on each side. It is necessary that the short parts after the opening of the openings do not stagger arbitrarily.
Be sure to put the bench inside. Dobori hide behind the casing. They make and fix the pillars supporting the “steam locomotive” - so that they can be covered with wheels later. Installation of racks should be made symmetrically. After they make small (30 cm) and large (50 cm) wheels.
Sleepers are set up exactly under the racks, imitation of the rails is made with the help of a 4x10 cm board. Usually the track gauge is 98 cm and the length of one rail is 2.5 m.Only after checking, making sure that everything is accurate, you can put together parts of the “track economy” tightly. When all this is done, for each of the wooden parts pass sanding machine, and then with emery paper, and then paint the surface.
The toy train for preschool age is almost perfect, but in the older group it is not serious enough. Therefore, for children, along with this wooden game composition, it is required to prepare a sports area. It is quite logical if it will be executed with the expectation of both young people and even adults.
Attention: there are no trifles either in the selection of training projectiles, or in their arrangement, or in security measures. For the manufacture of crossbeams with rings used as a tree, and steel pipes.
The height of the rings are made variable, a rope is put to adjust. For almost all ages, metal ladders will be useful where it is easy to do a variety of exercises. Most often, a chain of such elements is constructed, the last in a row is calculated on adults. It is impossible to ignore the traditional components of physical culture corners - the crossbar on which you can pull up.
Recommendation: in case of an acute shortage of space or money you need to combine the ladder and the crossbar.
It is possible to use the ropes and ladders of the ropes. They do not even require a mandatory withdrawal of a specific area. As additional elements, bars, other attractions and shells are used. But there are no ready-made recipes here - everything needs to be selected individually. Contrary to the traditional stereotype, the swing can not be set: the released funds are redirected to other goals.
In addition to the listed designs on the pads are often put:
- punching bag;
- sandboxes;
- slides;
- helper ladders;
- houses
Throughout the territory of the playground is unacceptable the presence of stumps, bushes and trees. In order to minimize the risk of injury, the area around any projectile is filled with a powerful sand cushion. In some cases, even form a lawn, even if it complicates, increases the cost of work.
For your information: it is worth considering in advance how certain parts of horizontal bars and other projectiles will be removed. In bad weather, it is best to move them under the roof.
When the crossbar is being prepared, the plank at the top is simply superimposed first and then welded.In advance, each part is cut into fragments, the size of which is in harmony with the dimensions of the horizontal bar project. At the same time amendments are introduced for the deepening. The optimal size of the upper bracket is chosen so that children can hug it without any problems.
Its subtleties are when installing a simulator with a punching bag. For him mounted eyebolt, designed for increased load. On the reverse side there is a small plate, pressed by a nut. Sheet steel 0.4 cm in thickness is used to form the caps. Then the shaped tubes are processed by preparing round channels under the crossbar.
If it is necessary to make ribs for pouring concrete, a 5x5 cm steel corner is used.
Important: reliance pipes should be marked out with chalk, showing the depth of the entrance to the ground. It is recommended to use the corners of 0.4 m in length. They are attached to pillars under a layer of concrete. In fact, these parts are designed to perform the task of reinforcement, to increase safety.
It is advisable to use magnetic squares: they make work easier and more accurate. Round crossbars are welded from the inside and outside of the tubular profile.
Attention: all parts need to be scalded at the seams to keep them better. When welding is completed, the metal parts are coated with anti-corrosion compounds. Everything that is located underground should be smeared with mastic on both sides.
Decorative design
Just to put even very reliable elements and sports equipment on the playground is not enough. It is important to further equip it, make it as beautiful and pleasant as possible. It is needed to the same extent in children and adults. Much can be created with your own hands: it is not only a way to decorate cheaper, but also to do all the work “with soul”. Even if it is possible to buy very expensive ready-made accessories, still this is “not quite that.”
A common idea is to use waste tires. But they are so easily transformed that creating a completely original design is easy. Most of the tires are prepared:
- flower beds;
- obstacles for trainees;
- decorative figures.
You can't just bury a wheel like that. It is washed and dried in advance. Vertically buried auto tires can form a finished improvised bench.There are a lot of options for arranging sites using plastic bottles. It is recommended to use the most diverse in size bottles, from which you can decorate the figures of exotic plants, strange animals and so on.
Flat design designs are often composed of plywood. To make them more elegant, you just need to apply building paints. The original, non-beat stroke is the use of foam. It is blown into an arbitrary painted figure. Another great way to achieve your goal is to visit the river or lake where you can get pebbles and gravel of different colors and sizes.
Beautiful examples
- It looks like a truly luxurious playground, in which a lot of work has been invested But the result is worth it. The original “train” of dark wood, ending in a steel slide, and a multi-colored coating make it look unforgettable for children. Complements this impression of an unusual bench shape. However, this is not the only way to create something unusual, eye-catching.
- This photo shows a children's corner, equally well suited for preschoolers and high school students.The latest will appeal to a variety of sports equipment. The kids will love the design concept, reproducing as if “sky”, “river” and similar details.
- Otherwise, they approached the work here: the designers tried to “grow together” the diverse elements into one whole. Romantic addition to the composition are the "medieval" turrets.
How to make a playground with your own hands, see the next video.