Advice for day care institutions

We specialise in designing playgrounds and play equipment for institutions in collaboration with children and childcare professionals. This ensures that the children’s development is supported in the best possible way, and that the playground remains fun and educational day after day.

If you have questions or need advice, our knowledgeable dealers are always ready to help. You can also read more here, where we have gathered various information that will help you make the right decisions when planning a new playground for your institution.

What should you think about when planning a new playground for your institution?

How do we support child development through play?

Play is crucial for children’s physical and cognitive development, and it also helps them to grow up to become active members of society. Play is an important part of being human, and it helps young children lay the foundations for lifelong learning.

Therefore, it has always been important for us to develop the best play equipment and to thereby help to encourage and support children in their play and learning. We can only do this by involving children in the process as well as experts who can ensure that we are supporting children in the best possible way. By involving experts, we can guarantee that our play equipment offers a high degree of play value with play activities that are both age-appropriate and tailored to the five development areas of the value flower.

Value flower

Creative development
Encourages children to be experimental and creative through their play and imagination. Creative development is important for seeing things in context as well as seeing them in new ways.

Emotional development
Children learn to understand and manage their emotions, and thereby develop a sense of empathy which is essential for being able to interact socially and understand other people.

Social development
Through play, children learn to interact with and respect each other and abide by the social rules, including making compromises, negotiating and resolving conflicts. Most importantly, children gain experience and practise being with others. In this way, it supports their basic communication and social skills.

Physical development
Children are stimulated into actively using their entire body through play and movement. In particular, balance and gross and fine motor skills are challenged. All are vitally important for a child’s development.

Cognitive development
The children’s cognitive development is stimulated through play where thinking, language, problem-solving and so much more are tried and learned. Through play, children form a coherent picture of the world and what it means to be part of it as engaged citizens.

Which play equipment is best for the youngest children?

For very young children, their day care institution is one of the first places they start spending many hours in the company of other children. In the first three years of a child’s life, their brain capacity triples in size, and it is therefore important that children are stimulated in the right way during this period. At this age, most learning takes place through the senses – and preferably through changing activities, as children can only stay focused for a few minutes at a time. Therefore, a playground must feature different play activities, colours, patterns, textures etc. At the same time, the children’s physical and motor development also needs supporting, and the equipment should encourage them to crawl, walk and balance.

A safe and secure environment for small children

Our theme world LEDON MiniPlay has been designed specifically for children aged 0 to 3 years. A fantasy world awaits them. The series has extra child-friendly crawling ramps, moving parts and small slides. It includes lots of fun elements which also function as ‘language starters’. For example, numerous figures, shapes and colours that will inspire children to practise forming their first words, for example ‘bee’, ‘ladybird’, ‘red’, ‘blue’ etc. MiniPlay thus has everything that is needed to create a safe play environment.

The play systems in the series have also been designed so that adults and childcare professionals can stand upright and assist the children without having to adopt awkward positions.

Which play equipment is best for older children?

Most older children are used to spending much of the day in day care institutions. This is where children experience both great joys and huge crises, and it is where they establish life-long friendships. Children aged 3 to 6 years begin to play more social games, and role-playing is particularly popular. Children love adopting other roles and imagining that they are in another world.

The playground for older children must be able to accommodate many children at the same time as conflicts may arise if the area is too small or if there are too few activities. It may be a good idea to establish zones with different play systems of varying degrees of difficulty. This ensures that the playground will be sufficiently challenging for all the children while also supporting their development.

We have a number of theme worlds which are designed in particular for 3 to 6-year-olds. These series boast a wide selection of play equipment such as play systems, playhouses, sandboxes, swings etc. At the same time, the theme worlds help to stimulate the children’s role-play, as the thematic details make it easy for them to immerse themselves in a new universe.

Be inspired by other institutions’ playgrounds

The possibilities are many when it comes to the size, layout and design of playgrounds and play equipment for institutions – and it is rare that two playgrounds are the same. Be inspired by some of the playgrounds below which other institutions have chosen.