There’s no doubt that children love nothing better than to scramble and mess around on school playground equipment. From as early as 2 years old, toddlers love climbing, swinging and running about in a playground, and when they head off to school they’ll love playing on the school’s equipment just as much.

When you take your toddler to a playground, someone will be there to oversee their safety and make sure that they don’t get into a fix. This is how they learn all about risk assessment, and parents are there to make sure they don’t make any silly mistakes along the way. However, once children reach school age there is a fair chance that they won’t have this one-to-one attention anymore. Of course, the playground will be supervised – but there will only be one adult to a handful of kids. It is really important for a child to have a good handle on their own safety so that they don’t take any risks.

School playground equipment has come a long way from the early days, and it is usually quite safe with rubber flooring to absorb landings if and when the children fall. But it is still quite possible for a child to injure themselves if they bite off more than they can chew.

In order to prevent these injuries at school, children need to be exposed to low-level risks from an early age. Regularly aking them to local playgrounds,so that they can begin to experiment and find their feet, is important. They will watch other children playing too and learn from how they behave. It’s better to find wooden playground equipment as it is slightly safer than metal. When they inevitably slip up and fall and adult will be there to reassure them, and talk them through it so that they understand where they went wrong.

Children learn a lot when they play on school playground equipment, so keeping them away from it is not the answer. Simply supervising their play and making sure they understand their own limits helps prevent them from taking silly risks.

Teaching children how to be safe in playgrounds

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