Every Housing Estate Should Have A Playground

It saddens me to think that there are children in this country that don’t have access to playground equipment, a bit of green, or somewhere to kick a ball and run around.

Childhood memories are made from the simplest of things. Personally, I don’t remember the first time I got the highest score on a PlayStation game, but what I do remember is playing football at the park with my Dad and playing an exciting game of manhunt with my friends.

I was quite lucky to have lived in a nice, family estate with access to a play area and playing fields, but many children don’t have this privilege.

Housing developments continue to spring up all over the UK and current policies enforce that all new house builders must have a proposal for play and recreation areas incorporated into their development plans. This is great and hopefully will help this country march on in its fight against child obesity and sedentary lifestyles.

Yes, times have changed. The way that children play is different and the price of their Christmas presents have dramatically risen. But I truly believe that the best present you can give a child is the freedom to play outdoors.

Does your housing estate have somewhere that children can safely play outside?

For more information about the work that we do with Housebuilders, click HERE

Play doesn't cost a penny

When I was younger a trip to the theme park was a rare treat. It was even rarer to find ourselves heading down the M55 to the glorious Blackpool Pleasure Beach, as our ‘day-out budget’ could only stretch to the wonderful world of Morecambe!

However all of these expensive days out could not live up to the freedom and simple pleasures of playing outside with a football, or going on the swings at the local park.

A recent poll by Sainsbury’s asked 1,500 five to eleven year olds in the UK to rank their favourite summertime activity in order of preference, and the results showed that the joys of the great outdoors was preferred over spending money going to the cinema or to theme parks. 

Parents seem to feel a great deal of pressure to entertain their children, and for some reason see expensive excursions as the answer. Maybe it is a lack of creativity on their part, or simply that they just don’t understand that all a child wants to do is have fun. One of my favourite things to do was to get a balloon and play tennis over the couch using my hand, pretending to be the mighty Tim Henman. Who needs the IMAX!

There are plenty of things going on throughout the country as people are taking the fight to childhood obesity; from national Playday’s, to residential areas campaigning to close their streets for the day to allow their children to play outside. It is great to see people making the effort and trying to get their children active.

It doesn’t have to be a big deal……just let your children play.

www.playdale.co.uk