Drawing children outdoors for nature-inspired play

Posted on February 28, 2013 by PlayLSI

Nearly 12.5 million children and adolescents ages 2 to 19 are obese, a number that has nearly tripled since 1980. One factor contributing to this rate of obesity is nature deficit disorder, a term coined by Richard Louv in his 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods. That’s why we’ve introduced more nature-inspired playground equipment—hoping that it will draw children outdoors to engage in play and lead to greater physical, emotional and social well-being.

Log Stack Climber for PlayShaper®

The new Log Stack Climber adds more climbing challenge for kids ages 2 to 12 while also providing fun, tactile discovery experiences to PlayBooster® and PlayShaper® playstructures. Constructed of hand-painted concrete, the nature-inspired playground climber gets its texture from molds taken from a variety of log species including basswood, mesquite, white pine and cotton wood. Even more, the Log Stack Climber includes realistic, natural details like knot holes, insect trails, woodpecker holes and a variety of animals.

Log Stack Climber for PlayBooster®

The great outdoors is the number one spot where kids can play naturally, and we’re committed to helping you create outdoor play spaces where children and families gather. With the Log Stack Climber and other nature-inspired playground innovations like the Tree House and AdventureScapes® Climbers, these products combine the adventure and wonder of nature with the durability, safety and low maintenance of high-quality playground equipment.

Welcoming all abilities, generations with a new take on the seesaw

Posted on February 21, 2013 by PlayLSI

Nearly 14 percent of children have one or more special needs ranging from autism to cerebral palsy. These kids often have troubles socializing and even playing, which is why it’s important to address various abilities on the playground. Additionally, we’re seeing an increased number of caregivers who are injured military service members and part of an aging population. Their needs are also important to consider so that entire families can come to the playground for fun and recreation.

The above reasons are why we’ve expanded our inclusive play product offerings. The new We-saw™ is a seesaw that was specifically designed to accommodate people of all abilities. It is a multi-person seesaw that is accessible, promotes social inclusion and offers a multi-generational solution. The We-saw provides a truly inclusive play experience by accommodates multiple users, and the We-saw’s walk-in seating allows for easy access and transfer for those with mobility issues. Everyone that climbs aboard the We-saw will experience a fun, user-controlled ride.

We are committed to providing play experiences for children of all abilities. With our design philosophy, which addresses the environment, the play experience and variability, and other inclusive play product innovations like the OmniSpin® spinner and Oodle® Swing, we bring children with and without disabilities together to play, learn and grow on the playground.

Create a true environment with matching site furnishings

Posted on February 13, 2013 by PlayLSI

When we collaborate with you to create a playground design, our goal is to help you create a complete play environment. One way we’re focusing on this is by offering three site furnishings collections that match our playground equipment as well as the surrounding landscape. Whether you’re focused on creating a modern, traditional or nature-inspired project, our site furnishings collections will help put the finishing touches on the play environment.

The Designer Collection’s modern style and architectural details are the ideal complement to our Evos® and Weevos® playsystems. The Arches Bench, Bike Racks, and Recycling and Litter Receptacles will accentuate your contemporary playground design.

You can plan on pairing our classic PlayBooster®, PlayShaper® and PlaySense® playsystems with the Vivid Collection. The colorful Kaleidoscope Bench, and Recycling and Litter Receptacles, along with the Loop Rack and TenderTuff Picnic Tables and Benches will coordinate perfectly with traditional playgrounds.

Extend your nature-inspired playground environment with the distinctive Nature-Inspired Collection. The Log Bench, Acorn Seat, Leaf Bike Rack, Wood-Grain Bench and much more will help complete your play space and blend in harmoniously with the natural environment.

The three new collections add to Landscape Structures’ already extensive site furnishings offerings. Learn more about the new Designer, Vivid and Nature-Inspired Collections at playlsi.com. While there, check out our other site furnishings like CoolToppers® shade systems and Welcome signs.

Stimulate your senses on the playground with Pulse™

Posted on February 8, 2013 by PlayLSI

Our inclusive playgrounds bring children and families of all abilities together for play. In addition to providing access to the playground, we are focused on offering sensory play experiences. That’s why we introduced Pulse™, a multisensory way to add lights, sounds, touch and more movement to the playground.

Pulse, with its three interactive games, brings children of all abilities together for visual, auditory and tactile stimulation. The games are easy to understand, encourage social interaction, teach the value of sportsmanship, and help develop physical coordination and spatial awareness.

Pulse Tennis

Pulse Tennis is great for two to eight players ages 5 to 12. With flashing lights and realistic tennis sounds, kids will be encouraged to run, lunge and stretch to send the light back to their opponent.

Pulse Table Tennis

Pulse Table Tennis welcomes two to four players ages 2 to 12. Kids develop hand-eye coordination and concentration as they watch for the light to bounce back to them. Table tennis, installed at a wheelchair-accessible height, is great for therapeutic settings.

Pulse Tempo

Pulse Tempo rewards kids for their movement with five unique sound and light shows. Designed for up to six players ages 2 to 12, Pulse Tempo helps advance kids’ motor skills.

Watch Pulse in action below, then go to playlsi.com to hear what kids have to say about the new multisensory play experience.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/-t4DMeZptFM]

Announcing our NEW 2013 Park & Playground Equipment Catalog

Posted on January 28, 2013 by PlayLSI

We are very excited to introduce our 2013 Park & Playground Equipment Catalog. With more than 200 pages, our new catalog features many new products and offerings that are designed to inspire your upcoming playground projects.

2013 Park & Play Equipment Catalog

The catalog opens to a letter from Cofounder and Chairman Steve King on behalf of all 300 employee owners at Landscape Structures. We are all honored to be a part of children’s lives, and are constantly inspired by their imaginations and drive to have fun. Every employee here puts his or her heart and soul into creating innovative playgrounds that kids flock to and become community gathering spaces.

Pulse™ Tempo

Next, you’ll see our new product offerings for 2013 like Pulse™, which offers a multisensory way to add light, sound, touch and more movement to the playground. We’re excited to show off our new site furnishings collections—Designer, Vivid and Nature-Inspired—which will match your new or existing playground. We’ve also introduced new freestanding play components like the We-saw™, our multi-person seesaw that welcomes children and families of all abilities; the Flywheel™ Spinner that encourages social interaction; and the Log Stack Climber, which will expand your nature-inspired playground design and offer various levels of challenge.

Mobius® Boat

In addition to our new products, we have a section of signature playground designs that highlight our custom design and manufacturing capabilities. Our artists, designers and engineers look forward to collaborating with customers to help bring their ideas to life, and our focus on the details makes each playground an exciting destination for children who visit it.

These are just a few of the highlights in the new 2013 Park & Playground Equipment Catalog, so take some time to page through the entire thing. You can browse our Virtual Catalog or request a copy be mailed to you at playlsi.com.

Keeping your playground design fresh: Evos slide options

Posted on January 4, 2013 by PlayLSI

We introduced the Evos® playsystem in 2007, and since then kids around the world are finding new ways to play on the innovative playground. While lots of kids describe Evos as a “spider web” or “spaceship” playground, parents and adult supervisors know that it’s a workout disguised as fun. And not only does Evos exercise kids’ bodies, but also their brains.With more than 25 playground components, Evos offers endless configurations for your playground. Even more, we’re constantly introducing new products to keep it fresh for kids. In late 2012, we introduced three new slide options that can help add new life to your playground design.

Rush™ Slide

The three new slides—Rush™ Slide, Surf Slide and Surf Stainless Steel Slide—join the Hang Glider™ in offering a truly unique and thrilling ride to the ground.

The Rush™ Slide has an integrated slide hood and transition platform specially designed to help channel kids into a safe sitting position.
The Surf Slide includes protective barriers and a unique slip resistant, marine-grade deck surface to keep kids safe.
The Surf Stainless Steel Slide has the same safety features as the Surf Slide with the polyethylene slide bedway, but the stainless steel bedway does not emit a static charge, so is a good choice for kids with cochlear implants.

Surf Slide

Learn more about Evos, and how you can create an Evos design for your playground that will keep kids active and engaged during recess or on visits to the local park.

A conversation with our local Green Classroom Professional

Posted on December 18, 2012 by PlayLSI

We recently talked with Corey Lahr, assistant principal at Delano Elementary School in our hometown of Delano, Minn., about his experience with the Green Classroom Professional Certificate Program. The program, which was introduced by the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council, encourages sustainable practices in classrooms to further the mission of creating green schools for everyone within this generation.

The certificate program was an online course with a dozen animated modules discussing a variety of green classroom topics. Learn more about the program here, and read below to hear Corey’s take on the program.

The Center for Green Schools

Q: Why were you interested in participating in the Green Classroom Professional Certificate Program?
A: We are in our third year of working with SEE (Schools for Energy Efficiency), which is helping us create a five-year plan to help us be more energy-efficient, focused on sustainability, and ultimately save our school money. Additionally, I thought that I would be able to gain some new ideas to help us along the path.

Q: In addition to welcoming Landscape Structures into the school to handout apples for the Green Apple Day of Service, what steps has your school taken to be more conscious about the environment?
A: After watching the modules, I realized that Delano Elementary School is on-par, and maybe ahead of the game, with other schools. Some of the things that we already have in place include:

Shutting the lights off when we leave a room
Turning down the temperature to 68-degrees
Combining refrigerators so that now two classrooms share one instead of each room having its own
Installing light sensors so that the lights turn off if the natural light is bright enough in a room
Unplugging electronics at night
Composting lunchroom waste, and separating plastics and Styrofoam

Q: What are two things that you learned that you might be able to implement at Delano Elementary?
A: While we’re composting our lunchroom waste, and separating our plastics and Styrofoam, we’re still sending it to the dump. I learned that we really need to make an effort to actually recycle those items, and will be looking into how we can accomplish that.

Additionally, I learned that we need to focus on educating our students and staff on why we are taking these steps to be more sustainable. We currently have morning meetings in each classroom during which we discuss a variety of issues. This is a great opportunity to address the environmental items, and teach students more about our efforts.

Q: What were your overall thoughts on this certificate program, and would you recommend it to other education professionals? If so, why?
A: The Green Classroom Professional certification program was a really great learning opportunity. It reinforced that we at Delano Elementary are on the right track in our efforts, and maybe a little ahead of the pace of some other schools. This program would be great for a school that is just getting started in the process; the training modules gave some really good ideas.

I’m the assistant principal at the elementary school and can help influence many environmental activities, but I think this program would also be great for other resources within the school. There was quite a bit of talk about maintaining air quality in the modules, which the school custodian or business manager could speak to with more knowledge. Also, by having a few people complete the certification program helps facilitate more conversation about environmental activities.

Designing to meet ALL children’s needs

Posted on December 4, 2012 by PlayLSI

This week (Dec. 3-7) marks Inclusive Schools Week, which celebrates the progress that schools have made in providing supportive and quality education to increasingly diverse student populations. This week, educators, students and parents are encouraged to discuss how to continually ensure the inclusion of all children regardless of ability, gender, socio-economic status, cultural heritage, language preference and other factors.

JT’s Grommet Island Beach Park & Playground for Every “Body,” Virginia Beach, Va.

At Landscape Structures, we’re using Inclusive Schools Week to educate playground planners on the importance of creating truly inclusive play spaces. In addition to thinking about accessibility on the playground, planners need to consider children with sensory deficits and other developmental issues to ensure inclusion.

Creating an inclusive playground may sound like a daunting task for your school or community, but by following simple design criteria you can create a play space that welcomes children of all abilities. We use a design philosophy that addresses the environment, the play experience and variability. The combination of these elements allows every child to choose how they want to engage in the playground. Our design philosophy is influenced by the Seven Principles of Universal Design to help us increase the usability, safety, health and social participation of our play environments.

Morgan’s Wonderland, San Antonio, Texas

Browse our Playspace Design brochure to learn more about our design philosophy, and then go here to get more information about our commitment to inclusive play.

Avoid the bid process with cooperative purchasing contracts

Posted on November 29, 2012 by PlayLSI

Purchasing commercial playground equipment through the bid process can add extra work and delays in developing and installing your new play space. The bid process also sometimes forces you to settle for less than expected if you’re forced to accept the low-bid, lower-quality alternative to your specifications. That’s why we offer our customers the option to purchase our park and playground equipment using national cooperative purchasing contracts.

We have a variety of purchasing contracts from which to choose including HGACBuy, TCPN, NPCA for cities, school districts and other municipal entities. All of these contracts are nationwide government-procurement services that establish competitively priced contracts for goods and services with the assurance that all contracts have been awarded through a competitive, public bidding process that is compliant with your state bidding statutes. Following are just a few of the benefits of using cooperative bidding contracts:

You can avoid the bid process, and expenses incurred, while meeting state or local purchasing guidelines.
You save money through product discounts; the contracts establish and verify best pricing offered nationally by a supplier.
You keep complete control of the quality, design and manufacturer of your next playground purchase.

Any tax-based agency or non-profit 501c3 is eligible to use cooperative purchasing contracts. Contact your local playground consultant to learn more, and get set-up to replace the traditional in-house bid process with the easy-to-use, no-cost services provided by cooperative purchasing contracts.

Guest Blog: Building social bridges at NAEYC

Posted on November 21, 2012 by PlayLSI

This post comes to you from Marnie Norris, director of programs at Shane’s Inspiration. Earlier this month, she presented at the 2012 National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Conference. Marnie’s session, titled Together, We Play! discussed how to use play-based techniques, including peer buddies, to integrate children with and without disabilities, support children with sensory and communication differences, and minimize conflict opportunities. Read below for ideas she shared as well as took away from the discussion.

At a major conference with thousands of attendees and a wide variety of sessions to choose from, you always wonder how needed your information is…how much is social inclusion on the minds of early childhood educators?

As the room filled up two weeks ago in Atlanta, it was clear that teachers, principals, and professionals need tools to support the social interaction between students with and without disabilities…interaction that can happen spontaneously in early childhood but not always consistently.

Here are few tips and tools that we shared with each other during our workshop:

1. Start ability awareness early…in Kindergarten, a book and guided discussion, followed up by consistent interaction through play, is enough (We Can Do It! By Laura Dwight, Susan Laughs by Jeanne Willis). At that age, we focus on the fact that everyone has a hard to and a can do. For some, the hard to may be walking or for others talking. Help the students to connect their can dos and hard tos! Together, we can do.

2. Turning the challenge into the tool…if you have a student unable to connect through play find out what he/she is focusing on (ex: my student does nothing but spin the wheels on the train…find a peer who loves playing with trains. Let the peer hold the train while his buddy spins the wheels as a start. Give them time away from the group and excess stimuli to explore trains together.)

3. Flexibility in group activities…if you have a student interested in but unable to interact with the group, isolate one or two of her peers and let them play as a small group. Once the connection is made with a smaller number of children consistently, she may be more drawn in to circle time/group play.

4. Grouping the students…if you have a few students with disabilities in your classroom, create play groups consisting of two or three students with typical abilities and a student with disabilities. Give the groups identities: Bears, Penguins, Butterflies. Let them use the playground or indoor space as a group to encourage social interaction in smaller numbers.

5. Sensory stimulation…many teachers spoke about students having tantrums/outbursts because of being over stimulated. Find out what your student’s sensory profile is: is he triggered by sound (if so, is it specific or the wall of noise), touch (too much light touch, too little deep pressure on their bodies), light/color, etc. If you can, have Mom and Dad share what triggers him at home. Then you can modify his environment to support the sensory needs: some students are under-sensitive to touch and need bigger movements, deeper hugs or weighted jackets to help them register the sensation.

Most importantly…keep trying! Creating awareness and understanding in students (and adults) as to how our peers who have differences communicate, feel and socialize will help everyone. Combine consistent play with that awareness and you have a powerful foundation for social bridges!

Together We Play

Bringing the magic of play to communities.