​ Which Playset Features to Invest in Based on Your Child's Interests

An excellent outdoor playground set can be a highly effective way to facilitate countless hours of fun for the little ones in your life.

The big question for many parents is - what type of playset features should they invest in to suit their child's interests and personality best? There are multiple features and playset configurations that you can pick from when shopping for a quality outdoor playset. The trick here is to understand where your children's interests, personalities, and preferences lie and try to match them with available playset features.

To help you get started, this post will explore some of the most common personality profiles to consider when picking out playset features in the hope that we can help you find the perfect mix of outdoor play equipment options for your loved ones.

Let's dive right in.

Understanding Your Child's Interests

Our first order of business will be getting a grasp of the type of children we're dealing with and their playtime approach. The truth is that children as little as three years old already display highly complex emotional, social, physical, and cognitive characteristics.

These qualities determine their personality profiles, and these, in turn, will tell us what play styles they gravitate toward. We will then know which types of playset features will work best to stimulate, engage, and encourage their development.

A good playground set will do much more than provide your children with endless fun and amusement. It can help develop their social skills, cognitive abilities, physical abilities, creativity, imagination, confidence, and much more.

You can get a steady grasp of the type of personality you're dealing with by observing how they interact with their current toys and the environment around them. By paying close attention to them, you should quickly determine whether they are active, imaginative, adventurous, sensory, athletic, or social players. Most children are a blend of these character types, but most will display one or two more prominently than the rest. Once you're armed with this information, you can then move on to evaluating the best swing set features on the menu and work out how to match them up with the interests of your little ones.

Playset Features and How They Impact Play

The variety of outdoor play equipment and playground set configurations available today can seem intimidating at first glance. Still, things become much easier to navigate once you understand what you're looking at. Here's a quick rundown of the playset features at your disposal and how they affect playtime for children:

• Swings: No playground set would be considered complete without a set of swings. This playground classic is guaranteed to give your loved ones endless hours of breathless, high-flying fun.
• Tic-tac-toe: If you wish to give the little ones in the playhouse some mental challenges to grapple with, then a tic-tac-toe feature will be a great idea that allows them to match wits with one another as they develop their strategic thinking abilities.
• Slides: The appeal of a slide's downward rush doesn't require much explanation, but it can be even more exciting for imaginative children. They come in various shapes, sizes, and lengths and so can be reimagined as winding railroad tracks, steep mountain tracks, or the winding slopes of a rainforest incline.
• Monkey bars: For sheer athleticism, few features compete with the high-flying excitement of monkey bars.
• The Tower: The tower or main interior of your playset is the most iconic and versatile playset features available today and have been a favorite with imaginative children since time immemorial. Whether they choose to imagine it as a secret clubhouse, a fairy princess palace, a vagabond's hideout, or a comfy cottage, the possibilities of a treehouse space will only be limited by the child's imagination.
• Steering wheels: These give children the opportunity to picture themselves steering large ships, large fire engines, and whatever else they may fancy.
• Telescopes: Anyone who encounters a telescope will automatically imagine a pirate ship, and what better way to spark a young one's imagination than a wooden swing set with such an accessory?
• Tunnels: Tunnels running underneath treehouses and climbing walls can be taken as hidden passages crossing unknown worlds. They contribute towards developing spatial awareness, problem-solving skills, and so on.
• Lookout towers: Climbing up to a lookout tower and spying on the land beyond the horizon is sure to keep any little one engaged and entertained for hours on end.
• Climbing features: Climbing walls and climbing ropes are a great addition to any outdoor playset because they are highly effective avenues for the development of physical strength, coordination, and balance. They can be designed in the form of fortress walls, pirate rope ladders, and so on.

The list of features above serves to give an idea of just how many configurations are possible when assembling playground sets. In most instances, these sets will be designed to cater to certain types of children and how they approach their playtime, as we'll explore below.

Active Play Enthusiasts

Children who are drawn towards active play styles are generally full of life and energy and so need the space and tools to do so. To keep them happy, you should consider features such as monkey bars, climbing walls, swings, and such. When it comes to a wooden swing set, as long as they can burn off their excess energy, you'll be well on your way to keeping them satisfied.

Imaginative Play Lovers

The kids that rely on their creative abilities and imaginations to embellish the worlds they play in will best be served by features that allow them to explore their minds as much as possible, expanding their creative capacity and exposure. Your goal should be to provide them with a canvas on which they can then paint the environment they picture in their minds. The main tower or treehouse area can be re-imagined as a cozy drawing room where your little one can host tea parties or a well-hidden secret gang hideout where the gang of highway robbers can lay low. The sky's the limit here.

Adventurous Climbers

If you have children who like to see how high they can go, the features such as monkey bars, lookout towers, climbing ropes, and even slides can provide them with endless climbing adventures. The most important factor to consider here is their safety. With Gorilla Playsets, you don't need to be overly concerned on this point, as all sets are built to ensure the well being of your child by using carefully considered materials, measurements, and designs.

Nature and Sensory Play Aficionados

In much the same way that newborns require contact with their parents to establish an early bond and connection, growing children need to engage in sensory-based play to get a firm grasp of their environment and how to interact with it.

A playground set designed to highlight natural and sensory aspects of the world might include features such as wooden bridges, swings, lookout towers, and rope walls. Such features will put them in vivid and stimulating contact with the environment and elements around them.

Social Butterflies

Children should be encouraged to cultivate and develop their social skills as early as possible, as these point to continued success as they continue to grow in the world. A child that exhibits a desire to play with others should be encouraged in this pursuit by including features such as treehouses, tic-tac-toe, double-swings, see-saws, and so on in their playground sets.

Young Athletes

Growing children need to test their strength and challenge their young bodies to ensure that they grow up big and strong. At certain ages, they will gravitate towards athletic play styles as they try out their rapidly-growing limbs, so be sure to provide them with appropriate playset features such as monkey bars, climbing walls, swing sets, lookout towers, etc.

Final Thoughts

We all want the best for our kids, and one of the most effective ways to brighten up a young one's life is to provide them with a great outdoor playground set. There are nearly endless variations and configurations of features to choose from, so the idea is to try and choose features that will most likely complement and satisfy your child's approach to playing. You might not get this selection exactly right, but that's not the only point. Children are flexible enough to appreciate and enjoy whatever you settle on, so don't let the decision stress you out.

What you shouldn't do is compromise on is the quality of the outdoor play set you choose. We here at Gorilla Playsets have you covered! Check out our available swing sets to get your child’s perfect backyard adventure today!