Some equipment for 5 - 12 year olds should encourage cooperation. Close proximity encourages children to move from piece to piece and gives them opportunities to interact. Children of all ages can develop social skills by working together to maintain their play areas. Tricycles and other loose equipment should be used and placed in designated areas. Children can help pick up trash and push into place loose-fill surfaces such as sand, pea gravel and wood chips that has been displaced by use.
Playgrounds are a fun way for children to develop intellectually.
Playgrounds offer opportunities to learn problem solving skills, to explore, to manipulate items and to discover new ways to get off and on equipment. Exploration areas include nature trails, large composite structures and play houses. Age-appropriate areas offer younger children smaller, safer and more secure methods of getting off and on the equipment like slides, steps or slight ramps. School-age children should have more advanced methods of getting off equipment like poles, horizontal ladders or flexible bridges to challenge their problem solving abilities. Play areas should provide accessibility and play opportunities for all children With the 1991 passage of the American with Disabilities Act, many play areas are being planned or modified to give children with disabilities an opportunity to play on play equipment with other children.