Archive for September 2015
A great day out in Haven Lakeland Park
Living in a holiday area means that we can enjoy holiday type activities all year round regardless of the season. The only places we can’t access are holiday parks because they are reserved for residents only which is a great shame because the swimming pools there are fantastic. For some reason Grange – Over – Sands has not been very good at looking finding good companies to build maintainable swimming pools so they seem to go into disrepair and are either listed as a grade 2 building that is too dangerous for people to used or knocked down to make way for affordable houses. The only other alternative are the many hotels in the area or in leisure centres a good drive away. The Haven Holiday Park in Flookburgh is only walking distance away and would be the perfect pace to go swimming if we could have access.
This weekend…
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Do your Children Have #nowhere2play API to Study Decline in Children’s Play Facilities
Posted September 3, 2015
on:- In: Children | Exercise | Health | Outdoors | Play eqipment | Playgrounds
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The Association Of Play Industries (API) have become greatly concerned with the lack of play facilities for children, particularly in urban areas, and are conducting a survey to find out from parents the state of play facilities in their area. The campaign is called #nowhere2play and is supported by Playdale Playgrounds Ltd who are experts in designing play equipment and installing it all over the world.
Do your children have public spaces to play in? Even in the countryside we are seeing green patches of land being swallowed up by housing estates and school playgrounds sold off to building companies. Is your local playground somewhere where you and your children like to meet friends and have fun or has it become dilapidated and rarely used. The Association Of Play Industries (API) have become greatly concerned with the lack of play facilities for children, particularly in urban areas, and are conducting a survey to find out from parents the state of play facilities in their area. The campaign is called #nowhere2play and is supported by Playdale Playgrounds Ltd who are experts in designing play equipment and installing it all over the world.
We are pretty lucky in this part of Cumbria, as there are plenty of places for children to play, and the majority of playgrounds are well resourced and maintained by committees. In Carlisle funding cuts meant that the council considered bulldozing unused playgrounds down, leaving spaces for imaginative play. This article in metro.co.uk explains their intentions. I am not sure if they followed through with this plan or were stopped in their tracks. To be fair the council were only considering removing playgrounds that were rarely used anyway as opposed to ones that were the meeting place of children in particular areas.
Are playgrounds used less these days because we are reluctant to let our children wander from our sight when they are playground age? There are significantly more cars than there used to be, causing us to be more overprotective than we may have been in the past. We are in an age where we fear strangers hanging around our children and allowing them to go and play out of our sight in a playground where there is no one to protect them scary. Children don’t really gain independence until they are in the upper juniors or starting secondary school, depending on how sensible they are.
As the population of the UK increases we find our selves in a space paradox, we will have more families so we need more houses, we will have more children so we need play areas but the houses have been built on the land that was once a playground. If children don’t get the opportunity to play outside they become obese and cost the NHS milions so what do we do?