National Playground Safety Week takes place every year during the month of April, but while this is a good time to think about playground safety, kids should do their best to be safe on playgrounds all year long. By taking action both on and off of the playground, you can reduce the chances that you'll get hurt while playing and help protect your friends and any other kids who use playgrounds, too. If you work together with kids and adults, you can make a difference and help keep playgrounds accident-free. Remember that a playground is only as safe as everyone makes it!
To start on your journey to making every playground in your community a safe place to visit, learn about your local playgrounds and the equipment they have, follow the safety rules, and think about ways you can help others learn to safely use this fun equipment.
Find out which parts of the playground kids like to play on the most. You can ask them face-to-face or make surveys and tell them to write down which ones that they like best and least. Get as much information as you can from them, including why they like or don't like the equipment, how long they play on it, and how many times they've fallen or hurt themselves while using it. Once you've gathered this information, take the results to some adults. Ask a parent or teacher to help you talk to the owners of the playground, including principals and city council members, so that you can all work together to make the spaces and equipment safer.
Learn about how your playground's equipment is supposed to look and work, and inspect it before you use it. Ask an adult to find playground equipment manuals online so that you can read up on where different parts, like nails and screws, should be. Make sure everything is tightened and in its place before using the equipment. If you share this information with your friends and they also make a habit of checking equipment before using it, everyone's chances of getting hurt will go down. Think about starting a playground patrol group and taking turns checking all of the equipment at your favorite playground!
You can also take your new love for playground safety to school. Join up with some friends and design posters to hang around your school's hallways to remind kids about how to stay safe on playgrounds. Make sure to keep them short and simple so that kids younger than you will understand them. Think about getting together with your principal or playground monitor and having a competition to encourage playground safety. Some kids run contests and challenge others to avoid getting hurt on the playground for a week or more!
Get the larger community involved and excited about playground equipment. You can start small by finding someone who knows about playground safety to speak at your school or neighborhood park. Introduce your town to these issues by writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper and describing how safety can improve on playgrounds. For an even bigger audience, contact your governor; governors are usually very concerned with kids' issues, and you can suggest that they help celebrate National Playground Safety Week to protect children from injury. Remember, your campaign can only be successful if you put in the work to spread the word and get people to agree with you!
Start a group of adults and children who want to keep playgrounds safe for everyone, then go out to inspect playgrounds together and find ways that you can improve them. For example, if you find that some playgrounds are built over hard surfaces, like concrete or asphalt, contact the person or organization that's in charge of maintaining it and ask them to add softer surfaces. Soft surfaces can help kids when they fall off of equipment and save them from scrapes, bumps, cuts, and other injuries!
Consider all of the other things that you can do every day to make a playground safer. For instance, you could set up a buddy system with other kids so that no one will ever play alone and so that kids can look out for each other while playing. Never climb onto rusty, old, or loose equipment, and only use playground equipment way that it was meant to be used. Don't wear loose clothing that can get caught on bars or hanging equipment, and avoid pushing and shoving your playmates. And if your favorite playground isn't at a school, where teachers are always around, ask your parents to talk to the playground's owners and ask for volunteer monitors so that an adult is always watching in case of an emergency.
Find more about the author: Kim Hart
