Friday, June 29, 2012

Our outdoor play area (updated)

Fun noodles and duct tape, curve a beam balance beam  and stepping domes

trampoline, basketball hoop, and play house



please excuse the mud puddle on our roller coaster

tarzan swing, trampo-swing, disc swing

swings and old ride ons


science lab set up

toy kitchen, food coloring, mint and lemon extract, and loose tea for kitchen and science play

outdoor "cooking" set up



coffee grounds, and sand


the mats are 4 years old and have been outdoors so they are not beautiful but work well!

see saw, rocking area

art area

clubhouse climber, picnic tables, sand and coffee ground "pit"


art area

water play "cove"

other side of water play "cove"Add caption

another view of water play "cove"

water table with 2 watering cans and pipe builders water ways from Lakeshore (disassembled right now)

water table with many types of bottles filled with colored water
A few things have been changed around, we no longer have the outdoor fish pond or sand box pool.  The tarp was ripped by hard winds and rain and it really messed up the sand. So right now we have a little sand area on the ground over top of the dirt until next week when I get something else set up for sand with a nice cover. If we had not been hit with such mega rain for days and days... the sand pit would have been fine. We were hot with an entire month of rain and bad storms in the past week. It is tough to have a great place to play outdoors when living in Florida. We get high winds, lots of rain, and storms for days sometimes in the year. We do our best to keep everything all maintained. To fix up the yard and bleach all of the toys it took me 5 full hours of work today. I work hard every week to keep the outdoor play area in tip top shape. Its a lot of hard work but well worth it. My kids learn, grow, play, and enjoy themselves as do their friends!!  That's what counts!

10 comments:

  1. I want to come play! But I live in California - bummer. Can I ask where you got the rainbow colored stepping domes? My daughter would love those. (they look like a giant bead necklace on the ground)

    Gretchen
    whatarabelladid.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow!! I hope to have a yard like that someday. We live in AZ and at the moment our yard is full of cactus:( We have some great plans for it though, it will just take time. Thank you for this post. It gave me some great ideas. This is my first time visiting and I will definitely be returning for more ideas.
    Jamie
    http://sjthomeschool.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  3. I hear ya Tropical Storm Debby made a mess here too. Love all of your creative spaces.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a terrifically fun playspace! I have a few questions--

    *What do you do about your "lawn"? Do you have any grass that needs to be mowed? Did you have to pull up grass or prepare the lawn in any way for placing the mats and such?

    *When it comes to water play, do you provide constant supervision? How do you prevent having standing water? How do you do clean ups before children come inside?

    ReplyDelete
  5. @Kristin,

    The lawn was not great, we lost a lot of our lawn in the past 3 winters freezes. Florida and freeze doesn't mix well ;)

    My husband mows it weekly, the grass that is there (which is probably mostly weeds)

    I did not prep the lawn for the foam mats. I originally staked large tarps down, eventually they became weathered and I replaced them with the foam mats.

    My twins do not pull any funny business with the water tables, they use them all properly. When they are in the yard playing, I am right there with them taking photos, setting things up, refilling things, etc. No one ever gets left alone in the yard or to swim for that matter. They have never played in the yard by themselves before.

    I do not clean up right away always. Sometimes I come back later that evening or the next morning and dump out everything. I then use soap, water, and a scrub brush to get it all clean. There are never standing water issues, the yard is uneven, it seems to all magically disappear usually! LOL On the occasion that the water does create a little mini yard flood, it is a small area and drains within 30 minutes. When it rains for a few days or life gets in the way of me dumping and cleaning out the water tables and such, I use a kitchen spray cleaner with bleach as well as soap, water, and a scrub brush.

    Thanks for visiting!!!

    ReplyDelete
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