To keep boredom at bay during break times and extend outdoor educational provision, it is important to provide pupils with a variety of equipment to play on and different types of learning activities to engage in. To help, there is now a range of switchable school playground equipment. This new type of product has easily interchangeable components that you can swap over to provide new activities and challenges on a regular basis, keeping the pupils engaged. Here we look at some of the switchable play and learning equipment now available.

Switchable rope climbing frames

Switchable rope climbing frames come in three varieties: an apex frame, a cube frame and a square frame. You can buy these individually or in multiples to create an extended climbing activity or a climbing zone. The real advantage of these frames, however, is that they come with a variety of switchable components to offer different challenges. This means that over the course of the school year, you can mix and match the components to create endless new challenges for your pupils to have a go at.

What’s more, the challenges come in three difficulty levels: simplified, intermediate and advanced. This enables you to cater for pupils of different ages or set challenges of varying difficulty for pupils to try and overcome. The challenges include climbing, traversing, balancing, swinging and more. And as there are more than 40 different rope challenge designs to choose from, the range of combinations you can create means children will always have something different to play on.

The switchable rope climbing equipment is part of our interchangeable Trim Trails collection. This means you can combine the apex, cube and square frames with traditional Trim Trails apparatus to create a truly unique obstacle course for your pupils. Trim Trail components can be purchased individually, enabling you to choose the pieces that best suit your pupils and your playground design.

There are over 60 different Trim Trail components available, and these are divided into three age-appropriate groups: early years, intermediate and advanced. This means younger children can have equipment that is lower to the ground and less demanding, while older pupils can go higher and take on bigger challenges. Trim Trail equipment includes items like wobbly bridges, hanging tyre challenges, shuffle bars, rope traversing, balance beams, log weavers and steppers, jungle bars and much more.

Switchable panels

Aside from climbing equipment, our switchable school playground equipment also includes a growing range of swappable panels that can be used for either outdoor learning or to provide creative playground activities. By erecting two sturdy wooden posts in your playground, it is possible to quickly swap these panels around whenever you need to. Posts can be placed wherever you want them and the panels at the height you need. The panels are securely fitted to the posts so they cannot be pulled off by children but can be easily removed by members of staff.

For outdoor play, there are panels that can be used for chalking, playing chime bells, xylophone, rain wheel and drainpipe drums, dry-wipe drawing and colouring, story writing, painting, playing battleships, making up crosswords and playing a child-friendly version of the hangman game that features a dangling spider.

For outdoor learning activities, there are specialist boards for almost every area of the curriculum. These include sum spinners and tessellation boards, weather stations, plant growers, map boards, historical timelines (e.g., Vikings, WW2, Romans and Victorians), a yoga positions board, anatomy boards, a clock board, a musical language board, an alphabet pronunciation board and abacus, handwriting and shapes boards, plus many more. All these can be put up during the lesson and easily taken down to be stored safely when not used. In between use, they can be replaced with the play boards above.

Switchable school playground equipment – tabletops

Our final range of switchable school playground equipment is our interchangeable, outdoor tabletops. These are fitted to the tops of either single seater or two-seater wooden tables that look like mini picnic benches. These are ideal for children that work one-to-one with a member of staff or in pairs to practice particular skills and can be used with a standard dry wipe pen.

The swappable tabletops include two different handwriting practice boards, one with gradually smaller lines to encourage smaller, neater handwriting; and a board for practising modern foreign languages. This has seats on either side so two people can write and speak to each other using a different language at the same time.

Conclusion

Switchable school playground equipment enables schools to offer a wider range of playground and outdoor curriculum activities and in doing so, can save space and cut the cost of installing lots of separate apparatus. As a result, it can help keep children engaged during free time and extend the school’s provision of the outdoor curriculum.

For more information visit our Interchangeable Trim Trails or Educational Panels pages.