New Year Outdoor Playtime Goals
20th Dec 2023
As the new year approaches, families eagerly make resolutions, hoping to improve their lives. However, children's healthy development depends largely on unstructured outdoor playtime, often overlooked when planning family growth goals. The great outdoors provides an ideal learning landscape where kids gain tremendous physical, social-emotional, and cognitive benefits vital for health.
Let a new
year refresh your perspective on the power of outdoor play to shape children's
growth trajectories in profoundly positive ways. Use this annual reset moment
to elevate your backyard into a playtime wonderland, facilitating adventures
that nourish your child's body and soul.
Setting Playtime Goals
As parents, our actions directly impact a child's developmental path. Intentionally designing an engaging backyard playground environment while establishing structured playtime goals amplifies the benefits of outdoor play.
First, identify your kid's playtime passions, whether that means imaginary games, physical pursuits, or building projects. Align mutual playtime interests, then collaborate as a family to pinpoint inspiring yet realistic targets. Display established goals prominently indoors as a visual commitment. Outline essential specifics like types of play, durations, weekly frequencies, and tracking systems. Employ the S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting method.
Specific - Precise actions like "Family bike rides three evenings per week."
Measurable - Quantify for tracking like "200 collective playground visits annually."
Achievable - Set realistic expectations accounting for weather, seasons, and actual lifestyles that ebb and flow. Start small.
Relevant - Choose goals directly, strengthening relationships and overall wellness.
Time-bound - Assign defined timeframes for accountability, balancing flexibility like seasons change.
Ideally, involve children in the goal-setting process to build engagement and ownership. Imagine their innovative suggestions for backyard adventures that parents may overlook.
Revisit targets, often providing encouragement and celebratory rewards along the way. Establishing structured playtime goals and an exciting Swing ‘N Slide equipped backyard playground sets up families for playtime success.
Goal #1: Daily Outdoor Adventure
Cultivating consistent daily outdoor playtime should be every family's first play goal commitment. Adventures in your backyard playground before/after school, on work break lunch hours, or even for quick morning wake-up calls maintain continuity in play routines proven to boost developmental gains. Build pathways, wander through garden beds, lay steppingstone hopscotch, install a birdbath, or create designated nature exploration zones to spark adventure.
Incorporate backyard playground play into daily habitual rhythms through mantras like "We play outside before dinner every night" or "I always take my last work call of the day while swinging with my son". Motivate daily adventures by planting kid-chosen vegetable/flower patches, hiding small toys around play areas to discover, starting birdwatcher journals, or having kids invent backyard obstacle courses. Establish outdoor play as a non-negotiable component of daily family life.
Goal #2: Physical Fitness Fun
Vigorous physically exerting play lays crucial foundations for continued healthy development. While kids meet light activity guidelines, most fall short of recommended strenuous play vital for endurance, strength, and motor skills.
For extra motivation, devise family fitness competitions hosted in your backyard every Saturday morning or on a morning that best works for you. Ensuring kids elevate heart rates, build muscles, and master coordination through backyard play now yields lifelong activity devotion protecting long-term Health.
Goal #3: Screen-Free Quality Time
Alarming screen addiction data demands prioritizing device-free playtime and bonding kids with nature and each other. Initiate sacred weekends, weekday hours, or mealtimes designated 100% screen-free. Alternatively, you can schedule weekly “Screen-Free Sundays” focused solely on backyard playset activities together all day.
Most importantly, model balanced tech habits yourself by keeping phones away during dinner/playtime, powering down during work breaks for outdoor play with kids, or establishing no-call zones in the backyard. Quality time spent fully present while communicating, cooperating, using creativity, and problem-solving builds stronger family connections with memories that will last for years to come.
Goal #4: Teamwork Through Play
Cooperative social play is crucial for a child’s developments and requires gentle guidance. Foster interdependent teamwork skills in backyard playgrounds through friendly competitions like obstacle course relays raced in pairs. Promote empathy and conflict management abilities by role-playing scenarios and discussing resolutions peacefully, respecting all viewpoints.
Swing ‘N Slide's Role In Achieving Goals
The backyard playset itself is one giant piece of sensory equipment where kids interact with the world experientially, developing skills needed to thrive. Swing ‘N Slide designs equipment specifically promoting healthy growth through active, vigorous play.
With innovative playground features like swing sets, monkey bars, a rock wall and more - backyard adventures never cease. Weather-resistant wood construction ensures your investment withstands all seasons, allowing years of use to maximize your return.
Precision craftsmanship requires intricate safety inspection so you can rest assured kids' play is protected from harm. Ultimately, Swing ‘N Slide playsets deliver safety, longevity, and most importantly - joyful memories bonded through outdoor play!
A Year of Outdoor Adventure
This new year, commit to embracing playtime adventures that nourish your child's body, mind, and spirit with the wonder only nature provides. Research proves outdoor play reduces anxiety/stress while improving eyesight, sleep quality, immunity function, creativity, and cognitive skills development. Yet, in the era of digital distraction, kids spend minimal time outdoors playing freely. Installing a Swing ‘N Slide playset oasis engineered specifically to enrich development through joyful play catalyzes your family's success in achieving targeted health goals.
Climbing towering rock walls tones gross motor skills, group games strengthen social abilities, and vigorous physical thrills release feel-good endorphins. Ultimately, your thoughtfully designed backyard playground and intentional playtime priorities prepare your kids for success - now and later in life! Here's to a new year overflowing with magical memories bonded together through outdoor play!