Playground at Boon Lay: The Space Underneath

See those space underneath the platforms and slides... perfect for little children to run underneath and out and about, and excellent for builing body awareness. So relax the next time your child crawl, run or cycle underneath the platforms, they are learning about their body and how it relates to the space around them.

Playground at Boon Lay: Slides

These are typical slides found in most playground. There are many many ways of playing with slides .... this learnt as i sat observing children playing on them. You can slide down the trough sitted or lying down. Sit on a piece of paper and slide down or arrange a pile of dried leaves, sit on them and slide down!

Lying on the tummy and coming down is fun but make sure that feet goes down first especially when not closely attended to by adults. You may want to encourage your child to "swim" down head first to experience the sensation but make sure you tell them not to do so when you are not around. You know your child best, if you cant trust them to be safe, dont teach them unsafe "tricks".

Children can walk or crawl up or down the slide, they can also go up backwards or sidewards by running, jumping, crawling or squirming. There's no need to keep to the trough, children can further challenge their own motor skills by walking or sliding up and down the divider between the two slides!

Some children would not need an adult to suggest these ideas to them, however, if your child have limited ideas as to how to have fun on the play ground, you may want to drop a few hinters. Show them what others are doing, demonstrate the trick and show lots of enthusiasm. Do not force them. Their little bodies may not be ready to be that adventurous.

Playground at Boon Lay: beware of the monkey bars???

It's time to move away from Bishan Park in the Northern part of Singapore and over to the west - this playground is situated in between Blk 203 andBlk 201, Boon Lay Drive. The lucky residents in this area have a great play area for their children just at their own backyard! I chose to review this playground because from my observation, it seems to represents many features available in playgrounds of newly upgraded mature estates.


This is the main playground structure of this play area. It has the stairs for your toddlers to go up to the platform, and it also has this unusual climbing frame for older kids to climb up. The more atypical a climbing structure is, the more problem solving it would require of a child and so it's geat. Remember though, once a child has mastered it, you would have to challenge him to do it another way to further develop his motor planning skills (refer to previous post for explanation of term, or if you'd like me to start a glossary of all these jargons that I use, drop me a comment, thanks!).


This is a type of monkey bars, excellent for building grip strength, shoulder stability, and coordination of the two sides of the body. However, it is also the pet topic of many orthopaedic surgeons and children emergency doctors and potential nightmares of parents. In an article in Today (dated 28 march, pg 2), a doctor was quoted saying that he sees several children each day with playground sustained injuries by which many were elbow fractures as a result of falling from monkey bars.

I certainly hope such a fact as it is, does not deter parents from encouraging their children to try out the monkey bars and/or result in the authority removing them from playgrounds! I would like to suggest alternative solutions.

Children need to be educated on the potential danger of the monkey bars. Parents of children below ten should help their kids determine if they are strong enough to hold through the entire course of the monkey bars before turning their heads away when their kids are playing on the monkey bars. Encourage them to practise many times in your presence, with you just right next to them ready to catch them. Be sure you are there to assess their ability, to cheer them on and if necesary, to catch them if they fall. Teach them not to use the monkey bars with oily hands, tell them not to compete on the monkey bars and that rules for playing catching at the playground includes not using the monkey bars! Yes, I'm nagging, but please, teach the children to be safe on the playground before essential features like monkey bars are being removed. Our children have already no trees to climb.