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.