Kids don’t think about heat, cold, rain, or snow when they want to play. Indoor soft play equipment gives them a place to enjoy being kids where the weather will not spoil their fun. Join in on helping kids and their caretakers make active fun a priority by providing them with the Soft Play area to do so.
Table of Contents
- What Is Soft Play Equipment? What Is a Soft Play Area?
- Benefits of Soft Play Equipment
- Types of Soft Play Equipment
- Soft Play Equipment by Age
- What Businesses Should Consider a Soft Play Playground?
- How to Start a Soft Play Indoor Playground
- Get Your Soft Play Equipment From Soft Play Today
What Is Soft Play Equipment? What Is a Soft Play Area?
Soft play equipment is a new take on traditional playgrounds. Often used indoors, these soft playgrounds have all the elements kids love to use. Slides, tunnels and climbers are only some of the equipment types you can select when creating your own soft playground.
What sets soft play playgrounds apart from traditional play spaces is the cushioned structures. Soft padding covers the frames of structures. Plus, the equipment includes a wide variety of options to excite kids and encourage play with their peers.
Many businesses and venues incorporate soft play areas as recreation options for customers’ kids. For instance,the Kennedy Space Centerhas a soft play area to activate the imaginations of budding astronauts with its Planet Play area. Features of this play area include space-time netting, an interactive satellite game and a handcrafted foam solar system. This example shows how varied these types of play areas can be to accommodate the needs of any business.
Benefits of Soft Play Equipment
Soft play equipment offers multiple benefits for kids and businesses. Taking these advantages into account will give you a more holistic picture of what having an indoor play area would look like. The benefits may not appear on paper immediately but will become apparent in kids’ active play and their caretakers’ increased satisfaction with your business. Check out 10 benefits of soft play equipment below.
1. A Place for Kids to Interact With Peers
Kids may end up playing with the same groups at school and in their neighborhoods. By providing a place for kids to interact with their peers at your business, you give them the chance to develop new social skills. They also learn how to play and interact with kids they’ve never met before. Your indoor playground might prompt friendships that last beyond the time spent in the play area.
2. Activate Kids’ Imaginations With Theming
Themed playgrounds activate kids’ imaginations by providing them with colorful play areas. For example, the largest indoor play area at Memorial City Mall in Houston, Texas, features a medieval-themed play spacecovering 3,000 square feet. Kids who play here can encounter a three-story castle, a roaring dragon, a bubbling cauldron and a sleeping giant. They can pretend to be in their favorite fairy tales with the themed elements needed to spark their imaginations built into the playground.
3. Encourage Active Play
Encourage kids to get active and build physical fitness while having fun. Play areas allow kids to enjoy movement by climbing, sliding and interacting with the elements in ways they cannot anywhere else. A lifetime of enjoying activities can start with positive experiences of active play as kids.
As they get active on soft play elements, kids can build stamina and strength. Plus, when you install inclusive play structures, kids of all abilities can get active and have fun.
4. Build Confidence in Kids
Kids need to do activities on their own to learn confidence and build self-esteem. Indoor playgrounds give them the chance to challenge themselves physically on the equipment and to learn problem-solving and social skills while playing with others. As they improve in these skills through play and peer interaction, they can have more confidence in themselves.
5. Promote Unstructured Play
Kids sometimes need to play without the structured rules of sports. Unstructured play on an indoor soft playground lets kids invent ways to play. They can simply enjoy the equipment without another goal. However, they may also want to interact with others and use their collective storytelling skills to create an imaginative world around the play equipment. Both are possible with unstructured play in a supervised play space.
6. Offer Year-Round Fun With Indoor Structures
Indoor playgrounds are protected from the outdoor elements that often make surfaces hot to the touch or slippery from precipitation. Kids can enjoy an indoor playground all year long, so their fun doesn’t need to stop based on times of year or weather conditions.
By having a soft playground in your business, you have an attraction that your customers can use throughout the year.
7. Attract Families and Boost Your Business
An indoor playground provides an attractive feature for families who visit your business. Caretakers can relax for a few minutes while they watch their kids on the soft play equipment. Kids can have more fun while at your business by enjoying the playground and meeting their peers.
This attraction may encourage kids to ask their caretakers to return to your business. Or guardians may prefer to visit your site because there’s a place for their kids to play. Whether the kids or their caretakers talk the other into returning, you still benefit from more repeat customers at your business.
8. Select Options to Fit Your Available Space
Soft play equipment gives you the benefit of choosing options to fit the space that you have. You don’t need to have a large open area to include an indoor playground in your business. This perk makes integrating a play space in your location easier, even if you don’t think you have much room.
9. Provide a Continued Return on Investment
When you show your indoor playground as an amenity for caretakers and their kids, you build a regularly returning customer base. These regulars can help you boost your business through their patronage and by spreading word-of-mouth about your location. By making your business family-friendly, you can improve your bottom line and see a return on your investment in a soft play area.
10. Inclusive Play for Kids
Give kids of all ages and abilities the chance to play together with inclusive play equipment. Indoor play equipment with an inclusive design helps your business ensure all kids participate in the fun.
Types of Soft Play Equipment
With indoor playgrounds, you can choose equipment that calls itself soft play because it includes padding over the elements. However, only Soft Play® branded playgrounds and elements can get you the benefits ofupper-level accessible play elements, customization options, free design consultation, in-house component manufacturing and on-site installation. Types of equipment for your indoor playground from Soft Play include the following:
1. Soft Foam Sculptures
Soft foam sculpturesadd colorful, eye-catching elements to your indoor playground. You have a full range of options to choose from, including licensed designs, customized pieces, abstract forms, whimsical structures and semi-realistic styles. These provide soft elements for kids to climb on and activate their imaginations in free play. You may want to include a customized option — such as your business mascot — in your indoor playground. We can create a customized foam sculpture based on your designs.
If you need something quickly, select from ready in-stockorElementzdesigns. Pick & Play pieces make designing an indoor playground easy — choose from five themes, pick the play area most like yours and choose the size needed. We’ll take care of the rest. Elementz pieces come individually or in packages based on the size of your space. These abstract features have interactive elements, such as tunnels or stepping stones, for fun play on soft foam sculptures.
2. Play Events
Play eventskeep kids active with slides, tunnels, interactive play, imaginative elements, climbers and other individual elements to incorporate into your indoor playground. These let you piece together a customized play area in your business based on the specific pieces you want to include. Or, you can add these events to standalone play areas to customize your playground.
3. Toddler Equipment
Toddler equipmentmeets the developing needs of toddlers still developing coordination and skills. These pieces of equipment give toddlers size-appropriate places to play. Smaller play areas for more comprehensive activity spots and independent elements ensure all toddlers in the area have a variety of play options to maximize their fun, whether playing alone or with others.
4. Small Play Structures
When you don’t have a large area to install a playground in, you can choosesmall play structures. These multifeatured play spaces maximize the fun kids can have per square foot. Customizable options let you add on various features, such as games or platforms, to get more from your play structure. Plus, by customizing the small play areas, you can meet the needs of kids at your business and avoid going over your budget for the projects.
5. Themed Playgrounds
Businesses frequently use themed playgrounds to make their play areas stand out with imaginative designs built around a common theme. Themes used atother venues with Soft Play equipmentinclude space at Kennedy Space Center,undersea exploration at Pacific PediatricsandLego structures at Legoland.
6. Classic Playgrounds
Play structures with softer structures and 30 years of design experience behind them are what you get when you chooseSoft Play classic indoor playgrounds. Look over the existing renders as inspiration for your customized design, or choose the prepared designs to save time. However you select a classic playground, you will get the elements of fun that kids want while having the indoor soft play features needed for caretakers’ peace of mind.
7. Large Play Experiences
When space is no object, chooselarge play attractions. With larger structures, you can include more play elements and a greater number of kids can play on the equipment at a time. Like classic playground options, you can select from pre-rendered options or use them as starting points to design your own major play attraction. If you want your indoor playground to serve a maximum number of kids and have the greatest number of attractions, select large structures.
Soft Play Equipment by Age
To give kids equipment that meets their developmental and social needs and create the best experience, match the play equipment to the kids’ ages. For example, toddlers may not have much fun on playgrounds as older kids because they may not have the coordination, strength or height necessary to use the elements. Similarly, older kids may not have as much fun in a toddler play area with elements optimized for crawling and walking.
Toddlers
Toddlers range from 2 to 5 years old. These kids are just learning to walk and become more coordinated. Play areas for toddlers promote playing with peers, developing motor skills, becoming more self-confident and learning creative play.Types of play equipment for toddlersinclude:
- Indoor play sculptures
- Small play areas
- Independent play structures
Smaller play areas cater to the needs of developing toddlers, giving them fun play elements where they can interact with others of their age.
Preschool and Older
Those ages 5 through 12 will better appreciate larger play structures with more active elements. For older kids, you have the largest range of options for indoor playgrounds, including themed playgrounds to match your business type and decor. You may also chooselarger indoor play structuresthat include several tiers for kids up to 12 to climb up and slide down from. Plus, you have options to customize taller structures that require less floor space or sprawling structures for areas with shorter ceilings.
What Businesses Should Consider a Soft Play Playground?
Almost any business that kids can enter could consider creating a soft play playground. Somebusinesses with indoor playgroundsinclude:
- Health and fitness centers
- Entertainment centers
- Restaurants
- Retail centers or stores
- Daycares
- Worship centers
- Amusem*nt parks
- Public or private parks
- Water parks
- Museums
- Airports or transit stations
- Sports parks
- Community recreation centers
- Children’s healthcare facilities
The main features needed for an indoor playground are space for the play area and kids who regularly come to your business. If you have these elements, you should seriously think about adding soft play equipment to your site.
How to Start a Soft Play Indoor Playground
Installing a soft indoor playground in your business can help you meet your customers’ needs and grow your operations. Take the following steps to simplify the process of having a soft play zone installed in your building:
1. Create a Budget
Start with a budget. When you have a limit for spending on the new playground, you can avoid overspending. With options available for all budget ranges, you will be able to find the right soft play equipment you need to create a fun, interactive playground inside your business.
Budgeting should include all the fees required for opening and maintaining the playground. Don’t forget to include insurance, utilities, staff salaries, maintenance tools, cleaning products and marketing the playground in your budget for a more accurate idea of the cost of ownership.
2. Research What Kids Want From an Indoor Soft Play Area
Find out more about the kids and caretakers who frequent your business. Do you mostly see caretakers of toddlers, or do kids of all ages visit your business? Knowing the age range will help you to choose the types of play elements. For instance, if your business sees a larger range of ages, such as toddlers through elementary school kids, you may want a playground built for all ages.
3. Identify Your Goals for the Playground
What do you want the playground to do for your business and the kids who use it? Do you want to encourage interactive play? This goal works well for busy sites that have multiple families visiting simultaneously. With a smaller venue, such as a pediatric dental office where your waiting room sits one or two kids at a time, you may prefer a playground that promotes active individual play.
Consider how you want the playground to serve your customers. Do you want the play space to become an attraction to differentiate your business from competitors? Or do you want to provide a relaxing amenity for caretakers and kids?
4. Look at Available Space in Your Business
How much space does your business have for an indoor playground? The more space you have, the greater variety of options you can choose from. However, even with limited floor space, you can still get a larger play area by considering taller structures with multiple levels for climbing.
5. Think About the Kids Using the Indoor Playground
What ages of kids will use your playground? If you anticipate toddlers, choose equipment for ages two and up. However, if you have space, you may consider a separate toddler play area from the main indoor playground for older kids. These separate areas can allow toddlers to play with a group closer to their age.
6. Choose Soft Play Playground Elements to Meet Your Goals
Once you know the goals your playground should meet and the needs of the kids who will use it,select the Soft Play productsto create your ideal play space. Find pieces that will meet your budget and available space that is appropriate for the age groups and interests of kids who will use them.
7. Have Soft Play Professionally Install Your Playground
With Soft Play, you don’t need to install the playground equipment yourself. Let the professionals install it for you to ensure proper setup that lasts for years with good maintenance.
8. Schedule Staff to Conduct Maintenance and Cleaning of the Play Area
You need to keep up with the play area through regular maintenance and cleaning. Have staff on hand to clean any spills as they occur to reduce the impacts of heavy use on the appearance of the play structures. Additionally,schedule regular cleaningsto meet the disinfection and cleaning requirements of each element.
9. Open the Playground to Your Business
Set up a grand opening of your soft play area for those who visit your business. Use marketing online and through local businesses to promote the opening and spread the news of the new indoor playground. Let visitors know about the playground when they come to encourage them to return for the soft play attraction.
10. Continue to Promote Your Indoor Playground
Don’t let your customers or the community forget about your indoor playground. Continue to market your new play area to keep the attraction fresh in the minds of your customers or potential visitors. Marketing your soft play space will bring more business to your location, providing a return on your investment.
Get Your Soft Play Equipment From Soft Play Today
Incorporate an indoor playground into your business to give kids a climate-controlled site for inclusive fun. Partner with Soft Play to grow your business with play that works.Request a quotefor soft playground equipment today orcontact usfor a free design consultation.
