The Benefits of Children’s Climbing Frames

Climbing frames are a great way to help your kids to burn off energy, increase their climbing confidence and to help them develop their physical strength.  Whilst climbing does encourage positive risk-taking, at Plum Play, we design our play equipment with safety and durability in mind, so, children can enjoy the freedom of play and parents can have peace of mind.


Child Development and Climbing

Climbing is an important skill that children learn as they develop.  Children first learn to climb when they are young, typically from around 12 months, and this helps them to develop their coordination and spatial awareness.  Learning to climb then helps them to acquire new skills.  For example, learning to climb by playing on a climbing frame means that they can then use these skills to walk up steps.


Once children have become more experienced with climbing, they can then further improve things like their balance and dexterity.


In addition to physical benefits, climbing frames can also help children to develop mentally.  When climbing, children need to make choices, which hand grip to hold to get the best grip and climb up the playcentre or decide which route down the climbing frame to take.  Playing in this way helps children to increase their problem-solving skills and decision-making.  This can then help them in other aspects of life, such as deciding what clothes to wear each day or which route to take on a family walk.


Children’s Climbing Frames

On your marks, get set… Climb!


A great activity to keep your children active this summer using a climbing frame would be to create an obstacle course.


Children can work together to set out the route using the climbing frame as the focal point, climbing up the ladder and scrambling down the cargo net.    They can add other toys into the course too.    Why not add in footballs to jump over, cones to run around or draw hopscotch with chalk on the path to add even more fun to the route?


Children can then take turns to see who can complete the course in the fastest time or race each other to the finish.


Another fun climbing frame activity to keep your kids busy this summer is hide and seek.    The seeker can head to the top of the climbing frame and count to 100 whilst the other children hide around the climbing frame.


Then the hide and seek fun begins!    The seeker needs to find all the hiders as quickly as they can.    Remember to look high and low and don’t forget to look in tunnels and dens and behind slides, if your climbing frame has those, there are lots of places to hide.


Toddlers’ Climbing Frame

I spy with my little eyes…


I spy is a great game to play with little ones around the climbing frame and encourages them to keep their mind active.


Each child takes it in turns to seek out something they can see on or near the climbing frame and the rest of the children can take turns to move around the climbing frame and guess what the other child can see.


I spy is a simple game to help little ones learn about their environment and can be played in a variety of ways.  Perhaps looking for things beginning with different letters of the alphabet, looking for things that are a certain colour or looking for things up high or down low.