New Santa Rosa playground gets kids moving

Swinging by her hands and feet from the underside of curved monkey bars, 6-year-old Savannah Smith of Santa Rosa paused to savor the moment at Santa Rosa’s newest playground at A Place to Play park on West Third Street.

Going upside down - that’s the best, she said.

“The thing I thought she’d like the most she uses the least, and that’s the slide,” said her grandfather, Richard Smith, 70, who was wearing a baseball cap that read: “Dad knows a lot, Grandpa knows everything.”

But Savannah Smith instinctively knows something that some adults may not: Hanging upside down is good for kids, as least as good as the old playground standbys.

So is swinging arm-to-arm, balancing on a moving swing, gripping, grabbing, climbing and taking risks. Climb a little higher. Reach a little farther.

“It really does matter what’s on a play structure,” said Alice Hampton, a Santa Rosa Junior College child development professor who teachers a course on outdoor play environments.

Seesaws, merry-go-rounds, jungle gyms and other toys from yesteryear are all but gone from today’s playgrounds. They’ve been replaced by safer and more engaging climbing walls, large rope spider webs, circular spinning “trees” and angular climbing and balancing structures.

Healthy, active play is the goal in current playground design, said Jen Santos, deputy director of Santa Rosa’s Recreation & Parks department. “Everything there is engaging the child to move and to keep moving. You can start at one end and move all the way over to the slide and go back again.”

This type of exercise-oriented equipment is appearing at playgrounds nationwide amid a childhood obesity epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that obesity has doubled over the past 30 years while physical education and even recess have been sidelined in schools.

Opened in March

The bright yellow playground at Santa Rosa’s 76-acre A Place to Play park, where Savannah Smith enjoyed the monkey bars, is at the western end of long row of parallel soccer fields. The playground opened in March, and several parents said it was a welcome addition to the sports-oriented outdoor complex.

The playground is one of five sites in California receiving grants from the California Parks & Recreation Society and PlayCore, a Chattanooga, Tenn.-based recreation equipment company that also does research on play.

Under terms of the grant, Santa Rosa paid just $71,000 for the playground - originally priced at $114,000 - and agreed to conduct a seven-week study on exercise and play with a group of 25 after-school students.

The play space was designed and built with children ages 5 to 12 in mind, said Anne-Marie Spencer, spokeswoman for a PlayCore division called GameTime. The goal was to give children “something they can achieve and something they can aspire to.”

“We’ve done a lot of research on this, and the kids who need (exercise) the most are the ones who might be intimidated by typical exercise or sports,” Spencer said.

“But they don’t feel that way about playing; they don’t have that intimidation factor.”

On a recent afternoon in May, kids in colored jerseys darted across soccer fields at A Place to Play. Cheers and thud-kicks echoed across the fields where parallel games were underway.

Spinning wheel

Santa Rosa 10th grader Juan Nuñez, 15, and his 12-year-old brother Alex took turns spinning each other on a tall circular spinning wheel, hanging from their arms with legs swinging out. They were enjoying a little freedom to roam while their mother watched another brother play soccer.

Juan Nuñez described the playground as “a little bit different.”

On week five of the seven-week study, Santa Rosa recreation specialist Ashley Peoples has noticed progress among the students, from kindergartners to fifth graders, particularly in spinning and climbing activities.

“I think the biggest thing is their overall willingness to try something different,” she said

Santos said A Place to Play is the first of several playgrounds that will stand out from the “post and platform” style playground that requires only that kids climb stairs and ladders to reach platforms that require little more of them.

The next two playgrounds - the Kawana Springs Community Park off Petaluma Hill Road and the Roseland Creek Community Park at Hughes and Burbank avenues in Roseland - also will include what are called play trails, paths along which play and exercise equipment is stationed so families can exercise together.

SRJC’s Hampton considers playgrounds key to promoting physical development at a time when children spend so much time indoors, looking at TV and video screens and seated in chairs.

Until the late 1980s and early 1990s, monkey bars, jungle gyms and other overhead structures helped students develop their strength, Hampton said. After safety concerns arose and that equipment started disappearing from playgrounds, the President’s Challenge Physical Fitness Test documented a drop in students’ upper body strength.

“There’s that time right between kindergarten and first grade when children master the monkey swinging going arm to arm,” Hampton said. “It’s so exciting because they’re so proud of it. It’s a milestone in their physical development.”

The kind of physical play children naturally engage in at the playground promotes upper-body strength, balance, courage, curiosity and social skills. Hamilton said that when adults hang back at playgrounds, children can be “a little more free.”

“Nobody’s right there listening to what you say. You can try out some social roles that aren’t typical social roles for you: You can be the leader, you can be sneaky,” Hampton said. “It’s social skill rehearsal.”

Too technical?

Parents and grandparents at the new Place to Play playground said the bathrooms are too far away and the structures are too technical for toddlers.

But the steep ladder leading up to a towering slide did not intimate 2-year-old Alexia Byck, who nimbly climbed to the top.

Her father, Rene Byck, 45, of Santa Rosa, stood at the bottom of the ladder, ready to catch her while balancing the instinct to protect with the knowledge his toddler needed the freedom to explore.

“How’s the slide?” he asked.

“Good,” said Alexia from the ladder’s top. Then she scooted across the platform and slid down the slide, landing her feet quickly climbing up again.

Byck called the playground “beautiful” as he watched Alexia climb up and away.

“Kids love playgrounds, regardless,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.