OUR PLAYGROUNDS

My Playground®: The Power of Play

My Playground is our catalyst program that helps communities around the globe create fully inclusive playgrounds and programs that:

  • Empower children with disabilities to be full, valued members of their communities
  • Inspire advocates in the communities to create sustainable social inclusion
  • Build community resources by bringing diverse partnerships together in a shared inclusion vision.

These unique, state-of-the-art play spaces meet critical child development milestones by offering a wide variety of activities that support a child’s physical, cognitive, social, and sensory needs.
Each one is designed to reflect the community it serves and is filled with rich and varied sensory play opportunities.

Physical Play - Oodle Swing
Physical Play

Motivation to move, reflex development, motor skills, flexibility, balance, heart/lung development, decrease the risk of disease, ability to engage with surroundings, body awareness in the environment, judgment, reason, risk assessment.

Sensory Play

Ability to process smell / touch / taste / hearing / sight, proprioceptive and vestibular development that affects all areas of development, ability to plan and sequence multiple steps, cause and effect learning, communication/language skills, neural wiring, enhancing memory function, impulse control, self-regulation.

Creative
Creative Play

Language development, problem solving, imagination, knowledge acquisition, autonomous thinking, emotional regulation, academic skill development, discovering social rules and roles, sharing, patience.

When children play, great things happen.

Play is foundational in the development of children, from birth on. It provides benefits that touch
every aspect of growth from a baby’s ability to sit up to a student’s ability to hold a pencil and write.

Social exclusion can last a lifetime.

When children are denied the opportunity to play and socialize with their peers, they are denied the chance to develop skills that will benefit them forever. A 2015 survey by the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute discovered that the young adult students with Autism who participated were:

25%

Completely isolate
with no peer contact

28%

More likely to contemplate
or attempt suicide

66%

More likely to be bullied
than their peers

75%

Unemployed two years
after high school

Create Social Inclusion in Your Community.

You have the power to change the social inclusion landscape in your community for good. We have the resources to help you.