It is essential that the children at your kindergarten have ample opportunity to play outside. It is also essential that they are protected from the sun's harmful UV rays, particularly if the play time is during the hottest part of the day.

Protecting children from the sun

What the children wear is one of the factors in helping to protect them from the sun. The facility to keep them out of direct sunlight is also important. You should provide play areas that are protected from the sun. The best way to achieve this is to use shade sails. These need to provide shade effectively, but they can also become part of the imaginative play experience for the children.

Creating a pirate themed area

Any great play area in a kindergarten needs to have a sandpit. Kids love to dig and to build structures out of sand. In a pirate themed play area, the sandpit is the obvious place for kids to dig for hidden treasure. Instead of using one large shade sail that will cover the whole sandpit, use three or four smaller sails that can be set at an angle and even overlap slightly. Choose green fabric for the sails, which will become the palm trees on the 'treasure island' you are constructing for the kids.

Of course there will be a jungle gym in your play area, which can become a pirate ship for the kids, with a little imagination. Some jungle gyms come with a small pitched shade roof on the highest level. You could label this the bridge of the ship. Put a large, blue shade sail over the whole jungle gym area, which will offer protection from the sun as the kids are playing and which will represent the sky over the sea that they 'sail on' during their pirate adventures on the jungle gym. The blue shade cloth can also become the water if the kids pretend that they are exploring a wrecked pirate ship under the sea.

Creating an outback themed area

With just a little imagination, from you and the children, you can turn the play area at your kindergarten into an outback theme. The sandpit will become the dirt area of the outback, with the smaller shade sails becoming big trees towering above. The jungle gym can be a hill, or it can be an outback homestead. The large, blue shade sail over the whole area will become the vast blue sky over the outback.