Creative Play grants

Imagination Playground™ is an innovative design in play equipment that encourages creativity, communication, and collaboration in play. With a collection of custom-designed, oversized blue foam parts, Imagination Playground™ provides a changing array of elements that allow children to turn their playground into a space constantly built and re-built by their imagination. Imagination Playground™ is based on three main concepts:

• Manipulable Environment: Sand and water provide the raw materials for creativity, sensory exploration and imagination.
• Loose Parts: Imagination Playground™ Blocks and a changing collection of “found parts” allow children to create and re-create their own play environment drawing from their imaginations.
• Play Associates: Play Associates are trained workers who maintain the safety and integrity of the environment.

This unique combination of elements enables children to create a great new playground each time they visit.

Traditional playgrounds consist primarily of fixed equipment, such as slides, monkey bars and teeter-totters. Imagination Playground™ prompts children to manipulate their environment and create a playground of their own design using sand, water, loose parts and, of course, their imagination! Imagination Playground™ can be used by itself, or in conjunction with traditional playground equipment.

They are made of low carbon impact, non-toxic foam manufactured in the United States. The closed-cell foam is soft, lightweight, and waterproof. It is resistant to sun, heat, mold, mildew, corrosion and micro-organisms.

Yes. For more information about how to recycle your blocks, please Ma href=”/contact” title=”Contact us”>contact us.

The particular type of molecular linking used to bond the foam ensures that when exposed to an open fire the blue blocks will smolder, but not catch fire.

Are Imagination Playground™ Blocks in different colors?

Imagination Playground™ chose one color for the foam blocks in order to facilitate more imaginative play, without any distraction or competition that might arise from having multi-colored toys. In the design process, blue was the color that tested most favorably with both boys and girls.

To ensure safe usage of blocks and accessories during the COVID-19 pandemic, Imagination Playground™ has developed cleaning product recommendations and instructions for keeping blocks clean for repeated use.

Learn how to keep Imagination Playground™ blocks clean

There are a range of sizes within each set, specially designed to prompt collaborative play amongst children.

The blocks are non-toxic and resistant to germs, mold and mildew. They are sturdy enough to withstand the elements and soft enough to protect children from injury if they fall on the blocks. Additionally, trained Play Associates are instructed to maintain the safety of the playground and will prevent the children from climbing on the blocks or hitting each other with them. All Imagination Playground™ products have been tested to appropriate ASTM and CPSC standards.

Play Associates set up and step back. Play Associates manage the space and the Imagination Playground™ Loose Parts, and they will be responsible for making daily safety checks of the entire site. Play Associates do not direct play or teach children how to use the objects or environment.

They might sometimes quietly demonstrate a different use of materials but there will be no teaching or schedule of recreation programs. What children do will be the result of their inherent curiosity and urge to play.

Play Associates will enable children to play in ways that would not be possible without a trained staff to monitor the resources.

Must all sites that obtain Imagination Playground™ have registered Play Associates? If so, is there a certification/level of certification they must have in order to be part of the program?

Imagination Playground™ has been created as a set of parts intended to be used in conjunction with a Play Associate. KaBOOM! requires that any site receiving Imagination Playground™ through KaBOOM! have at least three trained Play Associates onsite at any given time. These staff members must receive this training prior to taking charge of an Imagination Playground™ site.

Because it was designed to be customized to a community’s needs, Imagination Playground™ can be implemented in any situation, in any community. We foresee Imagination Playground™ at daycare centers, schools, Boys and Girls Clubs, children’s museums, hospitals… in essence, anywhere there are kids. Imagination Playground™ is attached to a set of wheels that allows it to be moved indoors or outdoors as needed.

Imagination Playground™ products are designed to be semi-mobile, meant for occasional travel over short distances on the wheels attached to the storage container. However, if you would like to move the sets over a longer distance, both designs will easily fit onto the bed of a trailer.

Rigamajig® is a building kit conceived for hands-on free play and learning. It’s a collection of wooden planks, wheels, pulleys, nuts, bolts and rope designed to engage the inquisitive mind and creative spirit of children.Through play, they think three dimensionally, create physically, and work collaboratively. Building with this simple set of parts helps children combine imagination with cognitive thinking and invention, embrace process over outcome, and empowers them to be makers of their own world.

Rigamajig® is much larger, and has many more parts to share. It’s intended for 2-20 kids to play together in a supervised environment. Teachers across the US have been developing lesson plans that use Rigamajig® to learn simple machines, mathematics, STEAM topics, and much much more. Best yet, the students design ways to use it in the classroom and all around the school.

Rigamajig® Jr. is great for 1-4 kids to play with. It requires less open space, and stores away in it’s own gym-bag sized duffel.

The Rigamajig® Basic Builder Kit and Simple Machines Add-on Kit have been fabricated using the highest grade Baltic Birch Plywood and finished by hand in Rhode Island. The rope is woven and the canvas buckets sewn in Rhode Island as well. Wingbolts and Hexnuts are made in New York State from 100% recycled nylon. The brackets are made in Pennsylvania.