In modern playgrounds, the monkey bar, jungle gym, and climbing frame is usually appearing at the same time, so many people will tend to confuse them together. In fact, these three facilities has a clear difference in terms of structure, gameplay, key points of exercise, and suitable age range.
To know the differences between them can help schools, parks, and playground park operators to make a more reasonable choice of these equipment.
What is the Jungle Gym
“Jungle Gym” first puts forward by American lawyer Sebastian Hinton. He observed that children like to climb and hang like a monkey, and then he designs an early three-dimensional climbing structure.
Nowadays, the jungle gym has already developed a kind of comprehensive playground facility, it usually includes:
Climbing net
Monkey bar
Slide
Platform
Rope bridge
Hand rings
Rock climbing board
It has a biggest feature that is “multifunctional”.
Children can finish many activities, such as climbing, drilling, hanging, sliding, and balancing, so it usually is one of the core devices of the large-scale outdoor playground.
Features of the jungle gym
Its structure is complex and has a large space
It can support many children playing together at the same time
It is suitable for the comprehensive physical training
It emphasizes the social interaction and exploratory experiences
The modern jungle gym can also combine the themes to design, for example:
Forest theme
Pirate ship theme
Space theme
Ninja challenge theme
What is the Monkey Bar
The monkey bar is a hanging playground equipment that composed of many horizontal bars. Children need to move from a horizontal bar to another horizontal bar depend on their hands.
It gets“Monkey Bars”this name from that it is because children swing like a monkey.
Different from the large-scale composite structure, the structure of the monkey bar is simple, but it has a higher demand for children’s upper limb strength.
The main training value of the monkey bar
The monkey bar is very suitable for training:
Arm strength
Grip strength
Shoulder stability
Body coordination ability
Core force
At the same time, it can also help children to build:
Challenge awareness
self-confidence
Spatial judgment ability
Many children will get a very strong sense of accomplishment after successfully finishing the entire monkey bars for the first time.
The development of the modern monkey bars
Today’s monkey bars are no longer just a traditional linear structure, and it also appears:
Wave monkey bar
Circular monkey bar
Inclined monkey bar
Ninja Obstacle monkey bar
High-low combination monkey bar
These designs can improve the fun, and it is suitable for kids of different age groups.
What is the Climbing Frame
The usage of“Climbing Frame”is more widely in the United Kingdom and Europe, it mainly is specifically designed for a climbing playground structure.
Different for the jungle gym, the climbing frame put more and more focus on the “climb upward”.
The common types include:
Rope net climbing frame
Metal three-dimensional climbing frame
Climbing wall
Rope ladder
Geometric climbing tower
Spherical climbing net
Its core goal is that improve children:
Balance ability
Four limb coordination
Space perception ability
Agility
Muscle control ability
Different from the monkey bars, the climbing frame puts more and more focus on the whole-body sports.
The development trends of the climbing frames
The climbing frame of the modern playgrounds puts more and more focus on:
High challenging
Three-dimensional space exploration
Adventure experience
Social collaboration
Many large-scale climbing towers even combine:
Zip line
High-altitude rope bridge
Transparent passage
Obstacle course system
The core differences between the monkey bar, jungle gym, and climbing frame
1. The differences of the structures
Jungle gym: It belongs to the large-scale integrated structure, and usually mixes many gameplay together.
Monkey bar: Its structure is simple, and mainly focus on the horizontal bar.
Climbing frame: It focuses on the vertical or inclined climbing.
2. Different key points of sports
The main training abilities of the Jungle gym: Comprehensive athletic ability
The main training abilities of the monkey bar: Upper limb strength and grip force
The main training abilities of the Climbing frame: Balance, coordination, and agility
3. The different gameplay
Jungle gym: Focus on free exploration by many gameplay ways.
Monkey bar: Take “hanging” and “swinging” as the core.
Climbing frame: Take “climbing” and “passing” as the core.
4. The different suitable ages
Jungle gym: It usually is divided into children's area and challenge area, so it can meet many age groups.
Monkey bar: It is very suitable for kids with a certain upper limb strength, and usually 5 years and older.
Climbing frame: It can design different difficulty levels according to heights, and it is suitable for a wide age group.
What are the differences in terms of their security
Although these three devices belong the classic playground equipment, but their security key points is different.
1. The key points of the jungle gym
Due to many game ways, its security management is more complex, too.
Its key points include:
The distance between different functional areas
Foot flow line design
Platform guardrail
Device connection stability
Large-scale integrated equipment also needs to consider the collision risk when many people use it at the same time.
2. The key points of the monkey bar
The biggest risk of the monkey bar is from falling.
So it needs:
A reasonable ground clearance height
Anti-slip monkey bar
An enough safety buffer ground
Age-matched design
For young children, a higher monkey bar is easy to cause injuries to the shoulder and wrist.
3. The key points of the climbing frame
The height of the climbing frame is higher, so its key points lie in:
Anti-drop design
Rope stability
Structural stability
Safe distance
A high-difficulty climbing structure needs to avoid children stuck or stepped.
How to choose a suitable equipment
If your goal is:
Train the upper limb strength → more suitable for monkey bar
Improve the climbing ability and challenging → more suitable for climbing frame
Create a comprehensive children's activity space → more suitable for jungle gym
Nowadays, many modern playground will take the three designs together to form a more complete children sports system.
For example:
The climbing tower can connect to the monkey bar
The rope net can connect the slide platform
Ninja obstacle course can combine hanging equipment
These ways can not only improve the fun, but also enhance children’s continuously exploring desires.
The jungle gym, monkey bar, and climbing frame although belong to a classic playground park climbing facility, and their design logic is different.
All in all:
Jungle gym: Its key point is “hanging and swinging”
Monkey bar: Its key point is “climbing challenge”
Climbing frame: Its key point is a comprehensive and multi-functional play structure
Along with the development of the modern playground, these three facilities become more modularization, thematic, and challenging. Rationally pairing different devices can not only improve the play experience, but also promote developments of children's strength, coordination, and social skills more comprehensive.
