Ideal backyard for your kiddos?

We are planning to renovate our backyard this year (read: our lawn looks terrible!!) and I want input on what would be "ideal" in a backyard for kiddos in this age group (and maybe older?). I grew up in the country with a lot of amazing places/things to explore (the barn, the neighbors' huge garden, etc). I also had a tree swing and a small creek to play in. These are not things we can offer to our kiddos since we live in the city

What would be in your dream backyard for your kiddos??

TIA

 

I am jsut happy to have lawn ( I live in Las Vegas). We have a huge sandbox (8 ft square) that is home made and I love it. THey and all friends can get right in and play for an hour with out interuption. I hightly recommend sandbox. And if you make it yourself they are reasonable. I wish we had a climbing structure but they are really expensive for a large nice one. We also have a concrete slab 10 ft by 30 ft. Great for tricycles. I thougth it was big but now wish for bigger. THey love riding bikes and cozy coupe cars.

 

I love our backyard. We live in a subdivision but we are lucky that we know the man who owns a farm right behind us. So we have a fenced in back yard..fairly large, with two sandboxes (one under their swingset, and one at the other end of the yard), a trampoline, big wooden swingset, teeter totter, and then just odd and end toys. Anytime we want, we can go and explore the big field behind us which leads to a small wooded area full of great trees to play around. I wish we lived in the country like I did when I was small, and hopefully we will be able to buy a small farm once my hubby finishes college, but where we live is a pretty good compromise. The one thing I would like to have when we get us a bigger place is an inground pool and a blacktop driveway.

 

hmmm.. we have a wooden play structure with slide, climbing rope, swings, playhouse, climbing wall, tire swing.... It's in a large 20'x20' area.


The rest of our backyard looks like a jungle! LOL Ideally, I would LOVE to get rid of the grass, put pathways that lead from our covered porch to the swingset, then to our garden, and around the backyard to different planting zones and a deck off in the corner. They have both our side and front yards for grassy areas...

We've had pools, the large, above-ground type. None of our kids have liked them so far. I 'wish' I had a larger cement pad on the side yard for them to ride their bikes up and down. We live on a cul-de-sac but have maniac driving neighbors that I'm scared would hit one of our kids if we let them ride in the street.

 

I wish we had a backyard. Our backyard is small and it's taken up by a deck and a pool...there is no room for anything else in the yard. I would not mind the backyard to be a little bigger so that we had room for a swingset and even a little spot for the kids to run around.

 

We have a big wooden playset with 2 slides and 3 sets of swings - they are expensive... thankfully we got it from my dad who was selling a house and the new owner didn't want it! yay for us! anyway, they LOVE climbing up it and going down the slides and swinging.

we also have a sand & water table... I just put sand in both. I kind of like that they don't get totally immersed in the sand so there's not sand everywhere... but wonder sometimes if they are missing out on a bit sand box.

we are debating on pouring a concrete pad approx 12x30, and its interesting to read above that the pp wishes theirs was bigger. I am hoping they'll like riding trikes there and then when they get older we can ride in the front driveway/street.

good luck!

 

We have a wooden swingset, a playhouse and a trampoline in our backyard.

 

Here's a photo of our backyard-well the side where the big stuff is:

Backyard

The rest of the yard is open. We have .6 of an acre-so a nice plot of land. There's a trampoline as well, and we have a little basketball hoop we got from a friend for free. They also have a sand/water table on the deck.