The dacha season opens when the whole family goes to the dacha. When arranging your summer cottage, do not forget about the children's corner. Make it brighter by installing an outdoor children's swing for your garden.
What can you make a children's swing from?
First of all, the swings differ in the material they are made of. Children are interested in everything that is unusual. For example, old car tires make an excellent seat. The wheels are tied to ropes vertically and horizontally. The tires are cut with a knife, turned inside out, and made into chairs and seats in the form of different shapes. There are even factory-made plastic rides like tires. The seat is equipped with mounting holes. Parents can only thread the ropes with their own hands and secure them to the support.
The classic material for assembling swings is wood. In its simplest form, the attraction for children is made of a piece of board tied with ropes or chains to a support. The seat is secured at both ends or in the center. The second option is a bungee, on which children ride while sitting and standing. A wooden permanent frame for a children's swing is created with your own hands from timber or logs. The seat for children is made into a bench or a pair of single chairs are attached.
No less popular, but expensive, are steel swings. The frame is welded with your own hands from pipes or profiles. The design is reliable and can withstand heavy loads. The downside is the metal's susceptibility to corrosion. Periodically, the structure will have to be cleaned of rust and painted.
However, metal is a very convenient material for making a collapsible structure with your own hands. Parents make compact swings for their children, which they use outside in the summer, and when cold weather sets in, they move them indoors. The frame of this design is connected with bolts and, if necessary, can be easily disassembled for spare parts.
Preparing for work
We advise you to think through everything in advance down to the smallest detail. Our advice will help.
Material selection
When choosing a material, be guided by the installation methods of the product and the purpose of its operation. If you are making a design exclusively for a child, it can be made of light wood or thick fabric. If adults will also use it, then it is better to make the frame metal.
However, here you need to correctly assess your capabilities, since an iron structure requires a solid foundation where welding will have to be used. If you do not have such skills, then create a project of a wooden product with chain or rope fasteners. Pay attention to oak, cedar, pine or birch. When properly processed, such wood will not crack, burst or turn into dust.
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If you don’t have wood or metal at hand, you can use another convenient and unpretentious material - a rubber tire. It is enough to secure it on a strong rope and tie it to a strong tree branch.
Preparing tools
You will need:
- Hammer
- Sandpaper
- Strong rope or several chains
- Large Diameter Heat Shrink Tubing
- Screwdriver
- Pencil
- Saw
- Carbines
- Blueprints
Types of homemade children's swings
It is impossible to list all the existing types of rides. Parents invent swings for their children from things lying around the house. However, all of them can be conditionally divided into three groups: for home, outdoor and portable models.
Children's swings for home
There is no swing just for indoor use, since if desired, it can always be taken outside. However, such attractions for children have their own characteristics. The first of these is compactness. Most often they do not have a supporting frame.
They make a children's swing for an apartment with their own hands, hanging on ropes. The seat is a piece of board, plastic window sill or a chair with armrests and a front crossbar. The second feature is that more often parents try to make soft seats for their children. Cocoons, simple strips of tarpaulin, and rings with mesh are popular. Children love to swing a lot. A soft seat will cause less damage to furniture or wall decoration upon impact.
Indoor models are often suspended from the ceiling if it is made of concrete floor slabs. The brackets can support the light weight of children.
Portable models can similarly be classified as outdoor and indoor attractions. Such designs are usually designed for small children. Factory-made and hand-made products are often made from a thin-walled metal tube. The frame is folding or collapsible. The seat is a child-friendly chair with armrests. For the youngest children there is a front bridge. The limiter prevents the baby from falling out of the chair while rocking.
Children's swing for outdoors
Attractions intended only for outdoor use cannot be brought indoors, even if children wish to do so. The swings are large in size. First of all, this concerns the frame. It is welded with your own hands from a pipe or using lumber. It doesn’t matter how many children the structure is designed for. According to the rules, the frame of a children's outdoor swing is made with your own hands and is 2-2.5 m high. The seat has a large swing angle. Such a children's attraction is inappropriate inside an apartment.
Important! Outdoor swings are not always made in the form of seats suspended on a frame. Children create their own balance beams, rides on springs and even small carousels.
Why are they attractive?
The best recreation for children is playing outdoors. In good weather, you can have fun on the swing, swinging in different directions, jumping and spinning. Thanks to the light weight and soft upholstery of the seat, even an impact does not cause severe bruises. There are significantly fewer injuries from the Nest than when riding on a regular metal or wooden swing.
If the size of the seat allows, you can play with two, three, etc. The main thing is that the structures are durable and can withstand the pressure of everyone. Thanks to their compactness, they can be easily stored. For the winter, the swing is removed, folded and put away in any convenient place - on the balcony, in the pantry, in the closet.
Inexpensive materials at hand are suitable for the manufacture of the seat and frame - gymnastic hoops, car tires, wood, metal. And if you involve children in joint creativity, they will suggest the most unexpected ideas.
Like any moving object, swings can be dangerous. They do not provide a backrest or any other kind of insurance. It is advisable to protect a child under 5 years from this idea or at least reduce the seat height to a minimum. The supporting frame or beam must be as strong as possible. Under dynamic influences, the load increases several times, which must be taken into account during design and manufacturing.
Dimensions and drawings of children's swings
A special feature of the attractions for children is their individual sizes. A child differs from an adult in height, weight, and physique. The dimensions of the frame can be left as those suitable for a swing for adults. They don't play a special role. It is important to correctly calculate the dimensions of the seat and its hanging height. For a comfortable push-off, children should touch the ground with their feet, but at the same time not catch their feet when swinging. The height of the suspension is determined taking into account the height and age of the children. The table displays approximate data.
The size of the seat for a children's swing depends on how many children it is designed for. If this is a single-seat attraction, then a seat width of 40-50 cm will be enough. A bench for several children is made 1-1.2 m wide. Very wide seats for children's swings are unacceptable. They have a lot of weight. Children are not always able to swing a massive bench on their own.
Selecting a location
The swing can be installed under trees.
When choosing a place to install the swing, take into account the following features:
- It is better to choose a flat area for mounting supports;
- if the structure is located near a barbecue or open fire, it must be protected from sparks;
- the swing can be placed in the shade of trees if the site is in direct sunlight;
- it should not interfere with other buildings in the garden.
To protect the structure from wind and rain, it is installed on a covered veranda or terrace.
How to make a baby swing with your own hands
If you want to create an attraction for children with your own hands, you first need to think through its design, draw a drawing, and calculate the dimensions. Materials and appropriate tools are prepared for the finished project.
How to make a simple baby swing with your own hands
Children hang a simple swing with their own hands on a branch of a tall tree. You can make such a design in 15-20 minutes. For the seat, prepare a piece of board 50 mm thick and 200-250 mm wide. A hewn log with a thickness of 100-150 mm is suitable. Workpiece length 500-600 mm.
It’s easy to make a children’s hanging swing with your own hands. A hole is drilled in the center of the seat. The end of a thick rope is passed through it, and a large knot is tied at the bottom. The second end of the rope is wrapped in several turns around a thick tree branch growing at a height of 2.5-3 m. A triple knot is tied to secure it.
Children should not attach the simplest swing to a tree with chains, nails, clamps or other devices. They will damage the bark and wood.
As a last resort, for quick hanging, a rope loop secured with a carabiner is suitable. The principle of fastening is shown in the photo.
Advice! Children can ride on a bungee swing while standing or sitting. The wooden seat must be sanded so that the baby does not pick up splinters.
How to make a children's swing for a summer house with your own hands
Country swings for children are recognizable by their stationary frame. More often it is made of two vertical posts and a jumper. The manufacturing material is timber, round timber or metal pipes. The racks are buried in the ground to a depth of 1 m. A crossbar is fixed to the top of them, and a seat is suspended. The downside of the U-shaped frame is poor stability and loosening when children ride on a swing.
The best option is considered to be frames, where each side support post consists of two pillars. They are placed at an angle with your own hands, sometimes reinforced with a jumper.
An L-shaped and A-shaped frame for a country children's swing is created with your own hands with a sharp top, where the jumper is fixed. The first option consists of two racks installed at an angle. In the second option, a jumper is installed between the racks at an arbitrary height from ground level. This makes the side support look like the letter “A”.
No less popular is the frame of a swing for children in the shape of the letter “X”. In essence, the design is similar to the previous options, only instead of a sharp top, the intersecting posts form forks.
The downside of wooden frames is the loosening of the upper unit during intense riding by children. A reinforced connection is obtained by welding a metal nozzle pipe with your own hands. The design principle is shown in the photo. A beam or log is inserted inside the pipe and secured with self-tapping screws.
The seat of a children's country swing is made with your own hands from available materials. Children love hanging tires, a regular board, or a couple of tied thin logs. A chair with armrests is made from boards for a small child.
Advice! It is better to make the seat single. To allow several children to ride at the same time, you can hang a couple of benches, you just need to increase the width of the frame.
The seat of a children's swing is attached to the crossbar in the following ways:
- the rope thrown over the crossbar is fixed with a bracket;
- They put metal plates on the upper plane of the crossbar with their own hands and fix them with long bolts;
- use a carabiner to cover a loop of rope;
- install anchors or eye bolts with eyes;
- cover the crossbar with a clamp.
When the home swing for children is installed with your own hands, we begin to decorate it. Children paint the structure with brightly colored paints. The area near the attraction can be covered with sand. Children will find it interesting and comfortable to jump off the swing.
The video shows an example of a wooden swing:
How to make a swing for kindergarten with your own hands
Small children attending kindergarten are interested in figure swings. By design, they can be suspended or ground-mounted. Here it is important to come up with an interesting figure, to make a comfortable and safe seat for children.
Do-it-yourself rope-type swings for the playground are created in the shape of an airplane, an animal, or a car.
The ground attraction is made like a regular balance beam. To make swings attractive to children in kindergarten, the supports are covered with figures cut out of plywood. The photo shows an example with a penguin. At your discretion, you can cut out another bird, animal, or fairy-tale hero. Eyes, mouth, nose are painted with paints.
How to make a children's swing on a spring with your own hands
One of the varieties of figured swings is a children's attraction on a spring. The seat is cut out of plywood in the shape of a horse, a whale, or a car. Be sure to attach handles to help children hold on while having fun.
To make a children's swing with your own hands, you will need a concrete foundation. It is buried 50 cm into the ground. Embedded threaded rods are embedded in the concrete, protruding onto the surface of the base.
A plate is cut out of a sheet of steel 4 mm thick and holes are drilled. They must coincide with the studs protruding from the foundation so that the workpiece can be threaded and tightened with nuts. A piece of pipe is welded in the center of the plate. Its thickness should fit inside the spring. Two such flanges are made by hand. One is strung on studs and tightened firmly with nuts. The second flange is attached to the seat of the children's swing using metal corners. Now it remains to connect the protruding sections of pipes by putting a powerful spring on them.
How to make a children's swing for two
An excellent example of an attraction for two children is the balance beam. You don’t have to worry about digging in supports.
For a swing you will need half a car tire and a board 2 m long.
The first step is to cut the wheel in half with your own hands. Rubber is cut with a sharp knife, wiping the blade with laundry soap. The wire cord is sawed with a hacksaw. First, take one half and screw the embedding bars to the side shelves with self-tapping screws. Their length is equal to the diameter of the wheel. The center is measured on the board, holes are drilled, and bolted to the embedded bars.
The second half of the wheel is still cut into two equal parts. Pieces of the tire are fixed along the edges of the board using similar embedded bars, but on the underside of the seat. The elements will spring back when they hit the ground.
The board is sanded with sandpaper. To prevent the wood from wasting, it is impregnated with an antiseptic and varnished. For ease of riding, handles are attached to both edges of the board.
How to make a baby swing from fabric with your own hands
Fabric seats are made for babies over 1 year of age. It should be shaped like a chair with armrests and a front crossbar.
To make a seat with your own hands, children will need two pieces of durable fabric 80 cm long and 4 round wooden sticks 2.5 cm thick and 30 cm long.
Wooden blanks are treated with sandpaper. To connect with rope, holes are drilled along the edges.
A cross is made from strips of fabric. Its lower element will act as a strap in front of the seat. This part of the fabric is reduced in width exactly by half.
Strips of fabric are sewn together. At each end of the cross, the edge of the material is folded and stitched with a machine. Prepared wooden sticks are inserted into the resulting loops.
A rope is passed through the holes of the wooden round timbers. Fixation is carried out with knots.
The other ends of the ropes are tied into metal rings. The rope is bent into a loop and secured with clamps. Before clamping the rope, you need to make sure that its length is correct for hanging the swing.
The finished fabric chair is suspended from a tree branch or other support, hooked with carabiners with rings.
How to make a safe swing for children with your own hands
For young children, it is first of all important to ensure the safety of the attraction. The do-it-yourself children's swing shown in the photo was made taking into account this requirement.
If the children's seat is made of metal, then there should be no sharp edges on it. The chair is bent from the tube so that rounded corners are obtained. The trim strips are ground in the same way, getting rid of sharp edges.
A cradle suspended on ropes is also a safe swing for newborns. It is convenient to use an oval wicker basket made of wicker as a base. Its length should allow children to lie at their full height.
Hanging swing cradle for small children is made of durable fabric. The perimeter of the cradle is framed with round wooden sticks. Through the drilled holes, the cradle is suspended with ropes to the support.
For children over 3 years old, a chair is suspended from ropes. It usually consists of a set of round sticks held together by ropes. The front bridge ensures safety for children. The restraint moves freely along the ropes, allowing the baby to get out of the seat and sit on it.
Safe models include floor swings of a folding or collapsible type. The frame is made of thin-walled pipe. All corners are rounded. The chair is upholstered in fabric with a foam lining. The limiter is the front jumper and a fabric strap.
Design selection
The swing consists of 3 main elements: a support, a seat and suspensions. They vary in type and installation features.
Base
To construct the support, a log or beam of small diameter is used. Connections are U-, X- and A-shaped. The side elements are made in trapezoidal or triangular shape.
Suspensions
Using hangers, the seat and backrest are attached to the base. To do this, choose polypropylene ropes, chain or rope.
Seats
Depending on the design of the structure, the seat is represented by a small board with holes for clamps, a hanging chair with a backrest. There are also options with a ball chair and a “nest”. For the garden, a structure in the form of a bench with a back attached to a supporting beam is often used.
Useful tips
To make a garden swing for children you assembled with your own hands a pleasure, a few useful tips will help you operate the attraction correctly:
- Children under 3 years of age should not be left to ride unattended;
- children need to be explained the dangers of being in the seat rocking area;
- swinging is carried out in the direction provided for by the design of the swing;
- Once a week, the working units are checked to identify signs of wear.
Proper operation of the attraction ensures the safety not only of children riding, but also of people nearby.
Game complex
There should be a children's playground on the plot. For restless kids, the children's play complex will give a lot of positive emotions.
Outdoor games and physical activity are extremely beneficial for children. Coordination of movements, dexterity develops, muscles become stronger.
Such a complex may include the following elements:
- slide;
- swing;
- climbing wall;
- ladder;
- poles;
- sandbox.
The main entertainment for children at the dacha is still the swing for the playground.
Safety precautions
Before allowing children into the attraction, you need to tell them about the rules for its use:
- do not load the swing too much;
- do not swing above a certain height;
- hold on to the lines with both hands;
- do not approach while someone is swinging;
- do not brake at full speed, much less jump off;
- If you fall, do not raise your head immediately, but only after stopping the swing.
But even if, in your opinion, no one participating in the entertainment is in danger, one of the adults needs to be nearby and keep the situation under control.
Material
There are two options for materials for structures with supports: metal and wood. Unfortunately, a children's metal swing for a summer house will require special skills from you. If you are not a blacksmith or a welder, building a metal frame will be problematic. And you will also have to look for pipes for supports.
To make such a swing you will need very little: a wooden chair and chains - and a unique decor for your yard is ready
Children's swings are not particularly demanding in terms of design. For children, the main thing is movement, and a rope suspended from a thick tree branch with a board for sitting can provide it.
The optimal solution that any parent can implement is building a wooden swing.
