(ARA) – Now that spring is here, kids will be spending a lot more time outdoors, riding bikes, kicking the ball around, and if they have access to one, enjoying the backyard playground. They know what’s good for them.

Over the years, numerous studies have shown playgrounds to be essential not only to physical strength, but mental well-being. They help children develop social, emotional and cognitive skills.

“It’s truly amazing,” says Cindy Corn of Agua Dulce, Calif., a town 50 miles north of Los Angeles. “My sons play all sorts of imaginative games on their playground. One minute they’re pretending to be construction workers building a city in the sandbox, the next they’re swinging high into the sky or racing their Hot Wheels around a makeshift track.”

Cindy and her husband Ed decided to get their sons, Benjamin, 7, and Miles, 4, a playground about a year and a half ago. “We live in Southern California in the desert and will never have a tree big enough to build a tree house for the boys, so we decided to do the next best thing and get them a playground with a fort.”

After researching several companies, both locally and on the Internet, they decided to go with a system designed by a company they read about in Parents’ Magazine, New Jersey based Detailed Play Systems. “It allowed us a lot more flexibility than other kits out there. We were able to pick and choose the pieces we wanted and since we’d be building it ourselves, put them together the way we wanted to,” says Cindy.

If you decide to build a playground yourself, you can count on the project taking about a weekend to complete. Figure about 8 hours for the wood processing, which includes cutting the wood to size and drilling the holes for the bolts, and another 8 hours for assembly.

“We’ve been really happy with this kit. Because of the hot desert out here, a lot of playground sets fall apart around here. When we put this together, it was absolutely solid, and still is today,” says Corn. Once you have completed your project, you may want to add such safety measures as mulch made from recycled rubber, landscape timbers made from recycled plastic, bumper pads, and nonskid strips for places where kids need a better grip. All of these kits and add-ons are available direct from Detailed Play Systems.

The company is based in New Jersey, but does most of its business online and through catalogs. To order a catalog, call (800) 398-7565 or log on to www.detailedplay.com. Shipping is available in the 48 contiguous United States.