Design a shelter for the perfect playground where ten people can wait out a shower and not be bored.Angle: what is on the walls, what the benches turn into, what you can see from inside.
Write the promise every visitor makes at the gate of the perfect playground.First line: I promise to leave it the way I would like to find it, and one thing better.
Describe the perfect playground just after everyone has gone home.Angle: a swing still moving, one glove on the bench, long shadows. What has been left exactly where it was dropped?
Ask three people what the perfect playground needs. Write down their answers and design one that keeps all three happy.Angle: one wants speed, one wants shade, one wants somewhere to sit. Whose idea was hardest to fit in?
Design a perfect playground where everyone can play, whether they run, roll, or would sooner sit and watch.Angle: wide paths, low things and high things, a quiet bench with a view. Give a reason for each.
Design the centerpiece of the perfect playground, the one thing you can see from the gate, and say why it goes in the middle.Angle: a tower, a tree, a hill with a tunnel through it. Everything else is arranged around it.
Design the ground of the perfect playground: what is underfoot in each part, and why.Angle: grass to roll on, sand to dig, something that bounces. Where does one end and the next begin?
Design the perfect playground and write a paragraph on each of its three best parts, with a reason for each.Angle: say who each part is for, and why it sits where it does.
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Design it, continued
Design the perfect playground for a very small space, a rooftop or a courtyard. What stacks, folds or hangs?Angle: when you cannot go wide, go up. What is on the wall, and what is under the bench?
Design the perfect playground for someone much younger than you, then say what you would change for someone your own age.Angle: lower, softer and closer together for one. What does the other want instead?
Design the perfect playground for the hottest day of summer, and say where the shade falls at noon.Angle: trees, a roof of sailcloth, water to run through. Which part would be too hot to touch without them?
Design the perfect playground using only what nature gives: logs, hills, sand, water and trees. Write what each one becomes.Angle: a fallen trunk is a balance beam. What is a hill for, and a puddle?
Design the perfect playground when there is only enough money for one big thing and two small ones. Choose, and defend the choice.Angle: the big thing has to work for the most people. What did the two small ones add?
Give the perfect playground a name and design the sign over its gate. Write what the sign says and why.Angle: a name that says who it is for. What is carved under the name, in smaller letters?
Write a map of the perfect playground in words, starting from the gate, so that a reader could sketch it.Angle: on your left, straight ahead, in the far corner. Finish at the thing you saved for last.
You have one empty field and may put five things in it. Design the perfect playground and explain what you left out.Angle: five is not many. Which thing nearly made the list, and what beat it?
Describe it 12
Describe every surface in the perfect playground that a hand touches on one trip around it.Angle: rope, bark, cold bars, sand. Which would you know with your eyes shut?
Describe one ride on the best thing in the perfect playground, slowed down so that it fills a paragraph.Angle: the wait, the first push, the middle where your stomach lifts, the stop.
Describe the best hiding place in the perfect playground without giving away where it is.Angle: what you can see from inside it, what it smells of, how long you have ever lasted there.
Describe the perfect playground as a bird flying over it would see it.Angle: shapes and colors from above, small heads moving, one good place to land.
Describe the perfect playground as seen from the top of its highest point.Angle: who looks small from up there, how far you can see, and what you notice that nobody on the ground can.
Describe the perfect playground as you might remember it twenty years from now.Angle: memory keeps the tallest thing and one afternoon. What has it made bigger than it was?
Describe the perfect playground in deep winter and again in high summer, and say which of the two it was built for.Angle: what is too cold to touch in one and too hot in the other? What still works under snow?
Describe the perfect playground just after everyone has gone home.Angle: a swing still moving, one glove on the bench, long shadows. What has been left exactly where it was dropped?
Describe the perfect playground one minute before it fills with children and one minute after.Angle: the same swings, still and then not. What is the first sound?
Describe the perfect playground to someone who has never seen a playground of any kind.Angle: you cannot say slide or swing without explaining them. Start with what it is for.
Describe the perfect playground with all five senses, one sentence for each.Angle: warm metal, cut grass, the squeak of a chain. What could you possibly taste?
Walk through the perfect playground with your eyes closed and describe it by sound alone.Angle: chains, feet on wood, a ball on a wall, somebody counting to twenty. Which sound is nearest?
Argue for it 12
Argue for the perfect playground as someone who will never play on it: a grandparent, or the shopkeeper next door.Angle: what a playground does for the people who only walk past it.
Argue that the perfect playground needs a quiet corner, to someone who thinks playgrounds are for running.Angle: who uses a quiet corner, and what happens to them when there is none?
One year after the perfect playground opens, write to thank the people who built it and say what it changed.Angle: one thing you expected, and one thing nobody saw coming.
The plan for the perfect playground costs too much and something must go. Argue for the one thing that has to stay.Angle: why this, and not the thing that looks better in the drawing?
Should the perfect playground be one place for everyone or have a part kept for the littlest children? Take a side.Angle: think of the smallest child and the biggest in one sandbox. Who gives way?
Some say the perfect playground has nothing high to climb, and others say it must. Pick a side and argue it.Angle: say what worries the other side, and what your side would give up to meet it.
Someone says the old playground is good enough. Write your answer, and make the case for the perfect playground.Angle: be fair to the old one. Name what it does well, then the one thing it cannot do.
Write a short speech to your school asking for the one change that would turn its playground into the perfect playground.Angle: one change only. Say what it is, who it helps, and what it would take.
Write the letter that asks the people in charge of your town's parks to build the perfect playground, with your three strongest reasons.Angle: open with the best reason, finish with the one that costs nothing, and say who would use it.
Write the petition for the perfect playground: the one paragraph at the top that makes people want to sign.Angle: say what is asked for, by whom and by when. The last sentence is a question.
Write the poster that asks the neighbors to vote for the perfect playground.Angle: seven words in big letters, one sentence in small ones. What is the picture?
Your town can pay for the perfect playground or for a new parking lot, not both. Argue for the playground.Angle: answer the other side first. Where will the cars go, and why is that worth it?
A rainy-day version 12
Argue that the perfect playground should stay open in the rain.Angle: what rain adds, what it takes away, and what a pair of boots solves.
Describe the perfect playground in the rain, as someone watching it from a window.Angle: the colors go darker, the sand goes flat, and one person in a yellow coat is out there anyway.
Design a shelter for the perfect playground where ten people can wait out a shower and not be bored.Angle: what is on the walls, what the benches turn into, what you can see from inside.
Design the perfect indoor playground for a day too wet to go out. What fits in one big room?Angle: something to climb, something to crawl through, a corner for the ones who want to build.
Design what the perfect playground lends you on a wet day: a rack of boots, a row of capes, a line of buckets.Angle: where it is kept, how it is shared, and what happens to a boot that goes missing.
Invent a game for the perfect playground that can only be played when the ground is wet.Angle: give it a name, three rules and a way to win. What ends the game: dry ground, or dinner?
It is raining. Design the rainy-day version of the perfect playground: what is under cover, and what is better wet?Angle: a roof over the swings, a slide that runs faster. What gets put away?
The perfect playground has a mud corner. Write the case for it, and the one rule it needs.Angle: who asked for it, who was against it, and where the mud has to stay.
The perfect playground has puddles on purpose. Write where they form and what they are for.Angle: a dip in the path, a channel to dam, stepping stones for anyone who wants to stay dry.
Write a wet-day report on the perfect playground: what worked, what flooded, and what to fix before the next rain.Angle: three short headings. The last ends with a drawing you describe in words.
Write the perfect playground just as a shower ends and the first person runs back out.Angle: who is out first, what is still dripping, which thing dries last.
Write the sound of rain on each part of the perfect playground: the slide, the roof, the sand.Angle: a drum, a hiss, nothing at all. Which part would you stand under just to listen?
Write its rules 12
A rule in the perfect playground is not working. Write the meeting where it gets changed.Angle: who called the meeting, who spoke for the old rule, and what the new one says.
The perfect playground has a rule about taking turns. Write it so that it is fair to the one waiting and the one riding.Angle: how long is a turn, who keeps count, and what happens when the line is one person long?
The perfect playground has one rule for dogs, one for bikes and one for balls. Write all three.Angle: each rule has to be fair to the dog, the rider and the kicker as well as to everyone else.
Somebody breaks a rule in the perfect playground. Write what happens next, and who decides.Angle: no shouting. Who notices, what gets said, and how is it put right by the next day?
Two signs hang on the gate of the perfect playground, one written by the children and one by the grown-ups. Write both.Angle: where do the two signs agree? Circle the rule that is on both.
Write one rule for the perfect playground that every playground ought to have and none does.Angle: a rule about the last swing, about new faces, about what to do with a lost hat.
Write the opening and closing times of the perfect playground, and the reason for each.Angle: it opens when the dew is off the slide. What decides when it shuts?
Write the promise every visitor makes at the gate of the perfect playground.First line: I promise to leave it the way I would like to find it, and one thing better.
Write the rule the perfect playground has for a new kid's first day.Angle: who says hello, who shows the way around, and what the new kid is allowed to ask.
Write the rules of a game that exists only in the perfect playground, clearly enough for a stranger to join in.Angle: how it starts, where the edges are, what counts as out, and how everyone knows it is over.
Write the rules on the gate of the perfect playground: five of them, and none may begin with the word No.Angle: turn every Do not into a Do. What does No pushing become?
Write the sign that tells visitors how to look after the perfect playground so that it lasts.Angle: what to pick up, what to report, what never to carve a name into.
How this list was compiled: Original list written for Draw This Next on 2026-10-15: 61 forms of one writing prompt, design the perfect playground, in five groups (Design it, 13; Describe it, 12; Argue for it, 12; A rainy-day version, 12; Write its rules, 12). Every row is that prompt as one kind of writing: a design with reasons, a description, an argument, a rainy-day version, a set of rules; the line under it gives an angle or a first line. The prompts are our own, though a prompt this simple may have been used somewhere. The list states no outside fact: no real playground, park, town or school is named, and nothing here is advice on building or on safety. No school year or level is named, so one list serves any class. The rows and the lines under them were compared with every other list on the site on 2026-10-15. Licence: own work
How it works
The perfect playground writing prompt holds five kinds of writing in one. Here they are apart: design the perfect playground with reasons, describe it, argue for it to be built, plan its rainy-day version, write the rules on its gate.
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Which kind of writing each group gives
Design it is explaining: a choice and its reason. Describe it is description, by sound, by touch, from the top of the highest point. Argue for it is opinion, with a reader to win over. The rainy-day version is problem solving, and the rules are instructions short enough for a sign.
One playground across a week
Take one prompt from each group on five days and the pieces build a single playground: Monday's map, Tuesday's walk through it, Wednesday's letter asking for it, Thursday's wet-day plan, Friday's sign for the gate.
Give every choice a because. A slide is a wish; a slide because the hill is already there is a design.
If the words will not come, sketch the map first, then write what the sketch cannot show.
Questions and answers
What is the design the perfect playground writing prompt?
A prompt that asks a writer to plan a playground and explain the plan: what goes in, where, and for whom. Most of the thirteen Design it prompts here add one limit, such as five things, a small space or a hot day.
What should a perfect playground have?
That is the writer's call, and the prompts press for reasons: something high to climb or nothing high, a quiet corner, shade at noon, paths wide enough to roll along, somewhere to wait out the rain.
Does the writer have to draw the playground?
No, though a sketch helps. One prompt asks for a map of the perfect playground in words, starting from the gate, so that a reader could draw it from the writing alone.