We are shortly going to convert part of our lawn area into a dedicated play area for the kids

We already have a trampoline and have a new swing set coming for Christmas (just a small 3xSwing wide one) and also already have a plastic climbing gym, and a clam shell full of sand, and a plastic cubby house. The area will be about 4m x 5m. Currently there is grass where we plan to set it up, we are going to put a border around (we have some existing treated pine sleepers to use) and were thinking of using either fine bark (so its the softest possible), or rubber matting (from Bunnings etc) or even looking into the playground soft base stuff (but thinking this will be very expensive)

Any ideas? Recommendations?

The Bark and Rubber Matting are the cheaper options, but problematic with weeds coming through

Also - any idea's what to use to kill off the grass? We plan to put some type of weed matting over it too.

I also had a great idea to get a large sheet of the waterproof plasterboard and attach it to the fence and paint it with blackboard paint Also put a shade sail over part of it, What other cool idea's can you throw at me that will look cool/funky and entice the kids to play outside? We have a boy and a girl

Ta