Children’s Play and Physical Activity in Traditional and Forest (Natural) Playgrounds

Abstract

Early childhood is a crucial period for the physical and cognitive development of children. A child's exposure to nature is proven to be beneficial in this period of human life. The aim of the present research was to investigate children's play and physical activity on a traditional playground and on a forest (natural) playground. Twenty-five observations took place on the traditional playground, and twenty-five observations were recorded on the forest playground. Twenty-five participating preschool children were observed in both playgrounds, but not necessarily in the same order. Research findings confirmed important qualities of natural playgrounds that provide children with a wide range of playing and learning opportunities not available on other playgrounds. Children were playing more with different natural materials in the forest playground and they more frequently played different chasing games and hide and seek in the forest playground. Participating children were also more physically active on the forest playground, and boys were more active on the forest playground than girls. The research concludes that it is important for preschool teachers to use natural playgrounds frequently and with regularity. Research design in this article is also an example of how GPS trackers can be beneficial for educational research.

The impacts of unstructured nature play on health in early childhood development: A systematic review

“…There were several methodological concerns amongst the included studies. The main concerns were: sample size not being described in detail (only eight studies Systematic review of nature play and child health described their sample [73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80]; the lack of sample size justification (only three studies did this [73,74,81]; lack of reliability and validity of outcome measures [ten studies reported on reliability [73-76, 78, 79, 81-84] and seven reported on validity [73-76, 81, 82, 84]; and finally the lack of reporting dropouts, with only six studies reporting dropout rates [5,74,75,81,83,84].…”

“…The study characteristics from the 16 included studies are displayed in Table 2. A range of study designs were identified, as were the geographical study locations, which included Norway [76,81,82], Slovenia [5], Australia [20,77], United Kingdom [77], Scotland [85], Canada [75], United States of America [73,78,83,84] and Germany. The studies were conducted from 2001 onwards to the most recent three studies published in 2018 [74,77,84] which may indicate the relatively recent interest in nature play.…”

“…For instance, ''natural playscape" [n = 3 studies [76,82,83]], ''nature playground" [n = 2, [74,81]], and ''natural play" [n = 2, [73,85]]. Remaining studies used varying terminology including ''free play in nature" [77], ''nature-based" [20], ''open space" [78], ''forest (natural) playground" [5], ''nature preschool" [84] and lastly ''natural zone" [80,87]. Despite variations in terminology used to describe nature play, some consistent characteristics were observed; specifically, free play and interacting with natural elements such as trees, sand, water and vegetation.…”

“…One study reported a statistically significant increase (p<0.05) in PA using pedometers (steps) from 3,836 steps before a exposure/intervention of nature play compared to 5,104 steps after an exposure/intervention of nature play [85]. Another study [75] reported a statistically significant decrease of 1.32 minutes in MVPA during a 20-minute play period following the nature play re-development of traditional play spaces (p<0.001) Three studies reported no significant change in PA from a nature play intervention/exposure relative to traditional play settings using pedometers (p = 0.10) [74], accelerometers (p = 0.629) [88] and GPS (p = 0.132) [5]. The remaining two studies used descriptive statistics, not testing for statistical significance and found no change in PA after nature play exposure (compared with traditional play spaces) when measured using accelerometry derived MVPA and/or direct observations [73,78].…”

“…Research indicates that from 1990 to 2016 the number of children aged between 0-5 years considered overweight or obese increased from 32 million to 41 million globally [2], and as these children get older 10-20% will develop a mental health disorder between the ages of 5-17 years [1]. While the causes of childhood obesity and its impact on physical and mental wellbeing are complex and multifactorial, evidence consistently highlights the positive effects of outdoor physical activity (PA) in ameliorating these risks in the short and long term [3][4][5].…”