New playground concepts--favouring natural play characteristics--emerge. The aim of our free play study is to explore the relation between newly established natural playgrounds and the widely spread contemporary ones in terms of physical activity levels. The playground features differ in vegetation, topography, size and play equipment. The…

The paper contains two different studies on preschool children's physical activity at indoor playground markings. Both of these studies are designed as two-factor experiments. Participants were children (N=87, 41 females, 46 males; Mage= 66.4 months) from an urban public preschool. Two main hallways of the school were painted with playground…

Play is a fundamental activity for experiences, learning and development among children in their early years. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions' play environments, their features and design, are therefore of great importance for the opportunities provided for children to create and engage in a wide range of play. This study…

The aim of this study was to explore how teachers and parents experience and reflect on participation and interaction with and between less active fifth-grade pupils in physically active academic lessons, in the school playground and during physical activity homework. This study formed part of the Active Smarter Kids study investigating the…

The prevalence of bullying worldwide is high (UNESCO, 2018). Over the past decades, many anti-bullying interventions have been developed to remediate this problem. However, we lack insight into for whom these interventions work and what individual intervention components drive the total intervention effects. We conducted a large-scale individual…

Research supports recess, however, playground injuries are prevalent with more than 200,000 cases per year requiring medical attention. School playgrounds are among the leading location for injury. The purpose was to identify the safety and risk factors of playground environments and impact attenuation characteristics of surfacing materials.…

Over the last two decades, there has been an increasing focus on spatial technologies in teaching and learning, revealing the potential to support new forms of youth sensemaking across varied settings and modalities. Recent scholarship has shown the possibilities of participatory digital mapping technologies, enabling young people to collect data…

High-quality language interactions not only support children's language development, but also promote better long-term academic outcomes. Language learning is the single best predictor of later growth in language, literacy, mathematics, and social development. However, many families do not have access to educationally enriched spaces that spur…

In 2001, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued "Guidelines for Preschool Education (GPE) (trial version)" to call on early childhood practitioners to use a child-centred and play-based approach to teaching and learning. In order to implement the requirements, many kindergartens in China have carried out the play-based kindergarten…

Preschool years constitute a vital developmental period during which foundations of later development are formed. It is during this period that essential developments such as establishing attachment bonds, forming a basic sense of autonomy and sense of self (ego), language acquisition and attaining life and social skills. Studies in developmental…

The importance of outdoor activities for children should not be overlooked, and teachers and parents as stakeholders have an influential role in providing learning opportunities (Elliott, 2015). Teachers are dependent on parental reciprocity because of potential for harm (Maynard, 2007), and parents can limit activities because of various reasons…

The COVID-19 pandemic's restrictions for schools and playgrounds threatened children's social and emotional wellbeing. In response, Grade 4/5 students created music-based activities through action research to sustain playground interactions. This study explored the crucial yet fragile playground relationships and the children's determination to…

The day-to-day environment surrounding the child influences its physical, social, and emotional wellbeing. The study was conducted to understand how the perception of children and their parents about the outdoor play spaces influences their outdoor participation. Face-to-face interviews with parents, a walk-along interview with children and audit…

Friendship is of paramount importance to children's holistic well-being and development. Friendship often runs smoothly, but when it runs into difficulties this can be unsettling and time consuming, particularly after the lunchtime break. This article makes an original contribution by placing the lunchtime period under scrutiny and specifically…

As elementary schools expand to include Prekindergarten (PreK), many elementary school physical education teachers are surprised to find PreK classes on their teaching schedule. Equally, many PreK classroom teachers are recognizing the need for quality movement opportunities for their students and are searching for resources that can help all…