Abstract Research shows that children through free outdoor play develop many important abilities. Within occupational therapeutic theories, the physical and social environment can influence outdoor play. The purpose of the study was to describe parents' experiences of outdoor play activities during leisure time for children aged 6-10 years. The study adopted a qualitative method and used semi-structured interviews to answer the aim of the study. A convenience sample was used when selecting the parents. A total of 12 parents were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed using content analysis that resulted in three categories; “Less outdoor play now than before”, “Opportunities and obstacles for outdoor play” and “The importance of outdoor play”. The result showed that parents' experience was that their children played less outdoors then what themselves did when they were children and the parents believed that it was the technology of today as it depended on it. It also turned out that parents thought outdoor play was very important for their children, but that parents saw many risks surrounding outdoor play. The conclusion of the study was that children's outdoor play not only are affected by the physical and social environment but also by their parents' attitudes.

A distinct lack of data related to the impact of natural environments on children birth to age 3 was identified by a thematic review of the existing literature. With this in mind, the researcher designed a limited scope quantitative study to explore the potential for extending the existing body of research to include this younger age. The study used a time sampling method to code behaviors that occurred in videos collected of children from 12 to 35 month who were playing on the playground at their childcare facility. The playscapes were classified as naturalistic or manufactured. The data was then analyzed using independent t-tests to look for statistically significant variations to the frequent that children engaged in various social and play based behaviors. The results of the study were minimal but were significant enough to support the value of further research involving children birth to three.

Harvesting children’s kinetic energy to power the electronics can bring interactive play to novel places and create unique context for play. This project presents design, crafting and testing of a child-powered interactive carousel designed for everyday outdoor play.  Through a Research through Design approach and craft thinking, a digital play artefact was realized through exploring material qualities and affordances, to crafting a real-world object, to immersing interactive elements in the final prototype. The situated play led understanding of the experiential qualities of the digital artefact in the emergence of a children-object-space relationship. The hybrid craft making and digital fabrication emphasized the process of making through negotiating and renegotiating with materials and digital abilities until the integration of the two. The unique composition of human power technology and outdoor play design opened up new conversations to exploit human motions and self-initiated engagement in designing embodied play. / Att använda barns rörelseenergi för att driva elektronik, kan öppna upp för interaktiv lek på nya platser och skapa unika sammanhang för lek. Detta projekt presenterar design, tillverkning och testning av en barndriven interaktiv karusell designad för vardagslek utomhus.  Genom en Research through Design metod och hantverkstänkande, realiserades en digital lekartefakt genom att utforska materiella kvalitéer och affordance, för att skapa ett verkligt objekt, till att fördjupa interaktiva element i den slutliga prototypen. Den situerade leken ledde förståelsen av de upplevelsemässiga egenskaperna hos den digitala artefakten i uppkomsten av ett barn-objekt-plats förhållande. Hybridhantverkstillverkning och digital tillverkning betonade tillverkningsprocessen genom att förhandla och omförhandla mellan material och digitala förmågor fram till integrationen av de två. Den unika sammansättningen av mänsklig kraftteknologi och utomhuslekdesign öppnade upp för nya samtal för att utnyttja mänsklig rörelse och självinitierat engagemang i designen av förkroppsligad lek.

Today, urban children are spending time indoors more than ever before and getting away from phenomenas of the outdoor world, which creates a big concern on how they develop their senses and get physical exercise. The tools, games and devices they interact with are preventing their imagination rather than sparking, by making kids consume content rather than asking for their participation. Peek transforms the outside into an imaginary playground for children, where interacting with the natural world takes the focus and the child’s simple acts and explorations can turn into their own stories. It is an expressive digital tool that invites children to explore the outside, capture audio and visual snippets, and build stories around them. It comes together with a physical book which triggers child’s imagination through guided explorations and allows the child to keep the stories they created. The result is a play experience designed for children aged between 5 and 8 years old.

The aim of my study has been to investigate, based on the children’s perceptions, what obstacles and opportunities they encounter in the outdoor play at the leisure home, which affects their playing habits. I interviewed eighteen children during four interview sessions at a school in Stockholm, Sweden about their outdoor play habits at the leisure home. To investigate this, I have used affordance theory, which is linked to the physical environment and the social environment. Affordance is about what meaningful offers an individual perceives in an environment and its material. The results showed that the children seem to be in a dangerous world according to the staff who set restrictive rules to protect them. The schoolyard, which should be a safe place in the other hand can contain several dangers that I have identified. The danger here are about the various factors that affected the children’s opportunities for physical activity. Previous research shows this fear of exposing children to risks is common in today’s society, it also shows how children’s opportunities for physical activity are diminishing.

No description available.

Background: Few studies have delved into the relationship of the social environment with children’s physical activity and outdoor play in public playgrounds by considering gender differences. The aim of the present study was to examine gender differences and the relationship of the social environment with children’s physical activity and outdoor play in public playgrounds. Methods: A quantitative, observational study was conducted at ten playgrounds in one district of a middle-sized town in Germany. The social environment, physical activity levels, and outdoor play were measured using a modified version of the System for Observing Play and Leisure Activity in Youth. Results: In total, 266 observations of children (117 girls/149 boys) between four and 12 years old were used in this analysis. Significant gender differences were found in relation to activity types, but not in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). The presence of active children was the main explanatory variable for MVPA. In the models stratified by gender, the presence of opposite-sex children was a significant negative predictor of MVPA in girls but not in boys. Conclusions: The presence of active children contributes to children’s physical activity levels in public playgrounds. Girls’ physical activity seems to be suppressed in the presence of boys.

Outdoor play is one major source of physical activity (PA) in children. In particular, parents act as gatekeepers, because they can enable their children’s outdoor play. This systematic review aims to provide an overview of parental correlates of outdoor play. A systematic literature research of six electronic databases (ERIC, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, PubMed/Medline, SCOPUS, and Web of Science Core Collection) was conducted with previously defined search terms, focusing on children 0–12 years old. In total, 1719 potentially publications were screened based on eligibility criteria. Included studies were scored for overall study quality. Findings were summarized using a semi-quantitative method. Twenty-one peer-reviewed publications which examined the relationship of parental correlates and outdoor play were included. Overall, five parental correlates were associated with children’s amount of outdoor play: mothers’ ethnicity, mothers’ employment status, parents’ education level, the importance parents assign to outdoor play, and perceived social cohesion in the neighborhood. Merely four studies reported sex/gender-stratified results. In summary, only parents’ encouragement/support provided evidence for girls’ amount of outdoor play. The findings are considered to be of public health relevance for developing intervention programs to increase outdoor play and for improving child’s health. More research, especially considering sex/gender of the child, is required.

Le déclin du jeu extérieur dans le contexte urbain se manifeste sous forme d’une épidémie de sédentarisation, d'obésité et de dépression chez les jeunes. Il s’inscrit dans un contexte où, depuis la deuxième moitié du 20e siècle, les efforts des villes pour créer des environnements destinés à l’usage des enfants s’orientent principalement vers la production d’espaces ségrégués et fortement régulés. Aujourd'hui, certaines municipalités adoptent des objectifs d’inclusion et manifestent un intérêt à repenser la place des enfants et de leurs activités sur leur territoire. Ainsi, une meilleure compréhension des pratiques de jeu non structuré et des environnements qui les rendent possibles devient nécessaire. Cette recherche a été réalisée dans une approche d’ethnographie critique, dans la perspective d’une facilitatrice de jeu durant l’été 2021, au sein d’un camp de jour promouvant le jeu non structuré et risqué. Elle prend appui sur l’outil TOPO de cartographie comportementale, ainsi que sur des observations participantes. Menée dans trois espaces publics de Montréal, elle porte un regard critique sur les différents facteurs spatiaux et sociaux influençant le jeu des enfants dans la perspective du concept d’affordance. Elle discute l’influence des caractéristiques physiques de l’espace sur le jeu des enfants, l’influence de la perception du risque chez les adultes supervisant le jeu, les conflits avec les autres usagers de l’espace et l’influence de la gestion et de l’entretien de ces espaces publics, menés dans un souci de régulation et d’aseptisation. Cette recherche tente d’offrir un regard holistique et critique sur les conditions favorables au jeu extérieur dans le contexte montréalais. Elle met en lumière l’importance de la plasticité des lieux, des conventions sociales d’utilisation de l’espace et des « capabilités », pour une meilleure compréhension et un meilleur aménagement d’environnements propices au jeu. / The benefits of play for children are innumerable; however, we are observing a decline in outdoor play in cities, tied to a sedentarization, obesity and depression epidemic in young children. This situation is attracting increasing interest in academic and municipal contexts. Until recently, North American cities’ efforts were limited to the provision of segregated children’s spaces. Now that some cities are ready to rethink the place of play in our cities at a larger scale, it becomes important to better understand urban outdoor play and the environments making it possible. This master’s thesis is based on a critical ethnography conducted as a playworker in a day camp promoting unstructured outdoor play in three green public spaces of Montreal, Canada during the summer of 2021. It explores a variety of physical and social factors influencing children’s outdoor play from a perspective of affordances. It discusses the influence of space characteristics on play, the importance of supervising adults’ perception of risk, the conflicts with other users and the influence of different approaches to management and maintenance of public spaces. This research attempts to offer a holistic and critical view on the adequacy of public spaces in terms of facilitating play, in the Montreal context. It highlights the transgressive nature of play and its confrontation with everlasting regulatory practices of public space management. In an attempt to provide a better understanding of planning spaces that can accommodate unstructured play, it discusses the importance of plasticity of spaces, the social conventions around the usage of spaces and capabilities.