Children’s possibility of physical activities in preschool playgrounds : What happens when the teachers are not able to leave the preschool?

The purpose of this study is to see how preschool playgrounds offer children anenvironment that inspires them to movement and physical activity in terms of size,material, and vegetation.Previous research shows that children that have access to a preschool playground that isat least 3000 sqm or 40 sqm per child and that have a variation of vegetation is morelikely to engage in physical activity than children that have a preschool playground that isless than 3000 sqm and that have none or very little vegetation. The research also showsthat preschool playgrounds need to have space for the children to be able to get up tospeed and have materials that are of a movement-inspiring nature and which does notcontribute to sedentary or stationary. We have linked this study to the outdoorpedagogical perspective because it looks at the possibilities of the environment and to thetotality between place material and its interplay.We have gathered information by making observations and by contacting officials in thetargeted areas which we have chosen in Stockholm to collect data about the sizes of allpreschool playgrounds in the area. In order to make the observations we made a checklistof what we needed to observe to get the most accurate results. To know which preschoolsto observe we analyzed the data we collected from the officials in the target areas. Wepicked the preschools with the smallest and the biggest preschool playgrounds in thetarget areas and began our observations.During our observations we could see that our formulated questions are consistent withthe results. The result shows that the larger the preschool playground is, the morepossibility of movement and physical activity it offers to children. We could also see thatthe farther away the preschools were from the city, the bigger they got, and morevegetation was integrated in the environment. We could also see that in comparisonbetween the smaller and the larger preschool playgrounds, the material was moreinspiring to movement and physical activities in the larger ones.