Playground
A playground, playpark, or play area is a place designed to provide an environment for children that facilitates play, typically outdoors. While playgrounds are usually designed for children, some are designed for other age groups or people with disabilities. A playground might exclude children below a certain age.
Modern playgrounds often have recreational equipment such as the seesaw, merry-go-round, swingset, slide, jungle gym, chin-up bars, sandbox, spring rider, trapeze rings, playhouses, and mazes, many of which help children develop physical coordination, strength, and flexibility, as well as providing recreation and enjoyment and supporting social and emotional development. Common in modern playgrounds are play structures that link many different pieces of equipment.
Playgrounds often also have facilities for playing informal games of adult sports, such as a baseball diamond, a skating arena, a basketball court, or a tether ball.
Public playground equipment is installed in the play areas of parks, schools, childcare facilities, institutions, multiple-family dwellings, restaurants, resorts, recreational developments, and other areas of public use.
A playscape is a type of playground that is designed to provide a safe environment for play in a natural setting.
History
Nineteenth-century playgrounds
Through history, children played in their villages and neighbourhoods, especially in the streets and lanes near their homes. The painting Children's Games shows children playing in multiple ways in the streets and fields of an imaginary Dutch townscape.In the 19th century, developmental psychologists such as Friedrich Fröbel proposed playgrounds as a developmental aid to instill in children a sense of fair play and good manners. In Germany, a few playgrounds were erected near schools. In the 1840s in Britain, the Home and Colonial Infant School had a for pupils that included climbing structures, seesaws, and parallel bars.
Thomas Carlyle called for the establishment of public playgrounds within industrial cities such as Manchester, England, in Past and Present, saying that "every toiling Manchester" ought to have "a hundred acres or so of free greenfield, with trees on it, conquered, for its little children to disport in". The first purpose-built public playgrounds were subsequently created in 1846 in Peel Park in Salford and Queen’s Park and Philips Park in Manchester.
Later in the 19th century, the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association became an important advocate for children's playgrounds in London, in part at least to provide a steady supply of healthy, strong working-class children for the army, navy, and factories. One of the first playgrounds in the United States was built in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in 1887.
Twentieth century playgrounds
Playgrounds in Britain
The engineer and philanthropist Charles Wicksteed became an important advocate for children's playgrounds from the 1920s onward. He manufactured robust equipment, including , and . The National Playing Fields Association also promoted playgrounds across the middle of the century - one of its founding aims was to 'secure proper playgrounds for children' - which in their mind equated to manufactured equipment.In post-war London, pioneering designers, charities and child advocates, including Lady Allen of Hurtwood, popularised the concept of the ’junk playground’ - where children played with rubble, built structures and invented their own entertainment. 'Bombsites and waste ground were transformed into hives of activity by children and progressive educationalists.' Allen campaigned for play facilities for children growing up in the new high-rise developments in Britain's cities and wrote a series of illustrated books on the subject of playgrounds, and at least one book on adventure playgrounds, spaces for free creativity by children, which helped the idea spread worldwide.
In 2019, there were more than 26,000 children's playgrounds in the UK.File:Local Council of Women, Halifax Plaque, Halifax, Nova Scotia.jpg|thumb|Plaque to mark the spot where the Playground movement began in Nova Scotia, Local Council of Women of Halifax, Nova Scotia|right
Playgrounds in North America
Over the course of the 20th century, the street increasingly lost its role as the default public space for children's play. It was planned for motor-car use, with momentum building to remove children from the new dangers and confine them to segregated areas to play. Organisations such as the National Highway Protective Society highlighted the number of deaths caused by automobiles. They urged the creation of playgrounds, aiming to free streets for vehicles rather than children's play. The Outdoor Recreation League provided funds to erect playgrounds on parkland, especially following the 1901 publication of a report on numbers of children being run down by cars in New York City.Image:Children playing in street, New York.jpg|left|thumb|Young boys playing in a New York City street, 1909
In tandem with the new concern about the danger of roads, educational theories of play, including those of Herbert Spencer and John Dewey, inspired the emergence of the reformist playground movement, which argued that playgrounds had educational value, improved attention in class, enhanced physical health, and reduced truancy. Interventionist programs, such as those by the child savers, sought to move children into controlled areas to limit 'delinquency'. Meanwhile, at schools and settlement houses for poorer children with limited access to education, health services, and daycare, playgrounds were included to support these institutions' goal of keeping children safe and out of trouble.
In 1906 the Playground Association of America was founded and a year later Luther Gulick became president. It later became the National Recreation Association and then the National Recreation and Park Association. Urging the need for playgrounds, former President Theodore Roosevelt stated in 1907:
Playgrounds in the Soviet Union
Playgrounds were an integral part of urban culture in the USSR. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were playgrounds in almost every park in many Soviet cities. Playground apparatus was reasonably standard across the country; most consisted of metal bars with relatively few wooden parts and were manufactured in state-owned factories. Some of the most common constructions were the carousel, sphere, seesaw, rocket, bridge, etc.Design
The intended purpose and audience influence playground design. Separate play areas might be offered to accommodate very young children. Single, large, open parks tend not to be used by older schoolgirls or less aggressive children because there is little opportunity to escape more aggressive children. By contrast, a park that offers multiple play areas is used equally by boys and girls.Effects on child development
Professionals recognize that the social skills children develop on the playground often become lifelong skill sets that carry forward into adulthood. Independent research concludes that playgrounds are among the most important environments for children outside the home. Most forms of play are essential for healthy development, but free, spontaneous play—the kind that occurs on playgrounds—is the most beneficial.Exciting, engaging, and challenging playground equipment is essential for keeping children happy while still developing their learning abilities. These should be designed to suit different groups of children at various stages of learning, such as specialist playground equipment for nursery & preschool children to teach basic numeracy & vocabulary, or to build a child's creativity and imagination through role-play panels or puzzles.
Image:KidsRopeBridge wb.png|thumb|left|Rope bridge for improving balance
There is a consensus that physical activity reduces the risk of psychological problems in children and fosters their self-esteem. The American Chief Medical Officer's report, stated that a review of available research suggests that the health benefits of physical activity in children are predominantly seen in the amelioration of risk factors for disease, avoidance of weight gain, achieving a peak bone mass and mental well-being.
Exercise programmes "may have short term beneficial effects on self esteem in children and adolescents" although high-quality trials are lacking.
Commentators argue that the quality of a child's exercise experience can affect their self-esteem. Ajzen's TPB posits that children's self-esteem is enhanced through encouragement of physical mastery and self-development. It can be seen that playgrounds provide an ideal opportunity for children to master physical skills, such as swinging, balancing, and climbing. Personal development may be gained through the enhancement of skills, such as playing, communicating, and cooperating with other children and adults in the playground.
Controlled risk in play at a playground helps children develop skills to assess physical risk and can reduce injury later in life.
Children have devised many playground games and pastimes. But because playgrounds are usually subject to adult supervision and oversight, young children's street culture often struggles to thrive there fully. Research by Robin Moore concluded that playgrounds need to be balanced with marginal areas that appear to be derelict or wasteground, but to children they are areas that they can claim for themselves, ideally a wooded area or field.
For many children, it is their favorite time of day when they get to be on the playground for free time or recess. It serves as a release from the pressures of learning during the day. They know that time on the playground is their own time.
A type of playground called a playscape can provide children with the necessary feeling of ownership that Moore describes above. Playscapes can also provide parents with assurance about their child's safety and well-being, which may not be as prevalent in an open field or wooded area.