There are lots of opportunities to encourage children to play outside. At school children make full use of their break times by playing on playground equipment. At weekends, public parks offer the perfect place for parents to take children. It is important to encourage children to play outdoors on a regular basis. It’s the first step to improving wellbeing with outdoor play. It gives them a break from being cooped up indoors, but also improves their overall wellbeing.
Improves health and fitness
Playing outdoors significantly helps to improve children’s health and fitness, which has a huge impact on their wellbeing. Playing outside usually provides children with more space to move around and encourages them to be more active. Additionally, outdoor play equipment often includes fitness orientated equipment. This encourages children to be active and helps to strengthen their growing bones. Being outdoors regularly can also improve general health as it allows access to fresh air and healthy exposure to sunlight.
Helps to destress
Today children are under pressures that previous generations have not had to face. The desire to perform well in exams, along with being exposed to the adult world at a younger age through modern technology, has led to children facing stressful situations at a younger age. Playing outdoors can help to reduce this stress. It gives children a chance to play with limited supervision in a safe environment where they can release excess energy. Being outdoors also gives children the chance to play in natural sunlight that helps to increase their positivity and improving wellbeing.
Encourages creativity
There is a strong link between creativity and intelligence and research has shown that being outdoors, especially close to nature, helps to increase creativity. A creative child will likely perform better in classes as they are able to
think more critically and find it easier to problem solve, this will also help to improve the child’s self-esteem and confidence. Not only does playing outside help to increase children’s creativity, but this is enhanced by the fact that many outdoor play equipment incorporates creative play into its design, helping to encourage children to be creative as they play.
Increases happiness
Outdoor play will help to increase happiness in children. Children normally naturally enjoy playing outdoors as it gives them a sense of freedom that isn’t achieved with indoor play. This sense of freedom, combined with fresh air and natural sunlight, helps to increase children’s happiness. As well as this, playing outdoors often means playing in public areas which encourages children to play with their peers, make friends, and socialise.
Creates childhood memories
When you look back to your own childhood there are likely to be happy memories of playing outdoors. Playing outside is a childhood activity that often creates happy memories that stays with children as they grown up and become adults. This not only increases their wellbeing as children, but the memories will also increase their wellbeing as adults.
The majority of children love playing outdoors, whether in their garden, public parks or school playgrounds and encouraging children to head outdoors to play will help improve all areas of their wellbeing.
What Next?
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