Forest schools: how climbing trees and making dens can help children develop resilience
Despite all the research that tells parents how good it is for their children to spend time playing outside, they are spending more time indoors than ever before. It seems that concerns about the dangers...Read more
Study finds children’s screen time has replaced outdoor play
A report by the Association of Play Industries (API) reveals that children have never moved so little and points to substantial evidence that screens are a key reason. In fact, by the age of eight, the...Read more
Creating relevant playgrounds in a tech-driven world
How vital are playgrounds in today’s society? For many people, unstructured outdoor play is viewed as a luxury, not a necessity. As a result, children don’t devote as much time in unstructured outdoor play as...Read more
Three ways to encourage outdoor play
Encouraging children to be active and play outdoors can be challenging. The problem arises from the fact that they’re comfortable indoors with their iPads, watching their favourite shows and eating snacks. Motivating children to be...Read more
The city of tomorrow reconquers cities for children
‘The city of tomorrow’ is an educational project that aims to include children and adolescents in the construction process of public space (squares, neighbourhoods, cities). Equipping them with the necessary tools to develop their creativity...Read more
Designing a play space for everyone
Antonio Malkusak, has 27 years of experience in the play and playground industry and is considered one of the leading experts on inclusive play environment design. In this article for Child in the City, he...Read more
Limiting children’s screen time to maximize outdoor play
Governments and education leaders must work better together to steer children away from the potentially damaging effects of excessive online time in favour of the wider benefits of traditional ‘play’ activity. That’s the view of education...Read more
Outdoor play boosts children’s performance in class, says new study
A new study from Norway has found clear associations between the extent of children’s outdoor play and their ability to make progress in school. Monica Arkin of Child Trends discusses the significance of the findings. Although outdoor play...Read more
Facebook boss advocates outdoor play – for his own children
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and chief executive of the social media giant, Facebook, has published an impassioned letter to his new-born daughter, in which he extols the virtue of playing outside in nature. Adrian Voce reports. The...Read more
Outdoor play leads to environmental awareness, says new Canadian study
A new study from the University of British Columbia, Okanagan in Canada suggests that children who play outside are more likely to protect nature as adults. Protecting the environment can be as easy as telling your kids...Read more
Is joining the German army a game?
With its recent recruitment campaign, the German army has provoked outrage from children’s play advocates by comparing enlisting in the forces to playing outside; evoking, say its critics, some dark echoes from the country’s past. Berta Kaufmann reports. To invoke...Read more
Parents anxious about neighbourhoods restrict children’s outdoor play, finds new study
A study conducted by LSU Health New Orleans School of Public Health has been greeted in the US as the country’s first serious research to find that parents who are concerned about the safety and...Read more
Isle of Man nature charity plans extensive new wild play area
The Manx (Isle of Man*) Wildlife Trust (MWT), has held a survey of how often children on the island play in the countryside as part of its planning for an exciting new wild play project on the island Tim...Read more
Osteria Ai Pioppi. If you want to play, you have to push and sweat
Bruno Ferrin is the inventor and creator of an ecological park in Nervesa della Battaglia, in the province of Treviso, in Italy. The particularity of this park, for children and adults both, is that there...Read more