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Outdoor recreational activities and the benefits

The famous adage “children learn how to learn when they play?” should be on every parent’s mind every time they release their children to jump, laugh, swing, climb, or slide!

Play does a lot more than just drain the children’s physical strength. For example, colorful and open playground structures provide a great learning experience. Education nowadays incorporates extracurricular activities as a mandatory part of learning, and the reason for this is outlined below.

Physical Growth

Children engage in play activities to have fun and enjoy, not knowing how that benefits their bodies, yet play has been discovered to greatly benefit children’s health and physical fitness. Development of motor skills, enhanced balance, and flexibility result from controlled movement and reflex reactions horned at playtime.

Outdoor playground equipment involves children in muscle strengthening maneuvers and improves bone density. Additionally, physically involving play activities increase blood circulation, ensuring better heart functionality and lung performance, thus preventing high cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity.

Emotional Growth

Ovid, a Roman poet, once said, “we tell kids what kind of people we are with playing”. At first glance, it doesn’t make much sense, but it has a deeper meaning if you think of your habits!

Several research reports reveal that outdoor playing helps children with emotional growth. There are three main areas in which outdoor activities help children internally.

Experience of different emotions – Pretended-play is a traditional way that children use to engage their imaginary skills to come out of reality and boundaries. Nothing has changed much as these are practiced to date. When children play freely, they express themselves fearlessly and openly. As a result, they experience emotions they might not have experienced before.

Developing self-esteem and confidence – Outdoor playground equipment like overhead hanging and climbers are designed to challenge them and develop their skillful ability psychically. These activities enable them to use tricks and push them to take risky maneuvers to prove themselves. Successful completion of any challenge improves their confidence and develops self-esteem, making them realize they can achieve anything.

The release of emotions from trauma – Free play doesn’t only help in physical growth, but it helps children in beating previous traumatic situations.  Outdoor playing helps overcome distressed emotions due to war or natural disasters, family disruptions, and child abuse. When children play, they take out their emotions and throw off all the negativity in their minds.

All in all, exposing children to a playground is a sure way of enabling holistic development. Won’t that improve their learning experience?

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