School playgrounds - Playground@Landscape

“Exerting yourself
sensually and voluntarily”
By Dr. Dieter Breithecker, Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft
für Haltungs- und Bewegungsförderung e. V.
(national association for the
promotion of posture and exercise)
Exercise – a law of nature,
on the school playground too.
Unlike us adults, “health” or “fitness” isn’t enough of a reason for
children to exercise. Children exercise because they are curious about
wanting to discover their environment and, above all, because exercise
is an evolutionary conditional “law of nature”. This “law of nature”
first allows the positive support of complex – i.e. physically reciprocal –
mental, psychological and emotional development processes.
Over the years each generation has left its mark on the way in which
children develop. For millions of years, the person, among others, is
“trained” to walk or to climb, and is also trained on different changing
postures such as lying or crouching on the floor. This principle of evolution
still applies today. For this reason children possess a natural urge
to “exert themselves sensually and voluntarily”. They are only able to
unfold their complex potential because the environment puts them in a
situation to “tackle” a challenging and varied “problem”.
In recent decades, it hasn’t been as easy for children to live out the spontaneous
urge to exercise as prescribed by nature. A restrictive change in
their social and spatial everyday world, on the one hand; but also hasty,
excessive safety measures, standards as well as overprotective parents or
guardians frequently hinder or prevent the varied and boundarypushing
physical activities of the children. We have discovered from
prevention science, however, that variable and complex patterns of
behaviour – as is the case with children if they are able to exercise spontaneously
and are not just made to move by adults - stand for healthy
physical and mental functions of interaction and, thus, development
processes. Children in the first 12 to 13 years of their lives have, as
part of their highly-sensitive sensor motor and brain-physiological
differentiation phase (“neurogenesis”, “synaptogenesis” / neologism and
interconnection of nerve cells) a natural need for diverse and physical
challenges.
Empirical studies verify that, in relation to the baseline situation,
a physically more-appealing environment (“enriched environment”)
requires an interactive inter-relation of physical, mental and social
development processes on a sustainable basis and is, thus, encouraging
(Ickes et al. 2000). Children perceive their environment in a different
way to adults. Children exercise in their own very special, specific world
of investigation and experience. “The child is a playful, physically-active
creature. Everything that he or she learns, does and understands, is
directly associated with his or her ability to approach matters in an
exercise-oriented and playful manner and continue to develop through
experiences of gameplay and exercise” (Hildebrandt 1995, 75).
Develop requires physical challenges
This important recognition is supposed to be reflected in “meaningful”,
Foto rechts: Den Weg sicher planen, jeder nach seinen
Fähigkeiten („Seilparkour“, Corocord Raumnetz GmbH)
Photo right: Planning to make the path safer, each to their own abilities
(“Rope Parkour”, Corocord Raumnetz GmbH)
(i.e. sensor motor) sophisticated areas of demand. An area which is
oriented on the children’s needs, which
● stimulates children’s curiosity-controlled exploratory and
discovery behaviour,
● facilitates varied tactile, vestibular, kinaesthetic experiences,
● develops risk competence through their own daring exploits
in marginal situations,
● fosters the need to self-plan and design, by means of
open spaces, and promotes the children’s self-activity
and creativity in appealing conditions,
● comprehensibly promotes the motor development through
the experience of complex basics types of activities,
● meets the performance prerequisites thanks to a differentiation
of the challenges and a willingness to take calculable risks,
● promotes social learning through problem definitions,
which require mutual, coordinated action and planning.
“Along the way” children learn to control their bodies, acquire skills and
abilities as well as developing dexterity. In addition, a self-concept in
relation to increased exercise skills has a positive effect on the acquisition
of fundamental core competences such as self-confidence, self-awareness,
self-esteem, risk assessment and risk evaluation as well as the
ability to keep oneself safe. Children always need the feeling of having
managed it and having overcome their fears. Boring playgrounds are bad
for children, according to Ellen Sandseter, psychologist at the Norwegian
Queen Maude University College, as they can impede emotional development.
Because, according to Sandseter, children need stimulating
confrontation with height and speed in order to overcome fears later on.
Worrying about our children. Overprotection
minimises opportunities to develop
Despite all these insights, everyday exercise seldom appears enchanting.
It lacks child-oriented “areas of exploration”, which allow children to
discover movement problems without supervision and monitoring and
to come up with solutions to these problems. It’s mostly the adults who
shape and define the entire environment of the children. “With the number
of overcautious parents, there is also an increase in the number
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