Six Benefits Of Outdoor Play For Children
Although outdoor play is essential for children’s health, fitness and general well-being, they seem to spend more time watching TV. Outdoor play has many advantages for healthy, growing kids, which is why they should spend more time outside. With the help of toys and activities from toy stores to facilitate outdoor play, here are six benefits your children can enjoy.
- Promoting Learning
Although there are educational activities for children indoors, they can learn even more by playing outside. Learning through play is one of the easiest ways for children to grasp complex systems and skills such as logic, problem solving and teamwork. When learning is fun, children want to learn more. Use outdoor toys and educational equipment from your local toy store to facilitate outdoor learning.
- It Stimulates Creativity
Creativity is an essential skill for your children to learn and encourages educational play as well. Playing indoors can be confining, which can hinder a child’s ability to build creative skills and have fun. When playing outside, your children’s imagination is stimulated as well, making their creative juices flow. If you encourage more outdoor play, you’ll see your kids’ imaginations and creativity skills begin to flourish.
- It’s Better For Their Health
One of the essential advantages of outdoor play is the health benefits your children enjoy when they play outside more often. When your kids play outside, they’re breathing fresh air with the sun on their skin. They have more room to play in, so they can run, jump and climb, building strong and healthy bodies. The sun provides much-needed vitamin D, and their fitness levels increase by burning off excess energy. Instead of sitting in front of the TV, they’re exercising their bodies and minds.
- It Builds Social Skills
If your children are in the habit of spending more time inside, they might feel pressured to communicate and be social because of the constraints of being indoors. This pressure can cause them to withdraw and shy away from others. By playing outdoors more often, even if they have to be social with friends and family members, they have more space around them in which to be comfortable.
Withdrawn children are more willing to join in with outdoor play because of the extra space they have to work with. Indoors, trying to share iPads and video game controllers, can make timid children more anti-social than before. By playing outside, there’s more space to be comfortable, with better opportunities to learn social skills.
- It Promotes Healthy Well-Being
Your children’s well-being is the source of many parents’ stress. Why is my child anxious? Is he/she happy and making friends at school? Well-being is a holistic view of health and happiness. That means, it encompasses not only being fit, active and physically healthy but also being mentally and emotionally happy as well.
Playing outside provides all the vitamin D that kids need from the sun. Vitamin D improves moods and promotes a positive mental attitude. Add that to the release of built-up energy, better focus at school, less anxiety, and sleep better at night; you’ll have a happy and healthy child.
- They Learn Independence
Being inside means adhering to rules. Don’t run along the corridors, don’t kick the ball inside, don’t jump on the couches. Although these rules are there for a reason, a child can’t play with the reckless abandon when they’re inside. A parent will always be in earshot, ready to call out at an unfamiliar noise. It’s very limiting, which means that children can’t be independent when they play inside.
However, they play as loud and hard as they’d like outside. Outside, kids have the freedom to decide what they want to do and how. They gain independence when choosing turns to play, when they pick themselves up after a stumble, and how to negotiate with unfamiliar toys and games. Without parents there to limit or guide them, they can explore and push boundaries. They also learn how to assess risk. Can they swing from that branch, or will it break? Will they get hurt if they jump into the pool from the highest tree? By playing outside, they learn how to explore, be self-reliant and independent. (Of course, supervision is a necessity).
Encouraging outdoor play can be difficult, especially when you and your children have gotten into indoor habits. However, the benefits of playing outside are many – from improved health and wellness to the acquisition of many essential skills. Visit any toy store for its selection of outdoor toys and activities. Toyco has a fantastic range of toys that are specially for outdoors, promoting health, wellness and learning. Visit Toyco today.
