Community Needs More Playgrounds for Kids - Essay Sample

Introduction

Despite the community field looking like a place for only fun, numerous advantages come with children playing together and spending their time together with the community playground’s aid. Playground for children has numerous essentialities apart from physical development. Community playgrounds enable children to have vital skills and development in different aspects such as social skills, reasoning, creativity, and the ability to solve problems. The benefits provided to a child by a community playground is much essential compared to the most complex modern learning technologies provided in schools.

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Understanding Play

Before elaborating further on a community playground’s essentiality to children, it is vital to understand what play is and how it enables the children to grow and develop. Through play, children can acquire different skills, which include motor skills and coordination. The play also enables children to develop social insight, reasoning skills, and finally improve in their language. There are different researches conducted by doctors, educators, researchers, and scientists, which shows the essentiality of play (Agboola et al., 2017). Children who do not play they usually have problems in the development of the mentioned traits. Play is compared to eating and sleeping for children since it enables children to develop healthy traits.

Essentiality

Different researches conducted show that kids usually spend thirty minutes a day outside and an average of seven hours on television, phones, video games, and computers per day. According to the researches, it is evident that children are abandoning active outdoor activities for a more lucrative indoor lifestyle, which has adverse effects on their health and their overall life while growing (Gubbels et al., 2018). The reducing number of active children comes from influence from media outlets and other influential people. Despite numerous parents realizing their children are not active during the day, some parents are unsure why their children need to be active. Innumerable parents will need their children to be healthy physically and also become all-round and independent. Parents also want their children to be compassionate adults when they grow up. Though encouraging children to spend more time outside playing, and staying away from all digital devices facilitated by technology, helps children grow not only physically but also intellectually.

Physical Benefits of Playing

There are numerous reasons why kids need to go out and play in the community playground. One of the essentialities of play is that it creates the necessary cognitive skills to children while growing. The following are children’s cognitive skills while growing: self-discovery, dexterity, problem-solving, and creativity. A playground with monkey bars will have to apply the motor skills to move from one bar to another. Children will also have to coordinate hands and eyes to determine the time for swinging and grabbing. All those skills developed by children require reasoning. All these skills were obtained by children in the playground used in different perspectives of life. Through spending time in playgrounds, children can learn diverse skills, which enable them to grow both physically and mentally.

Based on the data obtained from research from the National Association of Sports and Physical Education, there are several activities to be achieved by children daily. The activities include the involvement of toddlers in thirty minutes of physical activity. Kids need to use community play areas to improve their eyes and hands and grow their physical health.

Community playgrounds are essential places for children to develop skills, improve their physical conditions, and have fun. Children who spend more time outdoor in their initial years are generally active even when they mature. Parents encouraging their children to play in the playgrounds enable them to develop a positive attitude concerning active adult life maintenance.

Improved Motor Skills

Children who spend their time in playgrounds seen to have essential motor skills compared to children who spend most time indoors. Outdoor playing children develop better balance, agility, and coordination. Children utilizing the playground facilities may enjoy activities such as bike riding and walking. Though children in the playgrounds do physical activities, they grow physically and develop courage and high self-esteem. For children aspiring to be athletes, spending more time in the playgrounds enables them to practice and perfect different skills such as catching, batting, and kicking.

Community Playground Can Improve Health

Apart from having motor skills development, playgrounds also play an essential role in improving kids’ health. Children who utilize playgrounds are most likely to have a healthier body weight than children without playgrounds facilities. Different researches conducted in 1980 indicate that only seven percent of children were considered obese compared to thirty years later when studies suggest that out of three children, one is obese. Children in the modern era eat more and perform less exercise. Children who spend most of their time playing outside in playgrounds are less likely to be obese because their bodies are active during the day. Reducing the chances of children becoming obese has numerous essentialities: reducing the chances of having asthma, heart diseases, diabetes, and sleep apnea.

Improvement in Academics

When children get home, parents need to let them go to the playgrounds to play. Playing for children enables them to release frustration and anxiety from school. Playing also enables children to relax their minds when tackling assignments from school. Playgrounds have educational materials such as toys, which enables the children to learn new concepts while playing (Zenk, 2019). Increasing the learning space for children enables them to have an open mind that learning can occur anywhere, not in classrooms only—for example, when children are counting scores in a game, their knowledge about numbers increases.

Conclusion

This paper has addressed the different importance of having a community playground for the development of children. The paper has provided an in-depth definition of play. Secondly, it has shown the essentiality of non-screen time. It has discussed both the physical and mental essentialities of having a community playground. Finally, the per has discussed other essentialities of community playgrounds. The importance of this paper is developing a stronger sense of community, creating a stronger relationship of the children with nature, and finally bringing excitement to the day of a child. Every society needs to have a playground for children as playgrounds play an essential role in shaping children’s destiny.

References

Agboola, O. P., Rasidi, M. H., & Said, I. (2017). Adolescents’ Sense of Community and Involvement in Playground Activities: Panacea to Ameliorate Social Vices and Delinquencies. International Journal of Built Environment and Sustainability, 4(2).

Gubbels, J. S., Van Kann, D. H., Cardon, G., & Kremers, S. P. (2018). Activating childcare environments for all children: The importance of children’s individual needs. International journal of environmental research and public health, 15(7), 1400.

Hoffman, A. J. (2017). Millennials, Technology, and Perceived Relevance of Community Service Organizations: Is Social Media Replacing Community Service Activities?. The Urban Review, 49(1), 140-152.

Wright, D. J., Kouyoumijan, V., & Kopp, S. (2019). Towards a Community “Playground:” Connecting CyberGIS with Its Communities. In CyberGIS for Geospatial Discovery and Innovation (pp. 263-278). Springer, Dordrecht.

Zenk, S. N., Pugach, O., Ragonese-Barnes, M., Odoms-Young, A., Powell, L. M., & Slater, S. J. (2020). Did Playground Renovations Equitably Benefit Neighborhoods in Chicago?. Journal of Urban Health, 1-11.