The availability of children’s outdoor play equipment in city ECD centers for their holistic development

Abstract

Children require a lot of opportunities for creative play and creative thinking. Outdoor play for children has been regarded as not only a crucial part of children’s developmental stage but also as important for their holistic development. Despite this wide range of research that has shown positive correlation between play and children’s learning, recent trends indicate that children no longer engage in outdoor play. This study thus set to investigate the status of play environments in Early Childhood Development (ECD) centers. The main concern of the study was to establish whether the equipment in ECD outdoor play environments were enough and of different variety to cater for holistic development of children. The study was done in Kisumu city in Kenya. The city has 512 ECD centers with the majority of these being public and run by Parents Teachers Associations (PTAs). Purposive sampling was used to select 20 urban ECD centers in Kisumu city and children who constituted the sample. Data was collected from the head teachers and teachers of the selected respondents by use of interviews, an event observation schedule and observation checklist. The data collected was qualitative and thus was analyzed descriptively. The study results indicated that many ECD centers’ environments promoted physical development of children but only to a small extent. The equipment were available enhance gross motor development mostly. These included those that encouraged climbing, sliding, jumping and swinging. The equipment were inadequate in number in most of the schools. According to the results of the study, ECD center outdoor play environments did not accord opportunities for children’s cognitive development. Outdoor play environment had only equipment and materials for play. Many ECD centers did not have natural elements for children to learn from. Those that had natural things for children to explore and learn from were not deliberately conserved for children’s education but rather because they were found there. Outdoor play environment in ECD centers were not inclusive of the children with physical challenges. The design and organization of the play environment did not factor accessibility for children with physical challenges. Play equipment, materials and elements found in the outdoor play environment were not adapted to suit children with physical challenges. The study recommends that the Ministry of Education should make follow ups in all ECD centers to ascertain the extent to which the special needs policy framework has been implemented.