Research indicates that naturalized playspaces tend to promote higher levels and greater variety of young children's physical activity than traditional playgrounds. This study adds to this research by focusing on how children perceive and use affordances in the different playspaces and how this impacts their movement behavior. Affordances – which can be potential or actualized – are resources or features of an environment which may be used by an individual in that environment. Whether or not a particular affordance is utilized depends on the intentions and abilities of the perceiver. What designers of playspaces may perceive as potential affordances may or may not be actualized by children in those playspaces.
This study compared the affordances and children's physical activity in two preschool playscapes: a traditional playground and a naturalized play setting. The aim was to determine if a highly naturalized playscape provides more varied opportunities for physical activity than a traditional playground. Both playspaces (naturalized and traditional) were located at the same preschool in Australia and used by the same children. A gate – which was sometimes open so that children could move freely from one space to the other -- separated the two areas. The naturalized playscape included a series of terraces, edgings, inclines, logs, and rocks designed to provide potential affordances for children's physical activities. The traditional playground, while including some trees and other natural elements, reflected a standard playground design with an open space area for sports and biking, fabricated equipment, and a sandpit. Researchers used a behavior mapping technique to record children's observed movements in both playspaces. This technique involved dividing the playscapes into zones -- each with different affordances -- and observing children's activity in each area in a rotating cycle of three-minute time samples. This procedure allowed the researchers to collect data on children's movement and physical activity within each space and in relation to specific affordances. Forty observations were conducted in the naturalized space; 42 in the traditional space.
The way children manipulated materials differed significantly between the two playspaces. Manipulative play in the naturalized playspace involved frequent actualization of affordances provided by natural materials and loose parts such as leaves, bark, rocks, sticks, and sand. In the traditional playspace, there were only a few instances of children actualizing natural affordances for manipulative play. Other than manipulation, the different types of movement and levels of movement intensity were similar across both settings. There were qualitative differences, however, between spaces in balance and in moderate and vigorous movement activities. Children in the naturalized playspace actualized more varied and challenging affordances than children in the traditional space. For example, balancing in the naturalized playscape involved the extra challenges provided by uneven and irregular natural surfaces and features. These extra challenges suggest that the naturalized playspace may have provided more affordances for the development of physical skills such as agility, balance, and coordination.
This study shows that naturalized spaces can potentially provide equivalent or greater affordances for a range of physical activities compared to a traditional playspace dominated by standard equipment.
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