Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/ensuring-playground-safety/5015766/
The importance of motor development has been well understood by early childhood educators for many years. Unfortunately, they have received little in the way of guidance from designers or manufacturers of play equipment as to how to provide for safe active play. Recent brain research has proven what Piaget and child care providers knew all along, that movement is essential to the formation of intellect. Between the ages of birth and five or six years, children’s bodies as much as their minds are the organ of intelligence.The growth of quality child care in this country along with an enhanced understanding by manufacturers and designers about the importance of children’s motor development has resulted in new research into active play safety for young children. Strategies for creating and maintaining safe active play settings have been developed. But, as recently as 1991, play equipment was often designed with openings that could entrap the head of a child five years old or younger. These head entrapments resulted in some deaths by strangulation. As recently as 1991 most manufactured play equipment was designed for children aged 5 to 12. Children five years of age and younger were, therefore, often playing on equipment that was ...