The delights of the outdoors are among the greatest joys of childhood, but a growing number of young children today have less time to play in their neighborhoods or yards.

Instead, they are spending more time behind locked doors watching television, playing video and computer games, and as recent studies have shown, growing obese. Other children often have afternoon schedules full of structured activities, including music, dance instruction, drama classes, and tennis lessons.

Compounding the dilemma is the trend of public school districts eliminating recess in elementary schools. Those doing away with outdoor activity claim that it is a waste of time better spent on academics, that playground injuries promote lawsuits, that children might come in contact with threatening strangers while outdoors, and that there is a shortage of teachers and volunteers willing to supervise play activities.

While these concerns are valid, school recess is often the only time during the workweek that young children are able to be carefree — a time when their bodies and voices are not under tight control.

It is a widely held view that unstructured physical play helps reduce stress in children’s lives, and research shows that physical activity improves children’s attentiveness and decreases restlessness. Here are just a few examples of the value of outdoor play:

1. Play is an active form of learning that unites the mind, body, and spirit. Until at least the age of nine, children’s learning occurs best when the whole self is involved.
2. Play reduces the tension that often comes with having to achieve or needing to learn. In play, adults do not interfere and children relax.
3. Children express and work out emotional aspects of everyday experiences through unstructured play.
4. Children permitted to play freely with peers develop skills for seeing things through another person’s point of view— cooperating, helping, sharing, and solving problems.
5. The development of children’s perceptual abilities may suffer when so much of their experience is through television, computers, books, work sheets, and media that require only two senses. The senses of smell, touch, and taste, and the sense of motion through space are powerful modes of learning.
6. Children who are less restricted in their access to the outdoors gain competence in moving through the larger world. Developmentally, they should gain the ability to navigate their immediate environs (in safety) and lay the foundation for the courage that will enable them eventually to lead their own lives.

Early Years Are Learning Years is a regular series from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and one of many tools NAEYC provides to early childhood educators, parents, and others who support and nurture the development of young children. For more information, visit www.naeyc.org.