PLAYGROUND MOVEMENT

PLAYGROUND MOVEMENT. As an answer to crowded cities and long work days, the playground movement attempted to save children from unhealthy crowded neighborhoods. The movement began with the sand gardens in Boston in 1885. The following year two more sand piles, known as sand gardens, were added to church yards. By 1887 there were ten sand gardens with matrons paid to supervise, and tools for digging and blocks for building were provided. Twelve years later in 1899, there were twenty-one sand gardens in Boston; twenty were located in school yards. (1)

By 1900 reformers realized that play and playgrounds had educational value. In the neighborhoods with a supervised playground, children appeared to be more attentive and in classes, physical health increased, and truancy and bad behavior decreased. These positive results encouraged the involvement of schools in creating play spaces. (2)

Beginning in 1905, playgrounds included recreation for all ages. Social, aesthetic, and civic activities were added, such as dances, musical programs, dramatics, public forums, and elections. In 1906 the Playground Association of America was formed evolved into the Playground and Recreation Association of America by around 1915. (3)

The impact of the playground movement can be seen in the statistics: in 1909, 336 cities had 1,535 playgrounds; in 1948, 1,917 cities had 13,520 playgrounds – an increase of 880% in less than 40 years. Over the same time period, funding increased from $1,353,114 to $96,000,000 and paid play leaders grew from 3,756 to 48,548. (4)

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Source:

1. Play and Playground Encyclopedia. Online: https://www.pgpedia.com/p/playground-movement

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.