The Benefits of Outdoor Play, and How Much Australian Kids Need

Most parents already believe outdoor play is good for their children. What is harder to find is a straight answer to the practical question: how much does a child actually need, and what does it do for them?

Australia has official guidelines on this, and they are more specific than most people realise.

How much movement Australian children need

The Australian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines set out recommendations by age. They cover physical activity, screen time and sleep together, because the three trade off against each other across a day.

Birth to 12 months

• Physically active several times a day through supervised floor play
• At least 30 minutes of tummy time spread across the day
• No sedentary screen time
• 14 to 17 hours of sleep up to 3 months, 12 to 16 hours from 4 to 11 months

Toddlers, 1 to 2 years

• At least 3 hours of varied physical activity spread through the day, including energetic play
• No sedentary screen time
• 11 to 14 hours of sleep including naps

Preschoolers, 3 to 5 years

• At least 3 hours of physical activity, of which 1 hour should be energetic play: running, jumping, climbing, dancing
• No more than 1 hour of sedentary screen time, and less is better
• 10 to 13 hours of sleep

Children and teenagers, 5 to 17 years

• At least 60 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous physical activity, and more is better
• Activities that strengthen muscle and bone on at least 3 days a week
• No more than 2 hours a day of sedentary recreational screen time
• Break up long periods of sitting

Three hours a day for a toddler sounds enormous until you realise it does not have to be structured, or continuous, or supervised activity. It is simply a child who has somewhere to move and is not sitting still. That is what a backyard is for.

Eyesight: the benefit most parents have not heard about

This is the one that surprises people.

Rates of short sightedness in children have climbed sharply over the past few decades, and one of the most consistent protective factors identified across multiple studies is simply time spent outdoors. The figure that comes up repeatedly is around 13 hours a week, or just under 2 hours a day, associated with a reduced likelihood of a child becoming short sighted.

The mechanism appears to be light intensity rather than the activity itself. Outdoor light is dramatically brighter than indoor light, even on an overcast day, and that brightness seems to influence how the eye grows. Which means the benefit holds up even with a hat, sunglasses and shade, and it does not matter much what the child is actually doing out there.

Reading a book on the back step counts. So does sitting in a cubby house.

What else outdoor play is doing

Sleep

Physical activity and daylight exposure both help regulate the body clock. A child who has spent real time outside during the day tends to fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly. This is the benefit most parents notice first, and it is usually the one that gets equipment bought.

Coordination and strength

Climbing, hanging, swinging and balancing build gross motor skills and upper body strength in a way that almost nothing indoors replicates. Hanging from a bar and pulling your own body weight along it is not an experience a living room offers. That is a large part of why monkey bars and climbing frames earn their space.

Judging risk

Children who are allowed to climb slightly higher than is entirely comfortable learn to assess what they can and cannot do. Removing every opportunity to make that judgement does not produce a safer child, it produces a child with no practice at it. There is a real difference between a hazard, which a child cannot see, and a risk, which they can weigh up. Good play equipment offers the second and eliminates the first.

Attention and mood

Time outdoors is consistently associated with better concentration and lower irritability in children. Any parent who has sent a wound up child into the backyard for twenty minutes already has the empirical data on this one.

Social skills

Unstructured outdoor play is where children negotiate rules, take turns, resolve disputes and change the game halfway through. Those are difficult skills and they are mostly learned without an adult present.

Making it happen in an Australian backyard

Our climate is a genuine advantage. Outside of a few weeks of real heat and some cold mornings, most of the country is comfortable outdoors most of the year.

Sun. Aim for outdoor time before 10am and after 3pm in summer, and put shade over anything that gets used in the middle of the day. Sunscreen, hat, and a shaded landing spot near the equipment.

Winter. Gumboots and a raincoat convert a miserable afternoon into an interesting one. Cold weather is a clothing problem, not a reason to stay in.

Make it visible. Equipment at the back fence gets used far less than equipment the children walk past. If you have a choice of positions, choose the one they can see from inside.

What actually gets children outside

The honest answer is: something that is theirs, and something that changes.

• Swing sets are the workhorse. Swinging is vestibular input that children genuinely seek out, and a set with a slide and climbing frame covers several kinds of play at once.
• Cubby houses give them somewhere that belongs to them, which drives long stretches of imaginative play.
• Sandpits are open ended and calming, and hold the attention of younger children longer than almost anything else.
• Trampolines deliver serious physical activity in a small footprint.
• Mud kitchens and water play combine sensory play with pretend play, which is why early learning centres use them so heavily.
• Playgrounds and climbing frames build strength and give older children something they have to work up to.

The equipment is not the point in itself. It is a reason to go outside, which is the thing the guidelines are actually asking for.

Where to start

If you are planning a backyard from scratch, our backyard playground planning guide covers safety, sizing and materials. For the developmental side, play based learning and imaginative play go into more depth.

Everything we sell is covered by our Price Match Guarantee and delivered Australia wide.

Written by Carla, owner at All Things For Kids.