Preschoolers' Play Behaviors With Peers in Classroom and Playground Settings

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between different settings for young children's play behaviors with peers. Forty-one children from 2 to 5 years of age (twenty-one 2- and 3-year-olds and twenty 4- and 5-year-olds) enrolled in three child care programs participated in this study. The children were videotaped for five minutes each on four different days, both indoors and outdoors (total of 40 minutes). The Assessment Profile for Early Childhood Programs described the quality of the child care program, and additional measures described the playground setting. Children's play behaviors were categorized using the Parten-Smilansky Scale, which combines social play categories and cognitive play categories into 16 categories of peer interaction. Results showed that the children were more likely to engage in the most complex form of peer play (i.e., interactive dramatic play) outdoors than indoors. In outdoor play, the older age group was more likely to interact with peers than was the younger age group. The outdoor playground offered older preschoolers particular types of play experiences (i.e., functional play and dramatic play) more readily than the classroom. These findings reinforce the importance of both the indoor and the outdoor environments for promoting more complementary play behaviors and peer interactions.