What This Means
This research suggests that the physical equipment available outdoors at preschools plays an important role in how active young children are throughout their day. Researchers in Rivera, Uruguay, studied 112 children aged around 3–4 years old, measuring their movement over 24 hours using wrist-worn motion sensors. They also assessed the preschool environment across six areas, including what teachers do, school policies, and both indoor and outdoor spaces and equipment. Of all these factors, only outdoor equipment — its availability, quantity, and how easily children could access it — was meaningfully linked to children getting more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (the kind that gets hearts beating faster).
This research also suggests that having better outdoor equipment may help close the gap between boys and girls in terms of how much vigorous activity they get at preschool. Typically, boys tend to be more physically active than girls at this age, but access to outdoor equipment appeared to level that playing field. The study used a sophisticated statistical approach called compositional data analysis, which looks at how children's time is distributed across sleep, light activity, and more intense activity all together, rather than examining each behaviour in isolation.
The findings are particularly meaningful because most research on preschool environments and physical activity comes from high-income countries, while this study was conducted in Uruguay, a South American country. This research suggests that investing in outdoor playground equipment at preschools — making it plentiful and accessible to all children — could be a practical, targetable way to help young children move more and reduce activity inequalities between boys and girls during these critical early years.