Registration is now live for the 2023 Breath of Fresh Air Outdoor Play Summit! Held from September 27-29th, 2023 at Wesley Clover Parks Campground, Ottawa ON, BREATH OF FRESH AIR is a three-day Outdoor Play Summit hosted by Outdoor Play Canada, where thought leaders, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers can connect and share best practices. The theme for the 2023...
Thank you to Emily Gemmell, PhD Candidate at the University of British Columbia, for providing this guest post. “Ananda,” Mrs. Murry said thoughtfully. “That rings some kind of bell.” “It’s Sanskrit,” Charles Wallace said. Meg asked, “Does it mean anything?” “That joy in existence without which the universe will fall apart and collapse.” “That’s a mighty big name for one...
Thank you to Dr. Louise de Lannoy, Research Manager at Outdoor Play Canada, for providing this guest post. The 2015 Position Statement on Active Outdoor Play highlighted the unequivocal benefits of outdoor play for children’s physical, mental, emotional, social and environmental health, well-being and development. The Position Statement invigorated the outdoor play sector, bringing together many...
Thank you for Dr. Richard Larouche, Assistant Professor of Public Health at the University of Lethbridge, for providing this post. Outdoor Play Canada was founded shortly after the release of the Position Statement on Active Outdoor Play, which stated that "Access to active play in nature and outdoors-with its risks-is essential for healthy child development. We...
Thank you for Dr. Richard Larouche, Assistant Professor of Public Health at the University of Lethbridge, and Dr. Ransi Nayakarathna, MSc student in Health Sciences at the University of Lethbridge, for providing this post. As discussed in the Position Statement on Active Outdoor Play (Tremblay et al., 2015), children who spend more time outside are more...
Thank you to Kelly Arbour-Nicitopoulos and the Canadian Disability Participation Project team for contributing this guest post. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Canadian Disability Participation Project (with expertise in childhood disability, physical activity, health behaviour change, surveillance and inclusive physical education programming), representatives from disability and physical activity organizations, and parents of children and...
Thank you to Dr Michaela James – Swansea University, UK, for providing this post. Play is a vital part of growing up; it is so important that it has been made a right by the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) under Article 31 [1]. Therefore, by its definition, young people have...
BREAKING NEWS. Outdoor Play Canada, the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the CHEO Research Institute, Andrew Fleck Children's Services and Algonquin College have recently been awarded $2M for a 5-year project to launch the Canadian Centre for Outdoor Play, a centre of excellence where practice, policy and research will come together to...
Thank you to Gerben Helleman, author of the blog Urban Springtime and Researcher Public Space and Child-friendly Cities at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, for providing this post. Fortunately, more and more municipalities are working on play-friendly public spaces. However, many policy visions and investments are still based on assumptions made by municipal officials or...
Thank you to ParticipACTION for providing this post. The 2022 ParticipACTION Children and Youth Report Card has arrived! The 15th edition of the Report Card contains grades based on data collected during the pandemic to better assess its impact on kids’ movement behaviours. The pandemic drove a sudden and drastic shift in how kids could access physical...
