The equipment of children's playgrounds, like their size and number, varies, naturally, with local conditions. The average school yard play ground has a sand pit, a frame swing, a number of other swings and teeters, a spring-board, basketball standards, a standard for high jump ing, a tether ball equipment, a net for volley ball and a supply of playground balls, besides specialprovisions for sewing, basket-making raffia and ra work. But many playgrounds have far more meagre facilities, which may consist of only jumping standards, horizontal bars and sand piles. The roof playgrounds, if for boys, make provisions for baseball, basketball and tennis; those intended for girls, however, will have little or no apparatus, as dancing and sing ing are their chief diversions on such play grounds. The largest and best equipped play grounds, such as are maintained by Chicago, include large fields for baseball, field houses, libraries, clubrooms, assembly-rooms, gymnasia, swimming and wading pools, etc. Tie broadest scope is given in such playground centres to play and social activities, which include sing ing, folk-dancing, story-telling, pageants and amateur theatricals.
The general tendency as to hours and sea sons is to make children's playgrounds available during as large a part of the day and as many days in the year as seems possible. Some play grounds, especially those located in parks pro vided with field houses, are open throughout the year. In 1915 there were at least 573 play in 97 cities open all year round. Some, by electric lighting, are made available also in the evenings. The open hours of school playgrounds are naturally limited to non-in struction periods. The recent tendency, too, has been toward greater supervision and more trained leadership, experience having proved the unsupervised playground educationally unde sirable.
Objects and Results.— The object sought by the promoters of the earliest playgrounds was very simple. It was merely to keep chil dren off the streets and away from their physi cal and moral dangers. But as the playground movement developed its objects were interpreted more broadly. The importance of play as an educational factor coming to be more clearly understood, the formative influence of play grounds on character and social ideals could not be overlooked. The connection existing be tween unapplied juvenile energy and wayward ness suggests another very important gain from the playground movement, which has helped to make children not only busier but happier. Finally— to mention only the more significant benefits of playgrounds — children's play grounds, by bringing together the various racial elements under the most favorable circum stances, exert a most salutary socializing in fluence upon America's cosmopolitan population — an influence making for greater comity and tolerance among peoples with natural or ac quired animosities.
- Bibliography.—Addams,(The Spirit of J., Youth and the City Streets' (New York 1909) ; Curtis, H. S., 'Education Through Play' (ib. 1915) ; Greene, M. L., (Among School Gardens' (ib. 1910) ; Johnson, G. E., (Education by Plays and Games' (Boston. 1907) ; Perry, C. A., 'Wider Use of the School Plant' (New York 1910) ; Mero, E. B. (ed.), 'American Play grounds' (ib. 1910) • Wade, E. J., 'Social Cen tres' (ib. 1913) ; and The Playground, the offi cial organ of The Playground Association of America (ib. 1907 et seq.).