Comparison of motor difficulties measured in the first year of school among children who attended rural outdoor or urban conventional kindergartens

The purpose of the study is to investigate whether children who go to outdoor kindergartens have a lower risk of experiencing motor difficulties compared to children from traditional kindergartens. The study has a hypothesis that children in outdoor kindergartens will have a lower risk of experiencing motor difficulties due to a higher level of physical activity.

After adjusting for socioeconomic factors, the study found no significant correlation between going to an outdoor kindergarten and the risk of motor difficulties when starting school. Although there was a non-significant tendency towards a lower risk in the unadjusted analysis, this association disappeared when factors such as mother’s level of education and country of origin were taken into account. The study found significant socioeconomic differences between children in the two kindergarten types. Children in outdoor kindergartens more often had parents with higher levels of education and Western backgrounds, which may have influenced the results.

The study used data from 901 children from outdoor kindergartens and 993 children from traditional kindergartens in Copenhagen, Denmark. The data was taken from municipal registries and linked with information from Danish registries. Public health nurses using a six-item test that tested gross and fine motor skills measured motor skills during the first year of school. These tests were then compared to results from 13 subtests taken by 227 children aged 8-10 months. These tests, conducted by public health nurses, were designed to identify contact disorders, hearing and visual impairments, unsatisfactory environmental stimulation and intellectual disability.

Specht, I. O., Larsen, S. C., Rohde, J. F., Østergaard, J. N., & Heitmann, B. L. (2022). Comparison of motor difficulties measured in the first year of school among children who attended rural outdoor or urban conventional kindergartens. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(21), 14158.