they burn off extra calories, this can also help lead to better sleep. Correspondingly, Vitamin D can only be derived by outdoor play, which is essential for the skin, because it increases young children's exposure to the sun and their natural production of Vitamin D.
However, although there are many advantages of outdoor play, the motivation for early childhood outdoor play has decreased due to global society being busy in its day-to-day activities and children having over-protected parents (White, 2007). In addition, young children are either preoccupied by having too much homework or by electrical devices (such as T.V, computer games etc.) therefore decreases the amount of time children play outside. Correspondingly, further factors that have greatly impacted on early years' opportunities for outdoor play are social and environmental factors; for example, increased traffic has made play opportunities for children off limits due to being in areas where children previously spent most of their time playing (Little & Wyver, 2008). Also, there are various factors that must be considered when providing outdoor play for early years' children (i.e. supervision, safety etc.), therefore it is a challenging and complex task according to Johnson et al (2005). Other factors that prevent children from outdoor play is how many parents, teachers and politicians believe how outdoor play reduces the amount of academic activities young children take part in, therefore as a result outdoor play is limited in many schools and even eradicated (Sutterby & Frost, 2002 cited by Johnson et al, 2005). Moreover, outdoor play reduces stress in early years' children because through unstructured play they get to express and work out emotional aspects of everyday experiences (Levesque, 2011). In addition, outdoor play also presents opportunities for young children emotional development as they test their limits and challenge themselves to try new things (Strickland, 2002).
