Playgrounds

PLAYGROUNDS. 1. Sports grounds in the narrow sense—specially equipped and adapted areas of specific dimensions for conducting outdoor activities for any particular sport, for example, active games, gymnastics, track and field, ball games—tennis, football, basketball, volleyball, hockey, city skittles, etc. In the broad sense, sports grounds refer to an area (plot, territory) where, alongside special grounds for various types of physical exercises, places for hardening and other activities, and places for physical education, there are a number of additional service facilities—dressing rooms, showers, restrooms, places for spectators. In this sense, sports grounds approach stadiums (see) and differ from them in smaller dimensions and fewer conveniences for spectators. Sports grounds can be included as a component part in parks of culture and rest, be arranged at enterprises, at children's institutions, schools, in pioneer camps, collective farms, in sanatoriums and rest homes, in units of the Red Army (on the scale of camp units, at company-level Lenin ' clearings), etc. The dimensions, content, and character of equipment of sports grounds depend on their tasks and the contingents for which they are intended. Thus, for example, a sports ground at a large enterprise, as a rule, should have equipped grounds for all popular sports, starting with a football field and a track and field area; conversely, a ground at a school or children's institution will require only an area for active games and sports-type games like volleyball, gymnastics classes at a rate of about 6-8 m² per participant. In sports grounds serving adults, the core is usually a football field with a running track around it and places for jumps and throws located between the field and the track on the turns. The football field is also used for other ball games (handball, pushball, etc.) and mass games. Grounds for other types of physical exercises (volleyball, basketball, tennis, etc.), which do not require much space, are arranged throughout the area occupied by the sports ground as a whole. Sports grounds specially intended for exercises in one or another type of physical activity must satisfy a number of sports-technical requirements. Almost all these requirements, starting with the dimensions of the grounds, also have certain hygienic significance, since, for example, in ball games the size of the ground has a significant influence on the intensity of the overall load during play. In addition to special requirements for grounds for various sports, in the construction, equipment, maintenance, and use of sports grounds, a number of general hygienic requirements must be observed: 1) location of grounds as far as possible from factory chimneys, heavily trafficked roads, etc.; 2) mandatory planting of grounds with trees and shrubs to reduce the amount of dust from adjacent streets getting onto the grounds; 3) mandatory presence on the grounds of facilities for necessary water procedures related to physical education—showers, washbasins, etc.; 4) sufficient capacity of dressing rooms (not less than 1.5-2 m² per person) and sufficient throughput of restrooms, taking into account not only those using the grounds but also spectators (approximately 1 fixture per 100 people); 5) observance of safety measures both in the equipment of grounds and during activities on them: sufficient distance of the side lines of grounds from fences, trees, poles and other objects that could cause traumatic injuries, measures to protect spectators from accidental hits by projectiles—general discipline and order on the grounds, sufficient distance from spectators of places for throws, special barriers (e.g., when playing city skittles), softening of landing places in jumps, etc.; 6) proper maintenance of grounds, their systematic cleaning, collecting stones, glass and other objects, regular watering, etc.; 7) organization of constant supervision over the general sanitary condition of grounds, as well as medical aid on them by attaching a physician, medical assistant, and mobilizing the attention of the active physical education participants to the sanitary aspects of the grounds. On the sports-technical features of grounds for individual sports—see the respective terms.

2. Children's playground—an area of land specially adapted and equipped for the organized stay of children during the day. Depending on the purpose and tasks of organized influence on children, playgrounds are divided into health-improving and mass pedagogical. Health-improving playgrounds are of sanatorium type, built according to the type of day sanatoriums and usually arranged at tuberculosis dispensaries and polyclinics, and of semi-sanatorium type, usually called mass health-improving playgrounds; they are organized at children's professional outpatient clinics, OZDiP points, children's sanatorium institutions. Mass pedagogical playgrounds are organized at children's institutions (schools, kindergartens, etc.), at children's institutions, housing trusts, communal houses, in parks of culture and rest, at clubs, etc. Depending on the age contingent of children, there are preschool, school, and mixed playgrounds. Playgrounds can be winter, summer, or functioning year-round. Mass health-improving and pedagogical playgrounds are usually most extensively developed in the summer. Health-improving playgrounds have as their main purpose to carry out systematically and regularly a certain amount of therapeutic and preventive measures in relation to sick and physically weak children without removing them from family and educational influence. Mass pedagogical playgrounds have as their main task to organize the out-of-school time of children and their leisure on the basis of a properly conducted daily routine in accordance with the requirements of hygiene and health protection, and planned pedagogical and educational influence. In accordance with the indicated tasks, the contingent of children sent to health-improving and pedagogical playgrounds and their daily routine are determined, namely: to health-improving playgrounds are sent children with certain forms of tuberculosis disease, exhausted children, after severe illnesses, physically weak and anemic children; to mass pedagogical playgrounds are sent all children regardless of their health, first of all from among those in the most difficult living conditions. The duration and time of operation of playgrounds during the day vary depending on local features and conditions (domestic, production, national, etc.), as well as on the age composition of children and the nature of the playground itself. The longest duration of a children's playground in a day is 10-12 hours, the shortest is 4-6 hours. Depending on all the indicated conditions, the corresponding daily routine of the playground is established. We give an example of the daily routine of a summer school playground functioning for 10 hours in the conditions of the central zone of the RSFSR: gathering of children on the playground—from 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.; pioneer lineup—from 8:30 a.m. to 8:40 a.m.; exercises—from 8:40 a.m. to 8:50 a.m.; washing and preparation for breakfast—from 8:50 a.m. to 9:15 a.m.; breakfast—from 9:15 a.m. to 9:45 a.m.; mass work and excursions—from 9:45 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.; sun and air baths—from 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.; swimming, shower, pouring—from 12:00 p.m. to 12:30 p.m.; quiet games in free time—from 12:30 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.; preparation for lunch and lunch—from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.; preparation for rest and after-lunch rest—from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.; children's self-activity, club activities—from 3:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.; pioneer lineup, dismissal home—from 5:45 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. In connection with the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on the work of the pioneer organization of April 21, 1932, the question of the children's playground as one of the most accessible and best forms of mass health-improving work among children has become especially relevant. At present, especially in summer, a huge number of children's playgrounds are being developed, covering millions of children. Playgrounds are usually developed with funds from the population and public organizations with relatively small subsidies from the state budget, which to some extent serves as an indicator of the popularity of children's playgrounds among broad working circles. The main task at present is to consolidate seasonal children's playgrounds for year-round operation and to organize a children's playground at each children's institution on the adjacent area. The many years of experience with children's playgrounds, both special health-improving and mass pedagogical, have fully justified their great organizational, educational, and health-improving significance, therefore for the second five-year plan, the organization of children's playgrounds at all children's institutions of school and preschool type (along the lines of the People's Commissariat of Education) and at all children's professional outpatient clinics, polyclinics and children's departments of dispensary associations (along the lines of the People's Commissariat of Health) is planned. Thanks to this, the playground should become one of the basic forms of organizing a child's leisure time and conducting mass health-improving measures.

A. Tseitlin.

3. Physiotherapy playgrounds are used for treatment with sun, air, and physical exercises. In addition, many such playgrounds are equipped with showers, which are used to a greater extent for hygienic purposes. Movements are prescribed in the form of complexes of physical exercises according to special methodologies developed in therapeutic physical culture, while showers are most often used after heliotherapy and physical exercises, significantly less often after aerotherapy, with dosing of the shower duration. Physiotherapy playgrounds should be built on the territory with green cover, surrounded by green plantings. The location for physiotherapy playgrounds must meet high hygienic requirements, therefore a mandatory condition for organizing playgrounds is a certain distance from the roadway, from sources of dust, smoke, soot, etc. It is clear that if such a playground already exists where greening has been done (greened playgrounds at dispensaries, hospitals, schools, etc.), it is necessary to use it partially, and sometimes entirely, for organizing physiotherapy playgrounds. The placement of individual pieces of equipment on the physiotherapy playground should be as rational as possible. The average size of a playground, solarium, and aerarium can be recommended at 3.5-4 m² per person. Orlyuk proposes the following typical plan for a physiotherapy playground (Figure 1). The playground indicated on the plan for treatment with rest (Liegekur) is of course desirable as a separate one. In the absence of sufficient green plantings to organize a separate playground for Liegekur, treatment with rest can be carried out in the space allocated on the physiotherapy playground for resting patients, or in the extreme case on that part of the playground where air baths are administered. For equipping physiotherapy playgrounds, portable lounges with removable tents (Orlyuk) (Fig. 2) have been proposed, and for administering hydroprocedures—a solar shower. Physiotherapy playgrounds should be not only at inpatient facilities (hospitals, military hospitals, sanatoriums, etc.), but also at outpatient treatment institutions (dispensaries, polyclinics, outpatient clinics). It is desirable to have such playgrounds also at health stations at enterprises, at least the largest ones. The advisability and necessity of organizing physiotherapy playgrounds at treatment institutions in rural areas should be specially mentioned. In collective farms and state farms, the conditions allow for much wider construction of such playgrounds than in cities. Physiotherapy playgrounds are also absolutely necessary in preventive institutions (rest homes, culture and rest parks, forest schools, etc.); physiotherapy playgrounds are indicated for more weakened groups among vacationers, for whom health-improving physical agents should be administered not for purely preventive purposes, but for therapeutic-prophylactic purposes and of course with stricter dosing. For the same purpose, physiotherapy playgrounds should be organized at schools, keeping in mind children with initial forms of spinal deformity, with tuberculous intoxication, anemic, and with other pathological forms that do not allow such children and adolescents to be combined into general groups for hardening by the natural forces of nature. In adults, the use of physiotherapy playgrounds is indicated primarily for convalescents after acute diseases. To the same extent, physiotherapy playgrounds are indicated for those suffering from chronic diseases: tuberculosis, arthritis, intoxications, disturbed metabolism, and a number of other diseases leading to significant limitation of working capacity. This also includes less pronounced forms of disturbed health, in which working capacity is inadequate, but its increase can be ensured on physiotherapy playgrounds without removing workers from their daily activities. Individual elements of physiotherapy on playgrounds can be used according to the general indications for them.

V. Shimshelovich. Lat.: Katselenbogen S, Physiotherapy playgrounds for children, Theor. and Pract. Phys. Cult., 1927, No. 3; Molchanov A., Physiotherapy playgrounds, Encycl. Moshealthdept., 1927, No. 3; Orlyuk A., Physiotherapy playgrounds at treatment institutions, M.-L., 1930 (bibl.).