A Survey on Children Plays and Movement preferences in Pre-school Centers

This research aimed to study children's plays and movement preferences in pre-school centers in the city of Gorgan. Statistical population consisted of 4033 children who were educated in 85 pre-school centers of city of Gorgan. From among them 500 children (boy and girl), in the ages of three to four years old and five to six years old, were chosen randomly based on Morgan Table. Data were collected through questionnaires (Ramezany-Nejad, 2009) and by interviewing. Descriptive statistics is used for classification of frequency and percentages, and Cramer Coefficient of Correlation is used for analyzing the data. Results of the study revealed that 57% of children were included in Active category, and the rest are in inactive class, regarding the fact that 46% of girls and 67% of boys were included in Active category, and girls in the ages of 3-4 showed more tendencies toward inactive plays. The results showed that most children preferred group plays, 74% had a positive image of playing in mind and 59% (62% of girls and 56% of boys) chose pre-school center over home as the firs favorite playing place. The results of testing the hypotheses showed that there is a significant relationship between the age and the type of play (active or inactive), activity image (positive or negative image) and favorite playing place (home or pre-school). There is also a significant relationship between gender and the type of play and the type of social participation of children (groups, dual or individual) (alpha=0.05).