Evaluating Design Principles of Playgrounds in Educational Facilities for Children (3-12 Years of Age)

Environment has an important effect on children s growth and development. Since children are potentially tended to play both indoors and outdoors, their lack of presence in such environments can lead them to serious physical and mental harms. Therefore, the present study is aimed to obtain appropriate design patterns for an ideal area or ‘arcade’ (a special place for playing) in order to meet the children s needs, to discover the effective plays, and to increase the children s comprehensive growth, as well as analyzing the features of the ideal arcade s space to increase the children s activities and required cooperation. Accordingly, a descriptive-analytical approach based on the library studies and the surveying research was administrated to provide the literature review of the study. Also, the purposive sampling was employed to select as many as 115 children and 25 trainers. Consequently, the qualitative (questioners) and quantitative (paintings and interviews) data were collected and subsequently analyzed via Atlas.Ti and SPSS software packages. The findings and the filed investigations of the study led to achieving the purposive arcades scopes for children, and suggested the required features and the appropriate designing solutions to present a desired pattern for designing compatible children s arcade spaces with the children s needs.