Children’s injuries in locomotor / sport activities in kindergarten

Dr. Mateja Videmšek, dr. Jože Štihec, dr. Damir Karpljuk and dr. Maja Meško

Summary:  The purpose of the research was to analyse injuries in organized locomotor / sport activities of children in kindergartens. Our intention was to find out if there were any differences in the frequency of injuries regarding pre-school children’s gender. The sample of the interviewees comprises 178 parents of three to six year old children from seven kindergartens in Slovenia. We processed the data with the statistic program SPSS. Then we calculated the frequencies and conducted the Chi-square test. The results show that 60% of children have organized locomotor / sport activities in kindergarten only once a week, more than half of them in a playroom and a quarter of them even in the corridor. During the last year, more than a quarter of children in kindergarten have suffered injuries, statistically significantly more boys than girls. Three quarters of children suffered injuries during free games, mostly on the outdoor playground. More than half of the injuries, which happened during an organized sport activity, took place in a playroom and more than a third in the corridor, mostly because of unpredictable circumstances. There were mostly bruises and head injuries. A quarter of injured children were taken to hospital. It was mostly the pre-school teacher who informed parents about the accident, gave the injured child a compress, and in some cases bandaged the injured part of the body or put some ointment on the painful place. The report of the accident was written only in the third of cases.