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The aim of this study is to create more understanding of how children in a selected preschool interact with the outdoor environment while playing and performing physical activities. The study will also show whether there are differences between how boys and girls play and their choice of activities.

The background of this study describes the fact that being outside is a part of today’s preschool activities and that it should be a given to be outdoor every day. Today, many preschools want to have gender-neutral materials outside on the playground just to break the patterns that the society has built up with gender-coded toys and materials. The outdoor environment and nature is considered to be gender-neutral, which is something that can help boys and girls not to get restricted in their choice of games and activities.

Data has been collected through observations and the result has been analyzed with help of different concepts that has been used in earlier researches.

The results indicate that the outdoor environment attracts both boys and girls. There is no evidence that points toward that the environment attracts girls more than boys or the other way around. The environment offers a rich variety of affordances, such as running in open spaces, football, using the swings, playing in the sandbox and going down the slides. The activities that have been observed were usually played by both sexes but at different times. Sometimes, the children has been playing together over gender boundaries and sometimes only just boys and sometimes only girls. According to the study’s result, the playground do not seem to be designed with the aim to attract boys and girls in different ways. I interpret the environment viewed from a gender perspective as gender-neutral.