If you want your child to be more active and creative in their play, avoid expensive play equipment and get them a bucket instead.

Australian researchers have found that simple and cheap items, such as buckets, crates and exercise mats, encourage children to be more creative when playing, compared with expensive playground equipment.

The two-year study involved 120 primary school students, aged between five and 12, who were attending a newly built school. They were compared to pupils attending an already established school that had access to play equipment such as slides and monkey bars.

In the new school, items such as buckets, hay bales, exercise mats and swimming noodles (long pieces of foam) were put in the play area. The researchers recorded the children's behaviour when playing with these items.

The study found that sedentary behaviour around the play area fell from 61% to 30% during the two-year period. Sedentary behaviour was described as sitting or standing around the playground.

Playing with the simple items also appeared to boost social skills, problem-solving skills and creativity.

Overall, the children who were playing with the simple items took an average of 13 extra steps per minute and tended to play more vigorously and intensely than the children playing in the traditional playground.

"Conventional playgrounds are designed by adults - they don't actually take into consideration how the children want to play. At a time when childhood obesity is growing and playgrounds are shrinking, we need a creative approach to stimulate physical activity among schoolchildren," commented lead researcher, Dr Brendan Hyndman of RMIT University in Melbourne.

He added that these results ‘could be applied to anywhere that children play'.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, BMC Public Health.