Please join us on Wednesday, February 5, for Global School Play Day!
Healthi Kids has brought together sites across the city to participate in the Global School Play Day for the second year in a row. Global School Play is celebrated in more than 75 countries!
Healthi Kids has provided resources, materials, and support for 13 school-based sites to advance unstructured play in their learning environments for Global School Day of Play. These include:
- Pre-K sites: School 50, School 33, Rochester Early Childhood Education Center
- Elementary schools: Schools 4, 16, 17, 22, 33, 34, 45, 58
- Middle schools: Freddie Thomas Middle School
- Home school collective: Berr’s Infinite Mindz Learning Pods
2024 was the first year that Healthi Kids coordinated Global School Play Day celebrations across the City of Rochester. Nearly 60 sites, from schools to public libraries to R-Centers, participated, ensuring a day of play for thousands of Rochester students.
Proclamation from Rochester City Council
We were honored this year by an official Proclamation from Rochester City Council naming February 5 as Global School Play Day in Rochester. Read it below!
Why focus on unstructured play?
Since 2009, the Healthi Kids Coalition has been advocating for the power of play in both Rochester’s schools, neighborhoods, and early learning environments to ensure every child in our community receives the benefits play provides to their learning, development, and success. Healthi Kids for years has brought together neighborhood partners to raise awareness for the power of play in neighborhoods through the city-wide play day “PlayROCs your Neighborhood.”
The Rochester community is passionate about the power of play in both schools and neighborhoods. In 2021, we released a community vision for playful learning in the Rochester City School District that stated “Play is central to the education and well-being of our children. To support our kids, we must maximize the potential of play in a culturally responsive and sustaining way within our education system. All children (PreK-12) in the RCSD must have equitable access to playful learning and unstructured play opportunities throughout the day (in school, out of school, and during the summer).”
For many children, play is their preferred way of learning, and research demonstrates that play can enhance academic performance. Research dictates that play is where children learn they are in control of their life, to solve their own problems, to get along with peers, to see another’s point of view, to practice empathy, to innovate, to create and very importantly, to experience pure joy.
Experts including the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, also agree play is also critical to mitigating the impact the trauma associated with COVID-19, structural racism, and youth’s adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
Unstructured play, also known as free play, in particular is helpful in practicing problem solving and imagination skills. Because unstructured play has no set rules or guidelines, children invent their own and collaborate with each other on things like who takes the first turn and how to earn points. This type of free play has been on the decline in recent years due to a number of factors like safety concerns related to playing outside in one's neighborhood and the increase in technology-mediated play and screen time. This is why Healthi Kids is so excited to host Global School Play Day again this year!
Resources
- Play Day Activities and Games (.pdf)
- Global School Play Day: Homepage for the international event
- Rescue Recess: Healthi Kids initiative to ensure every child in the RCSD has daily active play
- Global School Play Day: Research on play
- Example of Unstructured Play Expectations