Woburn's Altavesta Elementary Celebrates Global School Play Day

WOBURN, MA — Woburn's Altavesta Elementary School participated in Global School Play Day earlier this month.

On March 1, the school celebrated the global event by allowing its students to have a day of indoor and outdoor unstructured play.

According to the Global School Play Day website, the event launched in 2015 as an educator-led grassroots effort to support unstructured playtime for students around the world.

Empowering kids to take part in unstructured play is essential for childhood development, boosting cognitive development, promoting learning and socialization and helping children become more adaptive to various situations, according to supporters of the effort.

During Global School Play Day at Altavesta, students were allowed to bring in toys, games, blocks and dolls to play with and share with their friends. Or, they could play with the toys already in their classrooms.

Outside, there was snow on the ground and students were encouraged to play in the snow, which they did by making snow angels and building snowmen.

No screens were allowed during Global Play Day.

"Global School Play Day is such an excellent opportunity for our students to put devices and electronics away and connect with each other in creative and fun ways," said Linda Riley, principal at Altavesta. "It was great to see the students using their imaginations and playing with board games, dolls and toys that teachers and staff played with when they were younger."