Ashley LaRochelle | Support HB1507

I am a mom of three, and I am a pediatric occupational therapist who works in public schools in NH. The value of recess cannot be overstated. Recess, unstructured outdoor play, provides children with opportunities to develop social skills, emotional regulation skills, cognitive skills, sensory processing skills, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and communication skills naturally. All of these skills are best developed through play. This “downtime” is so much more than it seems. All the research points to longer recess opportunities leading to healthy, thriving learners who bring their skills gained outdoors into the classroom. Children have always needed significant outdoor play opportunities to learn and grow, and recent years have robbed children of this opportunity, leading to many children struggling to learn and to demonstrate their skills. This bill is an opportunity to give children of the next generation the same outdoor play opportunities that previous generations thrived on. The world continues to change, but research demonstrates that children of more recent generations continue to require significant amounts of unstructured outdoor play to support developmental skills. Please consider this opportunity as an investment in education that will benefit all aspects of child development. NH can lead by example, giving children what the research says they need to thrive.