What is Opal?
Research has shown that children spend 20% of their time in school playing. To ensure that this time and our fantastic school grounds are used to their full potential our school has adopted an OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) philosophy that allows the children freedom to explore play in their own imaginative ways, often using found and gathered resources in the natural outdoor environment.
There are many benefits to the OPAL programme including:
- Improving playtimes for all children meaning happier children and children who come into the classroom ready to learn
- Improving our play spaces across the school making the most of our wonderful spaces and ensuring a fully inclusive play offer
- Develops our school values encouraging children to be creative, resilient, independent and collaborative whilst respecting those around them
- Improving behaviour at playtimes
- It’s fun!
Please read our Play policy to find out more!
Assemblies & Workshops
Every few weeks we have a play assembly where we gather the children together to ensure that there is communication between adults and children about play. This forms a crucial part of the OPAL process it allows us to celebrate play, gain the children’s ideas about play development, discuss safety and risk management and then continue to innovate our playtimes. Here is an example of one of our assemblies.
We are also sharing news with our community through our weekly newsletters and specific letters and workshops for parents:
Can you help?
It’s amazing the items which may be discarded that can be turned into dens, swings, costumes, sculptures and much more. And we’re also helping to reduce, reuse and recycle!
If you have any of the following items, we’d love to have them in school:
- small world toys (for example toy cars, people, dinosaurs, trains)
- fancy dress costumes
