‘Amazing playtimes, for every child, every day!’
It has long been recognised that play is fundamental to a child’s health, happiness, development and well being. Children spend 20% of their time in school playing and we felt we needed to ensure this time was planned and structured so children can learn to play properly. This led staff to reflect upon how playtimes could be improved in our school and in the Autumn of 2024 our OPAL journey began.
The OPAL vision is that “every child in every school has an amazing hour of high quality play every day” and as a school we share this vision and recognise the enormous benefits play has on a child’s life.
We have developed the OPAL approach and worked with our play team (which includes parents) to create our play offering. OPAL will be evolving over the next 18 months to ensure we offer our children the best opportunities we can on our school site. Our site is quite restricted with our field a 10 minute walk off the school site. It is our aim to ensure we meet the 17 different play types on the school site, every day.
Our OPAL journey began in January 2025 and since this time, we have quickly transformed our outdoor environment. Our children love the new outdoor opportunities that OPAL offers with so much more for them to do, no matter the weather! Through this approach to play children are not only more active at lunch times, but they are also having the opportunity to further develop life skills such as cooperation, team work and problem solving. They are becoming motivated and enthusiastic builders, engineers, explorers and designers.