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 and Play charter to find out more. 

Assemblies & Workshops

Every few weeks we will 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 and 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 are a couple of examples of our assemblies.

We are also sharing news with our community through letters and workshops for parents. 

Can you help?

It's amazing the items that are discarded that can be turned into dens, swings, costumes, sculptures and so much more. We're helping to reduce, reuse and recycle which is great.

Please see the attached poster for details of items we would like for our playtimes.

If you have an items we need please pop them into the main office. Thank you