OPAL (Outdoor Learning and Play)

Outdoor Play and Learning (OPAL) Project

UN Rights of the Child:
Article 31 (leisure, play and culture) Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

Research has shown that children spend 20% of their time in school playing. This equates to 1.4 years of their school attendance. To ensure that this time and our fantastic school grounds are used to their full potential, our school has adopted an OPAL 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 as well as man-made items.

Since starting our journey to enrich playtimes in May 2023, we have transformed our vision of play across the school. The children love the new outdoor opportunities that OPAL offers with so much more for them to do: from building dens and forts, making rope swings, and enjoying imaginative play. Alongside this, we have created zones for the children to enjoy sporting activities and more traditional playground games. There are so many different play experiences for them to enjoy!

One reason the school is carrying out this programme is that childhood has changed, and many children no longer get their play needs met out of school. Research shows that:

The average screen time per day is six hours.
The average outdoor play time per week is five hours.
The percentage of UK children who only play outdoors with other children at school is 56%.

Playing contributes greatly to such diverse areas as language, arts, culture, science, maths and technology. Play also supports self-regulation; this ability is increasingly shown to be vital to academic success.

We believe that play is essential for physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual development of each child. Our OPAL approach promotes a more inclusive play environment in which all children can feel comfortable to express themselves. Most of our best childhood memories are from playing outdoors, climbing trees and exploring the wide world around us. OPAL gives us the opportunity to give those memories to your children.

Through the OPAL approach to play, children are not only more active at playtimes, but they are also having the opportunity to further develop life skills such as cooperation, teamwork and problem solving. They are becoming motivated and enthusiastic builders, engineers, explorers and designers.

Can you help?

It's amazing that items which may be discarded 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:

Or any of the following:

Toys (cars, dolls, animals etc.)
Scooters
Containers- mixing bowls, cake/muffin tins, pots, pans (no glass or ceramic)
Milk crates - plastic
Plastic tubing / pipes
Water butts
Pairs of wellies- sizes suitable for ages 4-11
Waterproofs- trousers, coats, all in ones for ages 4-11
Aprons - waterproof such as those made from PVC
Any buggies no longer used
Logs / branches

Please bring any donations to the school office.

We are really excited about this project and hope that you will support us in our efforts to improve playtimes for all children.