At St Anne’s Catholic Primary School we are putting freedom and fun back into children’s playtimes by signing up and beginning our OPAL journey is an 18-24 month programme so watch this space for updates and progress.
What is OPAL?
OPAL is a national and award-winning programme that enables schools to better provide for children’s play. At St Anne’s our aim is that every child has an amazing playtime every day.
The OPAL programme will be used to improve opportunities for physical activity, socialisation, co-operation, coordination, resilience, creativity, imagination and enjoyment through improved play.
The OPAL Outdoor Play and Learning Programme is the result of 17 years testing and development in over 250 schools and is now used in Canada and New Zealand as well as across the UK. Work has started to adapt the programme for schools in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Austria. In 2018 OPAL won first prize in an EU funded award for the best active school’s programme in Europe.
It is based on the idea that as well as learning through good teaching, your children also learn when they play, and as 20% of their time in school is playtime, we want to make sure that this amount of time (equivalent to 1.4 years of primary school) is as good as possible.
Why are we following the OPAL programme?
One reason we are carrying out this programme is that childhood has changed and many children do not explore creative play as much as previous generations.
What will be happening?
We are having a ‘soft start’ this term before we really go for it in September! There will be music playing and equipment such as chalks, bubbles, dressing up, small world play, teddies.
Each fortnight, the children will have a play assembly where we will celebrate the great play that we have been observing, inform them of the new things being introduced e.g. equipment and loose parts, negotiate with them on how to develop the play and use the equipment safely, innovate and think of what to plan for next.
We will give you a regular update in the weekly newsletter, hopefully sharing some pictures to show how it is going as well as asking for any items that you may have lying around that you no longer need.
