...a haven of hope and aspiration...

As a school we will be starting a new and exciting play project in the spring - OPAL Play.  OPAL play is an exciting programme - OPAL work with schools to improve playtimes for all children.

Opal Play is coming to ABC!

What is OPAL?

Outdoor Play and Learning (OPAL) is a community interest company (CIC) dedicated to providing

services to schools and organisations in England and Wales to improve the quality of play

opportunities for all children. OPAL staff have expertise in teaching, school improvement, landscape

design, project management, play and strategic planning. 

The OPAL Primary Programme offers schools a structured process, with mentored support provided for up to two years and many resources, to enable schools to permanently change both their environment and their culture to enable provision of amazing playtimes every day.

To date, OPAL has run programmes in over 1000 schools throughout the whole UK and has recently expanded to Spain, France, Poland, Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand and Australia.

The OPAL Vision

At OPAL we have seen just how much of an impact improving play can make to a school. We are not just talking about playtimes being a bit less bother or about children being a bit happier. We are talking about cultural transformation.

When you address a need that is so fundamental to children's physical and mental well-being as play, and you do it well, it is impossible to think of how you ran a school and didn’t do this.

Our vision is that every child in every school has an amazing hour of high-quality play every day – with no exceptions. If one child is not enjoying playtimes, then things still need improving.

We want every school to plan for, resource and evaluate the quality of their play provision as if it were an important human right, essential to all aspects of children’s development and a source of joy and happiness that every child can access because it is all of these things'.

Details coming soon - children busy drawing

Our children need to access to different play types...

Creative Play – play which allows a new response, the transformation of information, awareness of new connections, with an element of surprise.

This play type is one of the most visual by allowing a child to access loose parts, arts and craft materials.

Deep Play – play which allows the child to encounter risky or even potentially life threatening experiences, to develop survival skills and conquer fear.

This type of play is defined by play behaviour that can also be classed as risky or adventurous.  This has important benefits to a child’s development.

Dramatic Play – play which dramatizes events in which the child is not a direct participator.

Children may also wish to use make up and costumes in this type of play.

Exploratory Play – play to access factual information consisting of manipulative behaviours such as handling, throwing, banging or mouthing objects.

Fantasy Play – play which rearranges the world in the child’s way, a way which is unlikely to occur, for example being a superhero or sitting on a cloud.

Imaginative Play – play where the conventional rules, which govern the physical world, do not apply, for example pretending to be an animal, or having a make-believe friend to being an object i.e. a tree.

Locomotor Play – movement in any or every direction for its own sake, for example playing chase, jumping, skipping and climbing trees.

Mastery Play – control of the physical and affective ingredients of the environments, for example making a dam in a stream, building a bonfire and digging holes in the earth or sand.

Object Play – play which uses infinite and interesting sequences of hand-eye manipulations and movements i.e. examining an item and looking into how and why something works.

Recapitulative Play – play that allows the child to explore ancestry, history, rituals, stories, rhymes, fire and darkness. Enables children to access play of earlier human evolutionary stages.

Role Play – play exploring ways of being, although not normally of an intense personal, social, domestic or interpersonal nature.  This could be a child pretending to be driving a car, ironing, piloting a plane.

Rough and Tumble Play – close encounter play which is less to do with fighting and more to do with touching, tickling, gauging relative strength. Discovering physical flexibility and the exhilaration of display.  This will not involve any deliberate hurting but children should be laughing and having fun.

Social Play – play during which the rules and criteria for social engagement and interaction can be revealed, explored and amended.  This could be playing a game together, building an item together or creating something together.

Socio-dramatic Play – the enactment of real and potential experiences of an intense personal, social, domestic or interpersonal nature.  This could be playing at mums and dads, or playing house.

Symbolic Play – play which allows control, gradual exploration and increased understanding without the risk of being out of one’s depth.  Example a stick becomes a sword or light saber a flower becomes a wand.