OPAL – Outdoor Play And Learning at Whale Hill
From September, we are really excited to launch our OPAL scheme. An acronym for Outdoor Play And Learning, OPAL offers our children the chance to freely choose and engage with their play type. Whether that is creative play, rough and tumble play, dramatic play or object play, our children will have the opportunity to enjoy a stimulating and varied play environment.
As a precursor to OPAL, we started with ‘Freedom Fridays’ at the end of last academic year. This allowed the children to use our full school site, and take advantage of lots of different opportunities around school. It gave them a flavour of how our play has changed with the new scheme.
Following the introductory sessions, they are now loving pushing, balancing on and rolling tyres; playing chess and small world play in our newly refurbished Year 2 area; chatting atop large cable reels; and using the Soft Play shapes to construct and build with.
We have lots of zones open to them, including a digging area, a newly built stage, access to the Science garden, and a wheels zone with bikes and scooters.
Over the next year, our annual fundraising aim will be to raise money to buy more resource for OPAL, and this is a scheme that will evolve and grow as our children become more familiar with it.
Further information on our fundraising activities can be found by clicking here.
If you think you can help us in any way, or can be really creative with a pallet and a cable reel, please do get in touch. We would love to hear from you.
For more information about the OPAL scheme, and to answer some of the questions you may have, please visit OPAL – FAQ’s for Parents
Keep watching for lots of other lovely things happening as our lunchtime play develops over the upcoming months and years.
