OPAL

Beginning Our OPAL Journey

At St Michael’s, we believe that play is an essential part of childhood. It supports children’s physical and emotional wellbeing, develops creativity and independence, strengthens friendships and gives children opportunities to problem-solve, take appropriate risks and have fun.

We are excited to be at the beginning of our OPAL journey as we work to further develop the quality of play available to every child during lunchtimes and playtimes.

OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) is an approach to improving the quality of children’s play across the whole school. Over time, it will help us make even better use of our outdoor spaces, resources and playtimes so that children have a wider range of exciting, creative and active opportunities every day.

Why Is Play Important?

High-quality play provides children with opportunities to:

• develop confidence, resilience and independence;
• build friendships and strengthen their sense of belonging;
• be active and support their physical and mental wellbeing;
• use their imagination and creativity;
• cooperate, negotiate and solve problems;
• explore challenge and learn how to manage appropriate risk;
• make choices about how and where they would like to play.

This strongly supports our school vision, ensuring that children have opportunities to flourish both inside and outside the classroom.

What Will Our OPAL Journey Look Like?

As we are at the start of our journey, our provision will continue to develop over time. We will be reviewing our outdoor environment, listening to the views of children and families, developing resources and considering how we can offer an increasingly rich range of play experiences.

As our OPAL provision grows, children may have opportunities to enjoy activities such as imaginative and creative play, construction, active games, den building, wheeled play, quiet and social spaces, natural materials and other open-ended resources.

We want children to have choice, challenge and opportunity during their playtimes while learning how to play safely, responsibly and respectfully alongside others.

Developing OPAL Together

OPAL is a whole-school journey and we are looking forward to developing our approach alongside our children, staff and families.

Throughout the journey, we will continue to share updates, photographs and information about how our play provision is developing.

Watch this space as our OPAL journey begins!