OPAL - Outdoor Play and Learning

Welcome to Our Play Vision

At Hebden Bridge Schools Federation, we believe that play is essential to every child’s wellbeing, happiness and development.

It is not just a break from learning — it is learning, and it supports the whole child.

Through the OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) programme, we are transforming playtimes across all our schools so that every child can enjoy rich, exciting, inclusive and imaginative play every single day.

OPAL (www.outdoorplayandlearning.org.uk)

A big part of play across the Federation schools is our partnership with OPAL (Outdoor Learning and Play).

In 2018, OPAL won the best active schools’ programme in Europe award and has been cited in two parliamentary reports as delivering outstanding practice. OPAL is working closely with Sport England to promote more active childhoods, which is one of the many reasons we are improving our playtime, as well as to improve opportunities for socialisation, cooperation, coordination, resilience, creativity, imagination and enjoyment for your child.

We strongly believe that: “Play is freely chosen, personally directed, intrinsically motivated behaviour that actively engages the child. Play can be fun or serious. Through play children explore social, material and imaginary worlds and their relationship with them, elaborating all the while a flexible range of responses to the challenges they encounter. By playing, children learn and develop as individuals, and as members of the community.” (Children’s Play Council 2001).

To facilitate this project, we will need to buy some new resources, move some things around on the playground and require some loose parts. Loose parts are any materials that can be easily moved, combined, and incorporated into children's free play. The items we are looking for will enable us to enjoy a wider range of play experiences during playtime (see below for some examples):

● Suitcases of any size and type

● Anything on wheels/castors

● Plastic milk crates/supermarket delivery crates/plastic bread trays

● Briefcases, especially hard cased ones

● Road signs and cones

● Kitchen pots, pans, baking trays, work tables, wooden spoons, chopping boards

● Tools like small spades/shovels, trowels and brooms

● Tubes of various sizes and various materials

● Buckets

● Nets and thick ropes

● Keyboards/torches/laptops/calculators/mobile phones/desk phones/webcams/cameras that are no longer working

● Fabric (large sheets/brightly coloured fabric)