OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning)
Playtimes at Sladewood Academy are great fun. As part of the OPAL programme we aim to provide the most active, fun and sociable play opportunities possible for our children. We have opporutnites for socialisation, cooperation, coordination, resilience, creativity, imagination and enjoyment through play opportunities with many everyday objects. They experience appropriate risk and challenge in a supervised and managed environment.
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).
