OPAL
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Our Vision
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Holy Family Catholic Primary School is proud to be an OPAL school. OPAL stands for Outdoor Play and Learning and it is the philosophy for play that our school follows.

We are committed to ensuring quality play opportunities are available to all our children. We believe that play is essential for physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual development of each child. Our school acknowledges the UN Charter on the Rights of the Child, especially Article 31, and supports the child’s right to play. Most of our best childhood memories are from playing outdoors, climbing trees and exploring the wide world around us. OPAL gives us the opportunity to give those memories to your children. OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) is all about using natural and man-made resources to allow children to be inspired and creative at playtime.

The OPAL Primary Programme rationale is that:

“… better, more active and creative playtimes can mean happier and healthier children, and having happier, healthier, more active children usually results in a more positive attitude to learning in school, with more effective classroom lessons, less staff time spent resolving unnecessary behavioural problems, fewer playtime accidents, happier staff and a healthier attitude to life.”

Aims
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At Holy Family Catholic Primary School we are committed to ensure play aims to:

  • To provide varied, challenging and stimulating environments.

  • To allow children to take risks and use a common-sense approach to the management of these risks and their benefits.

  • To provide opportunities for children to develop their relationships with each other.

  • To enable children to develop respect for their surroundings and each other.

  • To aid children’s physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual development.

  • To provide a range of environments that will encourage children to explore and play imaginatively.

  • To provide a range of environments which will support children’s learning across the curriculum and learning about the world around them.

  • To promote independence and teamwork within children.

  • To build emotional and physical resilience.

Please find our Play Policy, Play Charter and introduction to OPAL play documents.
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Introduction to Opal
 Play Policy
 OPAL Play Charter

Our Journey so far
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Our OPAL journey began in September 2024 and already, in less than a year, the environment and quality of children's play has been transformed. We started back in the Autumn term with getting feedback from children, parents, staff and governors about their feelings on play and the current opportunities we offer. We launched OPAL in November 2024 with music, scooters, small world play, water area, chalking and access to the field for our KS2 children.
In April 2025 we changed the staggered lunch times so all children had the same lunch break and they were able to start using all of our outdoor areas. Our Play Team (lunchtime staff) have now received all of their training on OPAL play, risk assessing and the 16 different types of play. They also wear our OPAL hi-vis jackets to ensure they can be easily seen by children when ranging our OPAL zones.

Over the year we have opened a large loose parts area, a mud kitchen, a digging area, a huge sandpit, a mound with tunnels and other small social spaces.  

What next?

We will soon be introducing the role of OPAL Play Ambassadors for Year 5 and hope to soon hold our first OPAL play afternoon for children, staff and parents. We are currently resourcing more den building equipment, a new stage area and shortly introducing gardening in our Forest School area for children who would like to get involved.  

Our suggestion box

We have a suggestion box at school which is very popular with the children. We often get very creative suggestions such as; a sweet shop, a water park and a fun fair, all great ideas but unfortunately not so realistic.

These are things the children have asked for that we have or will try to source next:

  • Music on the field (as well as the playground).

  • A swing

  • Rounders pitch

  • More balls

  • Den building

  • Using Forest School

We need your help!

If you have the skills, time or access to funding or resources that would support our OPAL journey then please get in touch with the school office. This could be if you are or know of any builders or carpenters who could help us build new play equipment- like our recent mud kitchen build from a fabulous parent. Time to help out odd jobs at the weekend like gardening and painting when the need arises. Then finally if you know of companies that could donate; wood, woodchip, soil or plants, tyres and pallets (including getting it to school) or other similar resources.  

Here is our most recent OPAL bingo card of items we are now looking for:  ‍

OPAL Updates

OPAL Family Fun Afternoon - 11th July 2025
On Friday we enjoyed our first OPAL Family Fun Afternoon where parents and carers came in to take part in an OPAL playtime with the children. It enabled them to experience OPAL and get an idea of what OPAL play looks like in our school. Despite the heat the turnout was fantastic and it was brilliant to see so many parents and children playing together in our outdoor environment.  

We have lots of plans to further develop the environment but really need your help in collecting more resources (loose parts) then also time and skills of parents to help make some new areas of play - seating made from pallets or welly racks. This is not a bingo game we are playing but gives you an idea of the resources we need.

OPAL Play Ambassadors
We now have five fantastic OPAL Play Ambassadors who will be helping with lots of important decisions about OPAL, encouraging all children to follow the OPAL Play Charter and getting ideas from children about what they want to see in OPAL.  

We have also started the ‘Golden Welly Award’ this week. Anyone showing outstanding effort towards our OPAL PLay Charter by tidying up, being creative, collaborative, problem solving or any other skill could be awarded our coveted award.

Sand Pit and Mound
Over the Easter holidays we had a new sand pit and mound with tunnels built by the company Bahale.
The children absolutely love it and it has been a great addition to OPAL especially in the lovely weather.

Mud Kitchen
We have had a very kind parent make a beautiful mud kitchen for OPAL. It has been very popular and the children are now independently making their own mud cafe.

Boats
Some boats have very kindly been donated to us. The children have had great fun roleplaying pirates, rockets and going on holiday.

Large Loose Parts
We have now launched our large loose parts. The children now have crates, cones, barriers, tyres, roadsigns and much more. This is a chance for them to use their imagination, work together with their friends to make something amazing.

Quick wins - OPAL launch
OPAL launched in November 2024 at our school. We started with setting up a OPAL shed with boxes of small world, construction and imaginative play resources that the children could help themselves to. We also got a stereo for music as well as costumes, hats and bags for dressing up. We introduced a materials box for den building, scooters and a water play area.