Playtimes and Outdoor Learning
At Our Lady and St Patrick's Catholic Primary School, we recognise that play is an important part of a happy and healthy childhood. Children spend up to 20% of their time in school at play. Therefore, this time needs to be coherent and planned for.
Changes in society such as heavier traffic, busier lifestyles, less areas for play and an awareness of risk have led to ‘play poverty’ for today’s children. This makes their play opportunities at school even more vital. In short, high quality play leads to happier, healthier children.
We are committed to developing our playtimes to enable all children to engage in high quality play at all times. Inclusive opportunities in play are achieved by offering carefully considered outdoor spaces that offer a real choice of accessible play experiences. We are on an exciting journey to transform our playtimes and create play spaces that nurture and excite our children.
As the school improves play opportunities for your children, you may find the school is asking you for resources and is making changes about how the children use the school grounds. They may use more of the grounds, for more of the year. Your children may get a bit messier, be exposed to more challenges and have greater freedoms to play where, with whom and how they like. The experiences the school is fostering are essential for children’s physical and mental well-being and health and in line with all current good practice advice on health safety, well-being and development.