Whole School Thrive Day – ‘Growing Together, Playing Together’ – 28th February

We had a wonderful return to school after the half term break with a whole school Thrive Day. This time we had a special focus upon play, with the children being invited to wear comfortable clothes and bring their favourite game into school to share.

The day started with a whole school assembly – this was the first face to face assembly in a long while and it was a joy to have everyone in the same space once again. Mrs Tam asked the children to say what they thought play was. Here are some of their responses:

Fun with friends, mind and movement, physical, calm and quiet, being outside

The children were invited to discuss in their classrooms what should be on our St Andrew’s Play Charter (or Promise). Later in the day, they shared their ideas. Play is…

Kind, safe, fun, includes everyone, happy, with friends, has choice, fair, we share, we can stop if it is not fun anymore, we are gentle, we collaborate, we communicate calmly and ask adults if we need help to mediate, we make space for everyone and do not play roughly, we look after everyone and everything, we have a respectful playground… the children also reminded the adults that they could (and should!) play too!

We will be refining this into a final ‘Play Promise’, and this will be central to our OPAL play provision. It was magical to watch the children sharing their indoor games with each other; these included classics such as Uno, Chess, Monopoly and Top Trumps as well as some fantastic new games from all over the world and even table football and table tennis!

The children were challenged to see if they could Participate, Learn, Accept, and (say) Yes during the day. We talked about different kinds of play, how to teach someone a new game, how hard it can be to not be the winner sometimes and how important it was to say ‘yes’ if someone asks to join a game.

As well as all of this, the children enjoyed some new stories to help them to discuss what they celebrated about each other as well as what was special about them. They used art and words to express this.

Finally, we all enjoyed ‘The Big Play’. This was quite a moment – we all went outside to enjoy a full OPAL playtime, without a ‘bubble’ in sight! We have finally been able to open the whole play space up to the children and they LOVED being able to interact with children across the year groups. Watching siblings playing together at last was particularly special. Please enjoy the many photographs that were taken during the day.

Next, we are looking to be able to open up other spaces in the school grounds to extend play and facilitate all types of play. We are always on the look out for donations to enhance our OPAL play provision – look out for our wish list.

We hope to invite you all along to the next Big Play in the summer!