OPAL - Outdoor Play and Learning

Did you know that children participate in up to 600 playtimes a year?

That accounts for approximately 20% of the school day

or 1.4 years of their primary education! 

Play has changed hugely over the last 25 years as the world has become a much busier and more technologically developed place. Children sadly sometimes miss out on the physical, creative side of play that is so important to their development. OPAL has been designed to give children the sense of freedom that perhaps we all enjoyed as children but that the modern world sometimes denies us.

We are committed to ensuring quality play opportunities are available to all of our children at Hawthorne Primary and Nursery School as we believe that play is essential for children’s physical, emotional, social and intellectual development.

Children spend 20% of their time in school playing. To ensure that this time and our fantastic school grounds are used to their full potential our school has adopted an OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) philosophy that allows the children freedom to explore play in their own imaginative ways, often using found and gathered resources in the natural outdoor environment.

An OPAL approach promotes a more inclusive play environment in which all children can feel comfortable to express themselves.

Our OPAL journey began in 2025 and since this time, we have quickly transformed our outdoor environment. Our children love the new outdoor opportunities that OPAL offers with so much more for them to do, no matter the weather! From playing with tyres and building obstacle courses; to digging in the sand pit or our digging pit; to enjoying imaginative play or cooking up a storm in the mud kitchen; to sliding down our bank on sledges or racing around on scooters; OPAL offers an exciting alternative to the standard playground activities.

Through this approach to play children are not only more active at lunch or break times, but they are also having the opportunity to further develop life skills such as cooperation, team work and problem solving.

They are becoming motivated and enthusiastic builders, engineers, explorers and designers and Learning For Life, the Hawthorne Way!

What does my child need for OPAL?

Please make sure your child has a pair of wellies in school, a pair of old tracksuit bottoms and a waterproof coat. 

What can I do to support OPAL?

• Send us your loose parts - we always need planks of wood, guttering, tyres, pallets, crates, tubing, tarpaulin, rope etc - anything a child can use to make a den, an obstacle course or a platform to perform on!
• Send us your old dressing up clothes - the children love dressing up - it doesn't even need to be princess dresses or pirate outfits, they love old clothes, shoes and handbags as well.
• Send us wheeled things - scooters, suitcases, old pushchairs - anything the children can wheel themselves, their friends or their loose parts in.
• Send us old wellies for others to use.
• Send us pots, pans, spoons, shovels, bowls - anything really they can use in a mud kitchen, in the sandpit or in our digging pit.
• Send us books, games, small world toys for those children who like to play quieter games.