At St.Helen's we are embarking on a very exciting project over the next 18 months to completely transform our playtimes to enable our children to develop lots of different skills through the environment of playtimes. 

Working alongside our OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) project manager we are looking to utilise the fantastic grounds and facilities that we have here to ensure children enjoy playtimes and continue to develop all our school values through play. 

St.Helen’s recognises that play is an essential part of a happy and healthy childhood. As a school, we endeavour to provide consistently high quality, sustainable play opportunities for all children. These inclusive opportunities in play are achieved by offering carefully considered outdoor spaces, equipment and toys that offer a rich choice of accessible play experiences for every child. At St.Helen’s we are committed to using our school vision and a newly created play policy to guide our planning and actions in providing play opportunities for children. We believe play has a vital role in children’s health, happiness and wellbeing. It creates children who are independent, confident, imaginative, adaptable, social and able to assess risks.

This page is a working page so over time you will find photos and videos of some of the things that we have been doing on our Class Dojo Pages. 

Please note the Risk Assessment and Play Policy cannot be published online so are available on request from the school as paper copies. 

St.Helen's OPAL play policy draft July 2021

St.Helen's OPAL play Risk Assessment policy draft July 2021

For more information about OPAL please click the link below: 

OPAL website