Developing A Vision for Play Time

INSET Day of Outdoor Fun Begins

At the tail end of the last academic year I simultaneously launched the Loose Parts Playground and claimed and opened a large garden space for the Junior School. Both were an instant hit with the students. Along with many discussions and mini workshops on play last year, and the set-up of our maker space, we had begun, as a staff, to re-think our approach to play time.This August’s INSET provided me with the platform to share my vision of how we can really take play to the next level. 

There are numerous amazing examples of play facilitation but there were two that I was itching to share with the PYP team. The first is of St Michael's School in the UK, whose play time has been completely re-vamped by OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning), an organisation which supports schools in improving the quality of play.The second example is of the truly inspirational approach to kindergarten by Anji Play, a revolutionary programme being rolled out across the rural Chinese province of Anji. The two examples share many commonalities - an incredibly rich variety of play materials, stimulating all areas of children’s development, respect for children’s capabilities, acknowledgment of the importance of being outdoors, and the underlying rationale of returning to children the right to play. The PYP teachers were as wowed as I was and the two videos provided the inspiration for refreshed thinking about our own re-envisioning of play time.

One of the first things we agreed upon was that we needed more time for play. Our existing schedule allowed for twenty minutes of morning break and forty minutes at lunch but that included eating too, so perhaps, more realistically, twenty minutes tops for those that gobbled their food down fast. So we agreed to add on ten minutes to the lunch break, moving Drop Everything And Read time to earlier in the day. Then (and I’m still beaming about it) the BIG change: we have dedicated the last lesson of the day (fifty minutes!) to play time too, so a total of an hour and twenty minutes minimum per day, not including scheduled P.E. time. It is far behind what the varying recommendations by world health bodies give but it is a huge step in the right direction.

Of course, merely allocating more time for play is not all that is required for a radical shift. It requires careful planning and a change in attitude on behalf of the facilitators. Firstly, rather than playground duty being just that, a ‘duty’, in which the teachers huddle together and sip tea while casually making sure no-one gets hurt. Now we have to see ourselves as playworkers, enablers of playful activity, ready to play alongside and with the children.

The INSET session unlocked memories of favourite games, childhood adventures experienced and the associated feelings of being thoroughly absorbed in play. While we played Hide-and-Seek, searched for words hidden around the playground, sang songs and built dens we stepped into the shoes of children for a brief moment. Re-imagining play requires us to step outside of our adult selves and experience things as children do. 

Den-Building

Hide and Seek

Build-a-Sentence Treasure Hunt

Build-a-Sentence

So how will this translate into change at playtime? Teachers were able to think of wide possibilities for play opportunities including art activities, dance, drama, classics like skipping, hula hoop and Chinese elastic, den-building, gardening and many more. Just as the Loose Parts Playground launch posed challenges for staff and students and essential agreements were formed, this new approach to play time will necessitate new behaviours and continuous reflection. Children certainly don’t require instructions on how to to play but they can really benefit from passionate adults who can set up imaginative experiences and share in the unbounded joy of play.

Lunchtime Play Activities

 Having brought the school management and the staff on board, the next step is to bring parents into the discussion and make them a part of the vision. As well as hoping for donations in the form of unused household items to supplement the play resources, we will need them to understand the thinking behind our pedagogical choices; our belief about the health benefits of play (particularly outdoors), our stance on risk, our understanding of ways play develops affective and cognitive skill plus our support of the child’s fundamental right to play.