OPAL Play 

We are absolutely delighted as a school to share with you that from September 2023 we will be an OPAL Play school.  

We will be sharing more information with you over the next couple of weeks but would like to thank all parents / carers who completed the survey we had sent out about play times.  

OPAL Team

OPAL Mentor: Bobby Beaumont

Headteacher: Laura Duffin

Curriculum Leads: Sharon Priddle, Jayne Thomas & Colette Tee

Play Co-ordinator: 

Governor Rep: Yacine Blair

Play Organisers: Joanne McNicholas, Tina Swain, Tracey Shepperd & Sue Porter

Meet the Opal Play Team

MAP OF SCHOOL

Here is a map of our school grounds with the current layout of our different play zones. We will update the map as when we make changes.

OPAL ASSEMBLY UPDATES

ASSEMBLY FOR 24.4.24

In our OPAL assembly this week, we have introduced a new activity on the field. We are now providing the children with 4 balls and cones so they can practise their football skills. This means the field is now split into 3 zones: football pitch (with goals), football skills and the loose parts area. Don't forget the children can also play on the embankment beyond the trim trail.  We have discussed with the children the variety of skills they could practise and as always negotiated the rules for safe play.

Our Year 6 respect rewards have continued this week with four children earning themselves an extra 15 minutes of OPAL play at lunchtime today - well done to Ava, Oliver J, Hudson and Connor H.

Our winners of the Opal play awards this week are:

The Golden welly award for great play goes to Quinn-Peter.

The Golden Broom award goes to Hidaya.

Well done!

ASSEMBLY FOR 17.4.24

In our OPAL assembly this week, we have introduced football with wellies on the field.  The children have thought of different games they could play with the footballs and we have negotiated rules for sensible play with them. 

No award winners this week as we've only been back two days but we'll be looking for next week!

ASSEMBLY FOR 20.3.24

In our OPAL assembly this week, we have introduced large carboard boxes into our loose parts play.  We have discussed with the children the variety of activities that can happen using these.  We have also had some reminders about some of the key rules we have negotiated for OPAL play and talked about our brand new welly sheds.

Our Year 6 respect rewards have continued this week with four children earning themselves an extra 15 minutes of OPAL play at lunchtime today - well done to Ava, Freddie, Gurdeep & Junior.

Our winners of the Opal play awards this week are:

The Golden welly award for great play goes to Harvey.

The Golden Broom award goes to Fakhria.

Well done!

ASSEMBLY FOR 13.3.24

Last week we had a visit from our OPAL Mentor, Bobby, he was delighted to see how far we have come already with our OPAL play.  We have started to look at how we can develop and open up our ground further for the children to explore and use.  This week, for the first time in Old Basford history, we are opening the bank at the side of the trim trail for children to use as part of their play provision.  More details are in the assembly slides.

Our Year 6 respect rewards have started well with four children earning themselves an extra 15 minutes of OPAL play at lunchtime today - well done to Morgan, Freddie, Sophia & Amaya.

Our winners of the Opal play awards this week are:

The Golden welly award for great play goes to Issac and Jotsroop.

The Golden Broom award goes to Jacob.

Well done!

ASSEMBLY FOR 6.3.24

This week Miss Priddle has been busy making bean bags for Opal Play. This means we can have throwing and catching back! As always Old Basford children are creative and imaginative and thought of lots of different ways to play with the equipment. Of course they were also able to think lots of lots of ways to play safely and sensibly. Thanks Miss Priddle!

To help with our rule of 'respect' we have introduced a reward for the Year 6 children who show the Play Team respect all the time and hopefully this will help the few children who don't show the team respect or don't use the equipment respectfully and encourage them to try harder with this rule. The children can earn a raffle ticket from the Play Team and every Wednesday 4 names will be drawn from the raffle box and will earn an early lunchtime and 15 minutes extra play. Good luck Year 6.

Our winners of the Opal play awards this week are:

The Golden welly award for great play goes to Mikey.

The Golden Broom award goes to Bareerah.

Well done!

ASSEMBLY FOR 28.2.24

This week we have been so lucky to have had a brand new 'messy kitchen' thanks to Mrs Duffin's family who gave up their weekend to make it. Mr Duffin is very talented and with the help of the rest of the family, was able to turn old pallets into different shelves for all of the pots and pans, a 'cooking zone' and sinks for mixing (where we can use water in the summer months). When the weather is dry the children are allowed to play there without their wellies, but on wet days they must wear their own wellies or borrow from the welly library. We would love any donations of old kitchen utensils to help with our recipes and cooking!

We gave the Y6 Opal Guardians a few reminders about their role and asked for their help with timing the children in the wheelie zone so that they can be shared more fairly allowing more children to have a go. This is one of our most popular areas, so we are always desperate for any wheelie donations!

Our winners of the Opal play awards this week are:

The Golden welly award for great play goes to Aliza and Aniyah.

The Golden Broom award goes to Megan.

Well done!

ASSEMBLY FOR 21.2.24

We have only been back at school for a day but we have already introduced three new things. We have the tyres on the bottom playground that are for keeping scooters and bikes upright but the children found their own way to play with them as a sort of trim trail- great idea! We have received a donation of a massive set of huge construction that will fill a whole cart! We are looking forward to seeing what the children will build with that. And finally, the children asked for badminton for the active zone, so we have bought some shuttlecocks to go with our set of racquets. Lets see if we can find the next badminton champions!

No winners of the Opal awards this week as we have had only one Opal lunch time so we will be on the look out for our next Opal champions.

Happy playtime everyone!

ASSEMBLY FOR 7.2.24

As we only have a couple of days left of the half term, we have not introduced any new activities. However, we did have a reminder about safe and sensible play with hula hoops and shared the risk and benefit assessment for play with the skipping ropes.

We also asked the children for any ideas of new activities that they would like for the future and ideas for activities that we could organise for after the holiday. Ball play still remains an activity that lots of children would like and once we believe that the children have experienced lots of types of play we start to introduce different ball games.

This week winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards are: Ella and Evie received the tidy award and Idrissa was awarded the golden welly. WE also gave out our Opal Guardian to Morgan who was nominated by Emer for always showing great leadership skills. Congratulations everyone!

ASSEMBLY FOR 31.1.24

This week we have decided to introduce skipping ropes into our Active Zone. We have some new short ropes for single skippers and we have a few long ropes for group games. To help the children with ideas we watched some videos of games and techniques and of course the children will think of their own ideas too! There are a lot of risks associated with ropes so we had to ensure we talked about all of the risks and how to play safely.

We hope you all have fun being active and creative with your skipping games!

This week winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards are: Sophie for being so helpful at tidying up the wellie racks and Owen for great play with the younger children. Congratulations!

ASSEMBLY FOR 24.1.24

This week our assembly had to be recorded and played in the classroom due to the hall being used. However this was a great opportunity to recap everything that we have done so far and go over our negotiated rules. We also decided that it would be a good idea to ask the children's opinions about the different 'zones' and how we can make improvements. Our initial thoughts are that the creative area needs to be improved, so already we have brought out more paper and crayons (not felt tips) with tray to tidy the resources away. The children love the wheeled zone the most so we are extending the area and hopefully we will receive more donations so that even more children can enjoy this activity.

We will endeavour to continue making our improvements to Opal Play.

ASSEMBLY FOR 17.1.24

There has been so much wonderful play on the field this week that we have decided  to enhance the play with tarpaulin and clips. There will also also be longs pieces of heavy duty cloth and pegs for the playgrounds. In assembly we innovated lots of ideas of how to play with them, we thought of the risks and negotiated how we could manage those risks for safe play. We can't wait to see what they come up with!

This week winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards are: Zainab for great tidying and Oscar for great play. Congratulations!

ASSEMBLY FOR 10.1.24

This week we have re-opened part of the field and introduced the tyres. In assembly we innovated lots of ideas of how to play with them and of course we negotiated rules together the rules for safe play. WE think we are going to have lots of fun with them!

This week winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards are: Huzaifa for great tidying and Starley for great play. Congratulations!

ASSEMBLY FOR 5.1.24

This week our assembly was all about recapping on the successes of the Autumn term. Some of the Play Team were also in the assembly so we were able to say thank you to them by talking about all of the things we can do, thanks to them.

The Play Team also told the children what they liked about Opal Play.

ASSEMBLY FOR 7.12.23

This week we have introduced some new play mats for our active zone. There are a variety of designs on the mats and the children had lots of ideas of how to use them. They thought of making circuit games, jumping challenges and using them for tracks with the pipes, planks and cars. Let's see how much fun we can have with them!

Our OPAL guardians have been brilliant. So much so that we have introduced a new award that will be given to the guardians if we believe they have gone above and beyond. The first OPAL guardian to receive this is Jessica. Well done and thank you Jess!

This week winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards are: Sophia for great tidying and Morgan and Sophia for great play. Congratulations!

ASSEMBLY FOR 29.11.23

No new activities this week.

Instead please let us introduce you to our newest members of the Opal Play Team - the Y6 Opal Guardians!

Every day, 3 or 4 Y6 children will be on duty in each play zone helping the other children have their best play!.They will guide them, give them ideas, play alongside them and help with any minor issues, finding a member of the Play Team when necessary. The Y6 children are really excited about their responsibility and we are sure they are going to really help lead school in our Opal Play.

This week winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards are: Masooma and Mazaynah for great tidying on the field and Cameron for great play. Congratulations!

ASSEMBLY FOR 22.11.23

This week we are extending our play on the field and we have introduced crates as well as the pipes and boards to play with. As always we have negotiated the rules with the children (please see our assembly for the rules the children came up with).

We have also introduced a welly library so that children can borrow a pair if they want to join their friends in the mud!

This week winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards are: Max and Ted.

Congratulations!

ASSEMBLY FOR 15.11.23

The time has come to allow the children on the field with their wellies!

We are introducing this play zone slow and steady and limiting the space to 2 year groups at a time and only after the children have eaten. We have created special racks to store the wellies and sealed shoe boxes to keep them dry. We hope the play will be fun!

This week winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards are: Madison and Lotus.

Congratulations!

ASSEMBLY FOR 8.11.23

This week we have introduced our wheelie zone! This will include scooters, large suitcases and trolleys. We negotiated some great rules for exciting but safe play. Good luck everyone!

This week winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards are: Jotsroop, Asaiah and Naziah.

Congratulations!

ASSEMBLY FOR 18.10.23

This week we have added planks, tubes and building blocks to the top playground so the children can build ramps and obstacle courses for the cars. 

This week winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards are: Henry, Cherish & Amber.

Congratulations!

ASSEMBLY FOR 11.10.23

This week we have added to our 'circus skills' area. Where the children can continue to practice their balancing and movement skills.

Our new equipment includes- space hoppers, moon hoppers and scarves. We have also introduced bean bags to the delight of everyone who enjoys throwing and catching! 

This week winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards are: Safiya, Ayesha and Rowan, all from Class 10!

Congratulations!

ASSEMBLY FOR 4.10.23

This week we have introduced a new zone on the field. We now have a 'circus skills' area, where children are encouraged to practice their balancing and movement skills.

We have new equipment: stilts, sacks and ribbon wands. Next week we will introduce even more!

We also introduced our first winners of the Golden Broom and Golden Welly Awards. Jake and Charlie in Year 2! Congratulations boys.

ASSEMBLY FOR 27.9.23

As with last week, we have not introduced any new activities as we want to make sure that we all have great play with the things we already have out. We starting to make great progress in our play, following the rules we have negotiated together. Lunchtimes are so much fun and our behaviour is improving all the time.

However this week we have introduced two lunchtime awards: the Opal Golden Welly Award for good play and the Opal Golden Broom Award for Good tidying. The Play team will be looking all week for children to nominate for the awards and the winners will be announced next week in assembly. This will become a weekly part of our Opal assemblies during the 'celebration' element. We can't wait to see who will be nominated! Also don't forget that you can be put on the lunchtime 'recognition board' to have treat time with Mrs Duffin.

ASSEMBLY FOR 20.9.23

This week we have not introduced any new activities as we want to make sure that we all have great play with the things we already have out.

However we have thought of some differnt ways of using the resources in the 'active zone' that would make exciting games to play.

'Calm coming in time' has been working really well and afternoon lessons have been starting promptly and smoothly.

ASSEMBLY FOR 13.9.23

This we have talked about our new activities:

• Water play- with paint brushes and rollers
• Creative play- with cardboard, wallpaper, felt tips, chalks
• The 'Active zone'- a place to create games with cones, batons, hurdles, etc

We negotiated the rules for these new activities with some ideas brought forward by the Infinity Club who had already trialed the activities.

We are also going to try 'calm coming-in time' when KS2 will walk into school without having to line up, allowing for more play and less interruption to lesson time.

ASSEMBLY FOR 6.9.23

This week in assembly we discussed tidy up rules and the children thought of a great list.

We also talked about the things that we still need. We have had lots of generous donations of small world, dressing up and role play items and we are so grateful. Now we would like to increase our supply of 'loose parts' that allows for open ended play and construction. Please see the list below.