Imaginative Play
Research shows that children spend up to 20% or 1.4 years of their time at primary school playing. At Hob Green, we want this experience to be fun and intrinsically motivating, so we have adopted an OPAL(Outdoor Play and Learning) philosophy that allows the children freedom to explore play in their own imaginative ways, often using resources found and gathered in the natural outdoor environment.
If we think back to our best childhood memories, we spent most of our time outside with friends, exploring and having fun. However, childhood has change drastically over the years, but children haven’t. Technology has a huge impact on our children nowadays and family life is a lot busier than is used to be. Research also shows that only 56% of UK children regularly have the opportunity to play outside with other children. This means that some of our children miss out on key creative, physical and developmental play.
OPAL Play approach at Hob Green
Our OPAL approach is highly inclusive where all children can access all play across the whole environment. The approach to play is different from the standard activities you would expect to see in a school playground. At Hob Green, children can take on the role of their favourite character in the performance area, dance away to the music, make a mud pie for lunch in the messy café, den build or have a catch up with friends in the comfy caravan to name a few.
