Our OPAL Journey at Grove Park:

At Grove Park, we are proud to be part of the OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) programme, which we began 18 months ago. Since then, we’ve been on an exciting journey to transform our approach to play and outdoor time.

We’ve developed a range of new play zones across the school grounds, reimagined our lunchtimes, and created richer opportunities for children to explore, create, and play in purposeful and imaginative ways. From building and role-play to quiet spaces and active zones, every area is designed to support creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving.

The results have been remarkable. Children are more engaged, active, and joyful during playtimes, and we’ve seen positive impacts on their social development, communication skills, and overall wellbeing.

Our commitment to high-quality play is a core part of our school vision, and we’re excited to continue developing our OPAL provision to ensure that every child at Grove Park has access to the very best in outdoor play and learning.

Woodland Trust Green School Awards:

We are very proud to share that we have now achieved our final award of Platinum in the Woodland Trust Green School Awards!

To earn this award, we completed two exciting platinum-level tasks:

🌿 Wild Trails
We explored the outdoors, looking closely at different types of leaves and sorting them into categories. We also experienced forest bathing by lying on the grass and seeing the world from a new angle. We took creative viewpoint photographs and then drew our favourite scenes.

🍂 The Woodland Perspective
In this task, we learned about woodland animals and talked about how they live and survive in their natural habitats. Then, using our imaginations, we designed and named our own unique woodland creatures.

We have loved taking part in these challenges and have learned so much about nature and how to protect it. A big well done to everyone involved!

 

Here are some photos of what our lunchtimes look like...