We are proud to be an OPAL school! Through OPAL play we aim to make our playtimes fantastic for all children at Teynham Primary School. OPAL is an award-winning mentor programme that is supporting us to improve the quality of play opportunities.

Did you know that playtime is about 20% of every child’s day at school? That’s 1.4 years of every child’s life while they are at primary school. We want to make sure that this time is as good as possible!

Research shows that play is one of the fundamental elements of childhood happiness. Play allows children to practice and build skills in language, cooperation and collaboration, it builds stronger muscles and bones, coordination and is essential for physical and emotional regulation. For all of these reasons, we share the OPAL vision that every child has an amazing hour of high-quality play every day – with no exceptions.

You can watch a video of how OPAL play has helped transform playtimes here and read more on the OPAL website.

What do we do during our OPAL playtimes? These are just some of the things our children do:

  Put on shows!                                      Dig in the sandpit!                       Work together to make dens!