In primary schools, children spend about 20% of their day at play. That adds up to 1 day out of the 5 they are in school that children spend in the playground. They spend the same amount of time in the playground as they do learning maths. Which raises the question:

What do they do at playtime?

At Abbots Hall we believe that play times are an important opportunity for children to continue their learning. Learning through play is essential for children's development and our playtimes encourage children to grow in confidence, resilience, courage, respect, compassion and responsibility - our 6 core values.

So what does that look like?

Our playground is set up in zones and all children play together - from reception to year 6. If they want to use the scooters, they go to the scooter zone; if they want to build a base, they go to the base zone and so on and so forth. Our role as adults is to provide children with as many different play types as possible, so everyone has an opportunity to do an activity that they want to do. The image below outlines the 16 play types that we aim to make available to children: