Playforce Present Holistic Grand Design Approach At Ryder Hayes County Primary School
Playforce School Grounds Consultant Sam Flatman met with Head
Teacher Joanne Speller over a year ago. At that time Ryder Hayes
had spent money internally improving the school, but nothing had
been spent on the outside school playground, otherwise known as the
outdoor learning environment.
The first project that the school needed to undertake was the
outdoor classroom for the Reception class children. The
school Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) coordinator Lynne Emery
had been on many courses and was keen to use the outside space as
an important aid to learning.
When Playforce arrived at this school Lynne explained that her
children had no where to shelter from the elements and had no fixed
outdoor resources.
Joanne said ‘ We choose Playforce because they were the
only company to see how the space could be used through our
eyes…we needed a space that would meet the educational needs
of the EYFS curriculum and Sam came up trumps with that.’
Wiltshire-based Playforce prides itself on the ability to create
play areas that stimulate children’s imaginations and improve
social behaviour at the same time as stretching their muscles. Each
piece of equipment is designed to work on developing specific areas
of the body and motor-skills.
The outdoor learning environment now provides the children with
a huge range of activities come rain or shine; they can complete
numeracy tasks, mark marking, road awareness, role plays,
imaginative play, digging, growing and not to forget physical play
that promotes gross motor skill development, which has been shown
in studies to improve fine motor skills such as hand writing!
The governors also like the fact that Playforce presented a
holistic grand design approach, so that they could see the whole
‘vision’. They were so impressed with this first
phase that the school has now transformed both its infants and
juniors playgrounds (where it has improved playtime behaviour) and
is now looking at the nursery space. This grand design
approach has worked well to improve the schools retention of
numbers at a time when nationally schools have falling roll
numbers.
‘All our children just love the new equipment they now
have lots more things to do at break times and this has helped to
keep them fit, active and healthy…the Playforce playground
equipment is great at sparking off imaginative play and everyday
the children go on new adventures.’
Learn more about Playforce visit www.playforce.co.uk