Priorswood Primary School in Taunton bravely volunteered to host a play day, at very short notice, on November 21st 2007. The play day provided information for Somerset Play Forum in preparation for their conference on 7th december 2007 (Playing to Achieve; Putting More FIZZ into Learning).

We held a Play Day at Priorswood School on Wednesday 21st November. The curriculum was put on hold for the day so that pupils at the school could take part in a wide variety of play activities including; crafts, circus skills, forest school, messy play and games. The aims of the day included; increasing pupil enjoyment of break and lunch times, improving relationships between staff and pupils and increasing staff involvement in play activities.

Priorswood School volunteered to host the play day to help Somerset Play Forum in preparing for a conference titled "Playing to Achieve: Putting More FIZZ into Learning". The school already has play leaders, some play equipment for break times and are taking part in the Somerset SEAL programme, so they thought that a play day would fit well with their current work and ethos.

The school was organized in three areas in the morning and the children were mixed across the whole school into three groups. Each group then had 45 minutes in each area. We kept a break time so that children could catch up with their friends and share experiences. The activities included, parachute and ball games, messy play (water, mud, slime etc) and scrap play.


In the afternoon, children were originally put into key stages and were to be allowed free movement between activities within their key stage area. However, the weather was being kind and so we decided to move activities outside which meant that apart from the two papier mache activities we ended up letting the children mix. The afternoon activities included circus skills, papier mache modeling, woodland play and dressing-up.


A consultation activity was undertaken with pupils at the end of the day and the day is being evaluated by staff. Results will be available on the Somerset Play website in the near future.

Comments from staff included:
"I was anxious before the day ... but it shot by... it was such good fun."
"They had lots of fun, we didn't have one incident all day."

The day was a huge success, staff and pupils alike had fun and got to know each other better.

The school are already planning ways that they can take the good work forward with ideas like half day play sessions every term, using longer play sessions as a reward for good behaviour and allowing pupils to choose play activities for play sessions.

To support their work, Somerset Play Forum will be involved in piloting some short staff training at the school and working with break and lunchtime supervisors to help them facilitate children's play at break and lunchtimes.