When they go back to school after half-term the pupils at Preshute Primary school will be looking forward to getting reacquainted with their new PlayPod.
Opened earlier this month, the PlayPod has been causing a good deal of excitement at the school. Financed with a grant of just under £10,000 from the National Lottery’s Awards for All scheme, the pod contains safe, large scale scrap which is refreshed six times a year by those inventive people at the Wiltshire Scrapstore.
Zoe Garbutt, chair of the school’s governors, cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony and says: “The children are all extremely enthused by this new project.”
In an age when children spend a lot of time playing with electronic games, the staff find it wonderful to see their pupils engaging in good old fashioned imaginative play – whether making an imaginary rocket ship or a ship or simply enjoying dressing up.
All the lunchtime staff have had externally accredited training as Play Leaders.
As the head teacher told Marlborough News Online: “The children love the PlayPod. One parent said it had transformed her child’s experience of school and now she couldn’t wait for Mondays!”
Wiltshire Scrapstore and Resource Centre near Lacock is a charity which promotes learning through creativity. They collect ‘scrap’ materials that industrial firms would otherwise send to landfill and make them safe and useful for play.
The Scrapstore PlayPod is based on the uncomplicated ‘Theory of Loose Parts’. This holds that the more loose elements in a play space that a child can pick up, move and manipulate, the more interaction they can achieve.
So if children have access to a range of materials which have no defined purpose, they will exercise their imaginations and be more inventive in the ways they play. The scheme is especially designed to make the most of lunchtime breaks.