Award presented at Highland Play Conference
Lundavra Primary School Nursery is the successful applicant of this year’s Highland Play Award receiving a £1000 award towards their play projects.
The award was presented to Pamela Hamilton and Sharyn Morgan by Dr David Alston (Chair of NHS Highland) at the opening of the Play Highland Conference on Thursday 15th March.
The Highland Council, in association with Play Highland, offer this annual award to the group, organisation or community that has done the most to promote self-directed free play with daily access to the outdoors in the region.
Sandra Harrington, Chair of the Play Improvement Group at Highland Council said: “We thoroughly enjoyed reading about the excellent projects and play opportunities being provided all over Highland. This year our focus was on inclusive play in line with Highland’s Year of Young People’s chosen themes. We received a large number of entries - the standard of which was very high. Many congratulations to Lundavra Primary School Nursery in Fort William.”
Lundavra Primary is a new-build school. Staff consulted with children and parents to see what they would like put in place for Nursery play and how they could help contribute to this. The use of ‘loose parts’1 in their garden has encouraged co-operation among children while ensuring inclusion of all children. This includes those with English as an additional language and those with Additional Support Needs.
The school believes this would not have occurred as thoroughly or robustly without the loose parts to use, create and play with. The children are able to communicate their ideas to each other using the loose parts rather than language and this has promoted a high level of interaction and inclusiveness. Many of the children attending the nursery live in flats with limited access to the outdoors.
The Play Improvement Group looks forward to seeing even more development at Lundavra Primary School Nursery in the future.
The Highland Play Conference “Eat, Sleep, PLAY, Repeat” welcomed over 100 participants with a mixture of teachers, early years practitioners, social workers, primary mental health workers and UHI students among delegates.
The conference was organised by The Highland Council’s Play Improvement Group to inspire inclusion and equality in the planning and delivery of play. The conference was opened by Dr David Alston – Chair of NHS Highland who was a founding member of the Play Improvement Group.
Conference delegates participated in three play related workshops:
- “Playing how we want: The benefits of play out with the gender binary” By Maggie Hume, Violence Against Women Training Officer, NHS Highland and Carrie Yavuz, Education Psychologist, Highland Council.
- “Play is for everybody” By Ruth Manson, Specialist Paediatric Physiotherapist, Highland Council.
- “Active Play” By Steve Holmes, PE Development Officer, Highland Council
Each workshop was an interactive learning session, at the end of which, participants wrote down their pledge on how they could enhance their own planning and delivery of play. This encouraged practitioners to share their innovative ideas with each other and contribute towards future play opportunities.
The conference was concluded by keynote speaker Tam Baillie, Former Scotland Commissioner for Children and Young People from 2009 - 2017. He said:
“I found the conference full of buzz and enthusiasm on the importance of play. It provided an important platform for the development of a better understanding of the critical contribution play fulfils in children's lives. I look forward to the messages from the conference spreading across all disciplines responsible for children and young people, and particularly to those in positions of influence who can make a difference at a strategic level."