Play Policy
The club will ensure that the children in its care will be supported in their
development through play as much as possible through both planned activities and
child initiated free play. It is recognises that play is an important part of a child’s
development and supports their physical, emotional and personal development as
well as learning and developing further their communication and language skills
and a way of expressing themselves in a creative manner.
Children will be encouraged and supported to make their own decisions and
choices as much as possible so that they are active learners that develop good selfesteem, feel confident and capable and develop strong relationships with others.
Children’s progress will be monitored, suggestions and ideas from the children will be
incorporated as much as possible to ensure that each child’s individual needs are
identified and provided for.
Planning and Evaluation
Each term the team must plan to include children’s individual needs, group needs
and with consideration to school activities and the previous terms evaluation from
the EYFS planner. This planning of activities should further include any ideas and
suggestions that the children have had and would like to see in the club, this could
be as simple as the selection of toys and games they may like available, a planned
observation that may take be required to take place with a group or individual
child, celebrating a child’s birthday and so on. Although the team will plan, this
does not mean that the ideas for the week or term cannot change or evolve
throughout as the sessions will need to accommodate each child’s need and
development. All planning must be completed on the EYFS weekly planner and
evaluated each day. Plans to EYFS can be changed at any time, if so then the
planner must also be changed and updated to reflect this.
Planned Activities
1. All staff are responsible for ensuring that there is a planned activity each
session this must be organised the term prior.
2. The session supervisor, Lead Play Worker and all play workers are responsible
for the input into ideas for activities. Through discussion with each other, the
evaluation and reflection of the previous term and weeks (EYFS planner) and
how children learn, observations of children, the development required,
school plans and ideas from the children should be taken into consideration
and will help to plan these activities.
3. The activities that are planned must be varied and appropriate to the
different ages and stages of development of the children. This can include
for example baking, all children can participate but the level of adult
supervision and support will depend on the age and development of the
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child. Older children could weigh the ingredients, younger children could stir
the mixture and so on.
Any activity that requires adult support and supervision is called a ‘supervised
activity’. Activities can be adult or child led therefore supervised or
unsupervised.
Activities need to meet 2 or more of the areas of learning for EYFS and these
should be considered when planning any activity as well as consideration of
Play Types as listed below. Play types can also be evaluated after the session
and added to the EYFS planner.
The activity plan will need to be displayed weekly for all staff on the EYFS
Weekly Planner and evaluated. All staff will make themselves familiar with the
plan each session. Any adjustments to the plan will be recorded also.
A summary of activities will be recorded on the weekly board for Parents to
view.
Free Play
As well as planned activities there will be a selection of toys and games that will be
available to the children to ensure a welcoming and warm environment that is
appealing to all. Children will be encouraged to get involved in the setting up and
putting away of all equipment and resources where possible. Children will have the
choice also to put items away during sessions as they wish to choose to play with
something else instead. A Staff member will assist in this where a child requires
support.
Activities, resources, games and toys include:
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Quiet corner –books, cushions and blankets
Games, board games & puzzles
Dolls & clothing
Role play items
Loose parts
Dressing up clothes
Art table - Paper, pens, crayons, glue, empty boxes
TV for DVD’s
TV for games console
Karaoke machine and CD’s
Indoor active play where space and activities allow imaginative play and
games for all.
Outdoor activities – school play trail, playground and field, football, scooters,
hoopla, bean bags, o’s and x’s, dominoes etc.
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Play Types & Effective Teaching and Learning
There is acknowledged to be a number of different play types which provide play
workers, managers, and trainers with a common language for describing play. We
will endeavour within our planning to incorporate opportunities for children to
enhance and explore the play types listed below as much as possible, we also
recognise that children will naturally develop their play within certain areas through
each session. We will record areas we feel we will be explored within our EYFS
planner, we will note any further observations of play types on the planner and on a
(EYFS) child’s observation paperwork/notes/sticky pad.
In planning and guiding children’s activities, we will also reflect on the different ways
that children learn. Three characteristics of effective teaching and learning are:
• Playing and exploring - children investigate and experience things, ‘have a go’
• Active learning - children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter
difficulties, and enjoy achievements
• Creating and thinking critically - children have and develop their own ideas, make
links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.
Play types:
 Symbolic play – play which allows control, gradual exploration and increased
understanding without the risk of being out of one’s depth. Using items for
something that they are not designed for, we can watch - jumpers for goal
posts, cushions for cars, see what is being used already before stopping or
adding to play.
 Rough and Tumble Paly – close encounter play, which is less to do with direct
fighting and more to do with touching, tickling, and gauging relative strength.
Discovering physical flexibility and the exhilaration of display. We can
encourage tag, playful challenges of crawling, running and chasing.
 Socio-dramatic play – the enactment of real and potential experiences of an
intense personal, social, domestic or interpersonal nature, where children play
house, being mothers, have a row. We can supply such items as dress up,
hats, kitchen equipment.
 Social play – play during which the rules and criteria for social engagement
and interaction can be revealed, explored and amended. Where children
play games together, create, co-operate together. We can encourage
group games, task children with ideas and ways of changing rules.
 Creative play – play which allows a new response, the transformation of
information, awareness of new connections, with an element of surprise.
Messy play, where mess is not a problem, creative tools, giving children
scissors, paper, loose parts, fabric, scrap and not being too directive.
 Communication play – play using words, nuances or gestures for example,
mime jokes, play acting, mickey taking, singing, debate, and poetry.
Encourage jokes, fun, laughing, and riddles, introduce books, and share funny
stories.
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Dramatic play – play which dramatises events in which the child is not a
direct participator. Events such as funerals, parents taking children to school,
a TV show, religious festival, we can encourage audience participation, give
them the space required.
Deep Play – play which allows the child to encounter risky or even potentially
life threatening experiences, to develop survival skills and conquer fear.
Encourage deep play, balance fear, risk and safety with the joys of success,
risk is not just danger, it can also be boys dressing as princesses.
Exploratory play – play to access factual information consisting of
manipulative behaviours such as handling, throwing, banging or mouthing
objects. We can think about how children can engage in their environment
in different ways, link tables and chairs, spend time off the floor.
Fantasy play – play which rearranges the world in the child’s way, a way
which is unlikely to occur. Making unreal things real, purely made up such as
mermaids and dragons, we can provide loose parts, space, dress up, face
paints etc. and adults should not intervene too much.
Imaginative play – play where the conventional rules, which govern the
physical world, do not apply. Patting an animal that isn’t there, singing into
non existing microphone, we need to be aware of and observe children using
their imagination, setting up a dolls tea party, encourage pretend games out
of something real.
Locomotor play – movement in any or every direction for its own sake.
Chasing, tag, hide and seek, climbing, encourage outdoor play and use of
the environment, as well as games of chase, tag, skipping etc.
Mastery play – control of the physical and affective ingredients of the
environments. Making mud pies, changing the course of streams, growing
things, encourage and make available where possible trees, sticks, earth and
sand and tools.
Object play – play which uses infinite and interesting sequences of hand-eye
manipulations and movements. Where a child examines and makes novel
use of almost any object. Make loose parts available, activities or toys that
come apart and are put back together again, resist telling the children what
and how to do it.
Role play – play exploring ways of being, although not normally of an intense
personal, social, domestic or interpersonal way. The child reacts something
they are aware of or have witnessed, we can have fun props as well as
specific toys for daily life routines.
Recapitulative play – play that allows the child to explore ancestry, history,
rituals, stories, rhymes, fire and darkness. Enables children to access play of
earlier human evolutionary stages. Children are able to change their
appearance with masks and paints, building dens. We can offer play in the
dark, activities that go back in time, loose parts to build dens and villages and
encourage customs and rule making.
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