OUR PHILOSOPHY

We strongly believe in the value of Outdoor Play and Learning (OPAL). The OPAL program offers an opportunity to improve play by transforming adult and child attitudes to enable and facilitate spontaneous and creative play. The programming encourages schools to use loose parts to enrich and diversify the play offering. The program was originally developed to address anxious unhappy behaviour, bullying, and poor quality of play in U.K. schoolyards. OPAL seeks to improve the social and collaborative life of the entire school, increasing cooperation, sense of agency, inclusion, and pleasure.

In 2016, EcoKids conducted an OPAL pilot project expanding to 40 public elementary schools in the Toronto region. Their research concluded the following benefits of Outdoor Play in School Communities:

Physical Benefits
- Helps build stronger muscle, bones, and lung capacity; develops motor functioning and movement skills; contributes to physical activity and more active children.
Social Benefits
- Provides opportunities to develop friendship, sense of social identity, and well-being; improves school and classroom behaviour; enhances the ability to share, communicate and work in teams.
Emotional Benefits
- Enables enjoyment; prevents boredom; children learn to express painful feelings and overcome trauma
Cognitive Benefits
- Offers different types of learning opportunities in a school day, including spatial and mathematical learning, language development, and creativity.
Risk-Taking Capacity
- Encourages children to explore their environments and take risks during play. This leads to the healthy conceptualization of risk-taking and risky play, for both adults and children. They become less fearful and learn to take more risks, which makes them more independent and confident.
Creativity and Imagination
- Inspires imaginative and creative play. This is related to the open-ended nature of loose parts play. Children are able to create their play experiences based on their ideas rather than materials with one predetermining purpose.

MISSION

To provide an alternative education for our students to acquire knowledge and learn through play in an outdoor ecosystem.

VALUES

A powerful image of the young child as intelligent, creative and capable with skills and abilities
A belief that children play a central role in the development of their own learning
A deep respect for differences, however they may be expressed
A belief that listening, dialogue and exchange open doors to unimaginable possibilities
A view that learning happens when people form relationships with one another, with ideas, materials and the environment
A belief in the rights of children, families and educators to participate together in forming and shaping rich environments of learning, challenge and choice

Our values have been adopted from OPAL school.