Yesterday we helped Fonthill Primary Academy celebrate being the first school to have a Scrapstore PlayPod for ten years. The occasion was marked most importantly by all the children decorating and then playing with their PlayPod.
Mrs Absalom then delivered an assembly where the children presented a Beautiful Scrap Cake which they had been working on and displayed their own Scrap Cakes as part of a competition. We had the very difficult job of picking 5 winners, pictured here, but would like to say a big WELL DONE to all those who took part for their amazing creations.
The Scrapstore also presented the school a certificate to say a BIG thank you and well done for being the first ever Scrapstore PlayPod being 10 years old. We are now looking forward to it being 20! The celebrations concluded quite sensibly by eating specailly made PlayPod Splat cakes. Yum.
The Scrapstore PlayPod research project started back in 2007; investigating augmenting outdoor play in schools. It provided primary schools with a container, or ‘Pod’, full of loose parts, (scrap materials), and explored changes to the human environment, with the aim of stimulating, facilitating and enhancing children’s play. In 2009 at the end of the research, the schools were so happy with the results they couldn’t help but let other schools know about it and suddenly a lot of schools were phoning us to ask how much a PlayPod was and if they could buy one! The demand was such that a twelve month business plan was put together so that the other local schools could benefits from this too. Scrapstore PlayPods was born: A process that works with the entire school community to change both the human and physical play environments; transforming play at lunchtimes. The transition from research to service and product delivery was a gradual and tentative one, but ever since this date the loose parts still never fail to create delight and enjoyment for the children who play with them.
From modest beginnings Scrapstore PlayPods has grown bigger than anyone expected and is having a major impact on children and schools across the whole of the UK and beyond! Since 2007 we have now worked with over 353 primary schools and early years settings ranging from Cornwall to the Orkney Islands, installing Scrapstore PlayPods, enabling 95,536 children access to loose parts play and quality playtime experiences.