Dear Parents and Carers
Last week, we recognised International Day of Play, 11 June 2025. This day was created by the United Nations General Assembly and implemented in 2024. The theme this year was “Choose Play – Every Day”.
Here at Frederick Irwin Anglican School, we value play as a dynamic vehicle for learning. Play gives students the ability to discover cause and effect, develop healthy risk-taking choices, problem solve and improvement in executive functioning. On top of this, it builds social/emotional growth, gross and fine motor skills, language skills, and more. In the Early Years we uphold a play-based inquiry pedagogy, where children have opportunities to build agency through voice and choice in their learning through play. Play takes many forms. In the Upper Years our students embrace playful learning through cycles of Inquiry. Outside the classroom, we view playful collaborative learning every day, through impromptu possibilities with recess and lunch. Our playgrounds are designed to provide students with age-appropriate healthy risk, we play in nature, both bush and beach, we play with loose parts, and we play in child-led, as well as organised sport.
From scholars as early as Plato, research has informed us that the skills required to be active and engaged citizens of the world include the same skills that are built from playing. This has never been more true than it is for the 21st Century. So, we end with a quote from Kath Murdoch.
“Give yourself permission to play with new ways of doing things, to explore, invent and create” Kath Murdoch, 2019.
We challenge everyone in our community, adults and children alike, listen to the research and choose play, every day.
Kind regards
Mrs Natalie Burbage, Deputy Head of Primary - Halls Head Campus/Upper Primary Coordinator
Mrs Karen Bond, Year 2 Teacher/Lower Primary Coordinator