We are proud to close out the year in announcing Preshil received a Highly Commended for the Sydney Opera House Play Awards.

The Play Award is an annual award for a primary school with a learning program, class or an individual student or teacher, that has made a remarkable and ongoing contribution to ‘play in learning’ with demonstrated positive impacts.

Highlighting Preshil’s play program “A Backyard for our Children” invites self-led, unprescribed outdoor play, so that children can activate their imagination, and grow their conceptual thinking, through creating their own games and scenarios. There is a forest of bamboo, trees to climb and swing from, dirt mounds to dig and hoses to create dams. Dense shrubberies to hide within, ponds to splash about with, and cubbies and huts that the children build with recycled wood and tools from the school’s outdoor workshop. Indoor spaces are also freely accessible so children can choose how and when they engage in play or in spending time to rest and recentre “A Backyard for our Children” acknowledges that play and recreation is as diverse as children, and prescribed playgrounds often preference sporting play over other styles of recreation. Differentiation in play is inclusive of all children, is open to accepting play in all its forms, is built on the premise of ownership of space, and meets the children where they are, on any given day.