Positive Play

The Positive Play Support Programme started in 1997 at a Nursery and Infant School in Derbyshire.

Play is described as children's work and through structured Positive Play Support Programme sessions, which are based on play, they can begin to develop the skills they have not yet acquired. For example, turn taking, concentration, and appropriate language, all of which can be modelled through structured parallel play activities when children are on the programme.

By lending a listening ear in the sessions, anxieties and fears can begin to be alleviated. Children can start to develop the skills necessary for them to express their feelings and engage with their emotions. As children discover ways to manage and cope with their emotional and behavioural difficulties, they became able to access the curriculum and work towards achieving their potential in life.

The Positive Play Programme aims to:

• allow the children a space to express and communicate feelings and difficulties in their lives, through a variety of media in a constructive rather than aggressive way  in a safe non-threatening environment.
• help children feel good about themselves, and raise self-esteem by providing activities that look at their strengths and by valuing what they do and making it special.
• provide a non-authoritarian, supportive, reliable, safe, unconditional relationship within the school and other settings.
• help children aquire the complex range of life skills needed to achieve their full potential.