The School of Play Curriculum
Primary School Foundation - Grade Two
Week Four is designed to build physical coordination, emotional awareness, creativity, and positive social connection through a series of fun, active, and reflective activities. Students begin with Walk, Stop, Name, Clap, a fast-paced listening-and-movement game that strengthens reaction time, focus, and confidence in group settings. They then shift into Superpower Strengths, a reflective and creative activity that helps students identify what makes them unique, visualise their strengths through art, and recognise how their abilities can positively impact others. These activities promote both physical engagement and emotional understanding, helping students feel confident, capable, and connected.
The week continues with imaginative movement and kindness-based reflection that encourages students to engage their minds and bodies in meaningful ways. In Tour De France Bike Race, students embark on a playful fitness adventure, using their imagination to ride through different race scenarios and build stamina, coordination, and resilience. Finally, The Happiness Boomerang teaches students the power of kindness through daily acts of appreciation, encouraging them to spread joy across ten days and reflect on how giving positivity benefits both themselves and others. Altogether, Week Four offers a balanced mix of movement, creativity, empathy, and kindness, helping students grow socially, emotionally, and physically while having fun.
Weekly Lessons
Walk, Stop, Name, Clap
Walk, Stop, Name, Clap is a lively icebreaker that gets students listening closely, thinking fast, and moving together as a group. What begins as a simple set of commands quickly transforms into a hilarious challenge as meanings are reversed, swapped, and layered with new actions. Students practise staying alert and responding in the moment, all while building coordination and confidence through playful movement. The constant switching keeps everyone on their toes and creates a shared sense of fun from the very first minutes of a session.
As the game becomes trickier, students naturally start interacting, laughing, and supporting one another, helping to shape a warm and welcoming group dynamic. It’s a brilliant way to create connection without pressure, just movement, quick reactions, and shared joy. Walk, Stop, Name, Clap is perfect for energising a group, breaking down barriers, and setting the tone for a positive, engaged learning environment.
Respectful Relationships
Communication, Listening & Following Instructions
Walk, Stop, Name, Clap supports students to:
- Practise focused listening, responding to verbal commands quickly and accurately.
- Understand and follow simple instructions, helping build early communication and comprehension skills.
- Adapt to changes, learning flexibility as command meanings switch and levels become more challenging.
Social Interaction, Cooperation & Class Connection
Walk, Stop, Name, Clap helps students to:
- Interact playfully with classmates, strengthening social comfort and confidence in a fun, low-pressure environment.
- Encourage one another, as students laugh, learn, and support peers who might mix up commands.
- Build group cohesion by participating together in shared movement challenges that create a sense of belonging.
Respect, Safety & Inclusion
Walk, Stop, Name, Clap supports students to:
- Respect personal space, navigating the room safely while moving and responding to commands.
- Include all learners, as the game is simple, adaptable, and accessible to students of all abilities.
- Model respectful behaviour, waiting, listening, and responding appropriately to classmates and instructors.
Emotional Literacy, Confidence & Positive Risk-Taking
Walk, Stop, Name, Clap encourages students to:
- Feel confident expressing themselves, especially when saying their name or performing actions in front of peers.
- Embrace mistakes with humour, learning that mixing up commands is part of the fun, not something to worry about.
- Experience positive emotions, such as joy, excitement, and connection, which reinforce healthy classroom relationships.
Self-Regulation & Body Control
Walk, Stop, Name, Clap helps students to:
- Control impulses, waiting for the correct cue and managing the urge to move too soon.
- Coordinate their bodies, practising balance and reaction time through walking, stopping, clapping, and speaking.
- Stay calm and focused, even as the levels become more confusing or energetic.
Resilience, Persistence & Trying Again
Walk, Stop, Name, Clap encourages students to:
- Persist through increasingly tricky levels, learning to stay engaged even when they make mistakes.
- Develop resilience, understanding that errors are expected and fun in games that challenge memory and focus.
- Celebrate effort, recognising that participation and enthusiasm are more important than perfection.
Superpower Strengths
Superpower Strengths is a joyful, confidence-boosting activity that invites students to recognise what makes them unique. By identifying a personal strength and turning it into a fun superhero identity, students explore their abilities through creativity, imagination, and self-expression. This simple process of naming and illustrating their strengths helps them build self-awareness and pride, reinforcing that everyone has something special they bring to the world.
The activity goes a step further by encouraging students to consider how their strengths can make a positive difference to others. Whether it's kindness, bravery, creativity, or teamwork, students reflect on how their “superpowers” can brighten someone’s day or support their community. Superpower Strengths creates a warm, empowering atmosphere where students celebrate themselves and each other, helping to build a classroom culture rooted in confidence, empathy, and appreciation.
Respectful Relationships
Emotional Literacy, Self-Awareness & Positive Identity
Superpower Strengths supports students to:
- Recognise their own abilities, helping them build a strong sense of identity and confidence.
- Use positive self-talk, identifying what they’re good at and celebrating their special qualities.
- Develop emotional awareness, noticing how it feels to recognise and share something they are proud of.
Creativity, Expression & Communication Skills
Superpower Strengths helps students to:
- Express their strengths creatively, using drawing and imaginative storytelling to bring their “superhero self” to life.
- Communicate ideas confidently, explaining what makes them unique and how they use their strengths every day.
- Engage in positive sharing, listening to others’ strengths and celebrating classmates with kind, encouraging comments.
Empathy, Social Awareness & Helping Others
Superpower Strengths encourages students to:
- Think about the needs of others, recognising that their strengths can be used to help people at school, home, and in the community.
- Understand how their actions impact others, developing empathy by imagining how their superpower could make someone else’s day better.
- Build caring relationships, learning that kindness, helpfulness, and teamwork are superpowers too.
Respect, Inclusion & Belonging
Superpower Strengths supports students to:
- Respect differences, understanding that everyone has unique talents, abilities, and strengths.
- Create a sense of classroom belonging, especially when drawings are displayed on a “Superpower Wall” for everyone to celebrate.
- Value peers’ contributions, helping students see that all strengths, big or small, are important.
Self-Regulation, Confidence & Growth Mindset
Superpower Strengths helps students to:
- Feel confident exploring what makes them special, reinforcing positive self-esteem.
- Reflect on their abilities, understanding that strengths can grow with practice and effort.
- Use their strengths to solve challenges, learning that they can use what they’re good at in everyday situations.
Resilience, Pride & Personal Development
Superpower Strengths encourages students to:
- Take pride in their abilities, recognising what they already do well.
- Persist in identifying their strengths, even if they find self-reflection challenging.
- See themselves as capable, nurturing a sense of resilience by focusing on what they can do rather than what they can’t.
Tour De France Bike Race
Tour de France Bike Race is an energetic, story-driven movement adventure that turns students into cyclists tackling one of the world’s greatest races. As the instructor narrates each twist in the course, from flying downhill to dodging spectators, students respond with physical actions that build strength, coordination, and stamina. The imaginative storyline keeps everyone fully engaged, helping them follow instructions, stay active, and immerse themselves in the excitement of the race.
Along the way, students stretch, jump, sprint, and crouch their way through obstacles, using creativity to picture themselves on the Tour’s winding mountain roads. The blend of playful storytelling and fitness makes this activity a brilliant warm-up, energiser, or end-of-lesson movement break. Tour de France Bike Race encourages teamwork, enthusiasm, and resilience while giving students a fun and memorable way to move their bodies.
Respectful Relationships
Communication, Listening & Following Instructions
Tour De France Bike Race supports students to:
- Practise attentive listening, following a fast-moving story and responding to each movement cue.
- Respond appropriately to sequential instructions, improving comprehension and the ability to transition smoothly between actions.
- Develop confidence in group participation, listening for cues, staying engaged, and moving together as a team through the adventure.
Social Interaction, Teamwork & Positive Connection
Tour De France Bike Race helps students to:
- Participate in a shared group experience, strengthening classroom community through playful movement and storytelling.
- Encourage and support classmates, cheering each other on during high-energy physical challenges.
- Build cooperative habits, recognising that the fun of the game comes from the group moving together and staying engaged.
Respect, Safety & Inclusion
Tour De France Bike Race supports students to:
- Move safely in shared space, learning spatial awareness as they run, jump, and transition through different actions.
- Respect each other’s abilities, understanding that some students may move differently or adapt movements to suit their bodies.
- Promote an inclusive atmosphere, celebrating everyone who participates, regardless of speed, strength, or fitness.
Emotional Literacy, Imagination & Creative Expression
Tour De France Bike Race encourages students to:
- Use imagination to deepen engagement, pretending to face hills, potholes, spectators, and race challenges.
- Express emotions through movement, such as excitement at the downhill, determination during the uphill, and joy at the finish line.
- Experience fun, positive emotions, which strengthen wellbeing and create a sense of joy in group play.
Self-Regulation, Body Awareness & Physical Control
Tour De France Bike Race helps students to:
- Manage their energy, shifting between slow, controlled movements (planks, ducking) and fast, intense actions (sprints, jumps).
- Build body awareness, recognising what different stretches, movements, and positions feel like.
- Practise calming strategies, such as ending the game with controlled sprints, slower movements, or cool-down variations.
Resilience, Persistence & Goal-Directed Behaviour
Tour De France Bike Race encourages students to:
- Persist through challenging movements, building grit during sit-ups, burpees, tuck jumps, and planks.
- Try new physical actions, even if they feel unfamiliar or tricky.
- Celebrate effort, understanding that finishing the journey, not competing, is what matters most.
The Happiness Boomerang
The Happiness Boomerang is a gentle, heart-warming activity that invites students to spread kindness in small but powerful ways. Over ten days, they choose one person each day, a friend, family member, teacher, or someone special, and send them a simple, thoughtful message. Whether through a drawing, a handwritten note, or spoken words, students express what they appreciate about that person and why they make their world brighter. This daily practice strengthens emotional awareness and encourages students to notice the good around them.
As the messages are shared, students begin to see how kindness creates a ripple effect, what they send out comes back in the form of smiles, connection, and genuine joy. The Happiness Boomerang gives students a safe and playful structure for celebrating the people in their lives and recognising the uplifting impact of appreciation. It’s a beautiful ritual that boosts confidence, deepens relationships, and builds a classroom or home culture where kindness truly comes full circle.
Respectful Relationships
Emotional Literacy, Awareness & Positive Feeling Recognition
The Happiness Boomerang supports students to:
- Identify positive feelings such as love, gratitude, pride, joy, and admiration for important people in their lives.
- Understand how expressing feelings helps relationships, building early emotional intelligence.
- Connect emotions to actions, recognising how sending kind messages creates happiness for themselves and others.
Communication, Kindness & Expressing Appreciation
The Happiness Boomerang helps students to:
- Use words or drawings to express appreciation, practising simple but meaningful communication skills.
- Share compliments and positive messages, strengthening friendships and relationships with trusted adults.
- Develop confidence in speaking kindly, learning that expressing appreciation makes interactions more joyful and respectful.
Empathy, Social Awareness & Caring for Others
The Happiness Boomerang encourages students to:
- Think about how others feel, imagining the joy someone might experience when receiving a thoughtful message.
- Notice the impact of small acts of kindness, understanding how their actions can brighten someone’s day.
- Develop generosity of spirit, learning to give kindness without expecting anything in return.
Respect, Inclusion & Relationship Building
The Happiness Boomerang supports students to:
- Show respect by recognising others’ strengths and kindness, expressing gratitude for specific behaviours or qualities.
- Promote inclusion, as every child can participate by choosing people who matter to them, friends, family, teachers, or carers.
- Build a warm, caring environment, where positive messages create stronger connections across the class or family.
Self-Regulation, Wellbeing & Emotional Growth
The Happiness Boomerang helps students to:
- Reflect calmly each day, practising mindfulness as they choose a person and think about what they appreciate.
- Recognise emotional changes, noticing how giving kindness boosts their own happiness and sense of wellbeing.
- Develop self-awareness, understanding what makes relationships meaningful and what brings them joy.
Resilience, Positivity & Growth Mindset
The Happiness Boomerang encourages students to:
- Focus on positive actions, helping them build resilience by noticing good things even on challenging days.
- Practise consistency, sending kind messages over several days and understanding the value of ongoing kindness.
- Celebrate effort, knowing that every message, big or small, creates a ripple of positivity.
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