The School of Play Curriculum
Primary School Grade 5 & 6
Week Thirty marks the final chapter of the Playful Astronauts' journey, a joyful return to Earth where students pause, celebrate, and reflect on everything they've discovered among the planets. After learning nine empowering life skills and exploring a universe of emotions, movement, imagination, and kindness, this week invites students to look back with pride. Through festive play, expressive art, energising movement, and group reflection, children recognise how much they've grown and how these life skills now live within them. They celebrate themselves, their classmates, and the shared adventures that made their astronaut mission meaningful.
This week reinforces that every child is now equipped with tools for kindness, confidence, gratitude, resilience, empathy, and more. Space Station Celebration invites joyful reflection, My Astronaut Journey Poster turns learning into visual storytelling, Suit Up Workout reconnects movement with life skills, and Mission Complete Medals allow students to recognise and honour one another. Week Thirty is a sparkling finish, a reminder that while the space mission ends, the lessons, friendships, and strengths gained will continue to shine brightly as students carry their astronaut hearts back into everyday life.
Courses
Space Station Celebration
Space Station Celebration brings the entire nine-week space journey together in one joyful, meaningful finale. After exploring kindness, confidence, resilience, empathy, play, and more across the planets, students return to their very own space station to reflect on how far they’ve travelled and how much they’ve grown. Surrounded by decorations, space-themed music, and their crew of fellow astronauts, children revisit each planet’s life skill and celebrate the ways they’ve practised it in real life. The classroom becomes a place where memories, laughter, and achievements orbit all around them.
Through dancing, role-play, sharing circles, and even a playful Astronaut Graduation, students recognise the skills they’ve developed and the courage they’ve shown along the way. They choose favourite planets, recall powerful moments, and proudly name life skills that now shine inside them like stars. Space Station Celebration marks the perfect ending to the Playful Astronauts mission, an uplifting moment of connection, pride, and joy that prepares every student to launch into their next adventure with confidence, gratitude, and a heart full of cosmic wonder.
Respectful Relationships
1. Emotional Literacy
- Students reflect on the emotions they experienced throughout their nine-week journey, pride, excitement, curiosity, bravery, gratitude, etc.
- They identify and name feelings connected to achievement and closure.
- They practise expressing their thoughts about favourite activities, planets, and life skills.
2. Personal Strengths
- Students recognise the strengths they developed across the entire program, such as kindness, resilience, creativity, empathy, and adaptability.
- The celebration encourages them to acknowledge personal growth, reinforcing a positive sense of identity.
- Through sharing their favourite life skill, they articulate what they value about themselves.
3. Positive Coping
- Students reflect on moments in the journey where they overcame challenges, such as trying again, adapting to changes, or showing vulnerability.
- Revisiting these experiences helps them connect past successes with future coping strategies.
- Celebratory activities also help students manage transition by ending the unit on a positive, emotionally supported note.
4. Problem-Solving
- Students revisit and recall situations from different planets (e.g., resolving conflict on Mercury, adapting on Pluto), recognising the strategies they used.
- They reflect on how they worked through tricky activities or unexpected rule changes.
- Sharing these experiences reinforces their understanding of practical problem-solving.
5. Stress Management
- The structured reflection and celebration promote calm closure, helping students process the end of the unit in a positive way.
- Movement activities (dance, role-play, rocket-launch countdowns) allow for healthy physical release of energy.
- Discussing favourite skills supports future emotional preparedness.
6. Gender and Identity
- Students share reflections in ways that are authentic to them, reinforcing their individual identities.
- The open-ended celebration activities promote freedom of expression: movement, creativity, speaking, or simply participating as part of the group.
- Students hear and value diverse perspectives from their peers.
7. Positive Relationships
- The class celebrates together, reinforcing group belonging, unity, and shared achievement.
- Students cheer for one another, acknowledge contributions, and celebrate each astronaut’s journey.
- Shared reflection deepens understanding and strengthens classroom culture.
8. Help-Seeking
- Students recall times throughout the program when help from others mattered, showing them that seeking support is part of successful learning.
- By discussing life skills such as resilience, conflict resolution, and vulnerability, students identify adults and peers who they can turn to in future.
- The celebration normalises talking about feelings, achievements, and challenges in a safe group setting.
My Astronaut Journey Poster
My Astronaut Journey Poster gives students a meaningful and creative way to look back on their entire nine-week adventure through the solar system. By drawing each of the nine planets and matching them with their life skills, kindness, conflict resolution, vulnerability, play, confidence, gratitude, resilience, empathy, and adaptability, students create a colourful map of their learning. As they illustrate their journey, they remember the stories, feelings, games, and special moments that shaped them along the way, transforming their poster into a visual timeline of growth, curiosity, and discovery.
Once complete, each poster becomes a personal celebration of what students have learned about themselves and others. Sharing their artwork with the class helps them recognise how far they’ve travelled and how many new strengths they now carry inside, just like true Playful Astronauts. My Astronaut Journey Poster is both a reflection and a keepsake, capturing the joy, imagination, and life skills gained throughout their space mission, and reminding every student that their journey isn’t ending, it’s just beginning.
Respectful Relationships
1. Emotional Literacy
- Students reflect on and recall the emotions they experienced throughout each life-skill planet.
- They express feelings visually by choosing symbols, colours, and imagery that represent their emotional learning.
- Sharing their poster helps them articulate how different activities made them feel and why.
2. Personal Strengths
- Students identify strengths developed over the nine-week journey, kindness, confidence, resilience, adaptability, etc.
- Representing each strength on a planet reinforces personal recognition of growth.
- Students feel proud of their learning, building a stronger sense of identity and capability.
3. Positive Coping
- Students reflect on moments from the journey when they faced challenges (Mercury conflict, Uranus resilience, Pluto adaptability).
- The poster reinforces coping tools they learned and encourages them to recall strategies that helped them stay calm and try again.
- Making a visual record strengthens their ability to revisit these strategies in future challenges.
4. Problem-Solving
- Students connect each planet’s life skill with real-world situations they navigated during activities.
- By illustrating solutions (e.g., resolving conflict, trying again, adapting to change), they deepen understanding of structured problem-solving.
- Sharing posters reinforces the idea that multiple strategies can be used to handle problems effectively.
5. Stress Management
- Reflecting on their nine-week journey helps students recognise activities that made them feel calm, confident, or regulated.
- The creative drawing process itself supports mindfulness and relaxation.
- Students identify which life skills (gratitude, empathy, vulnerability, etc.) help them manage stress.
6. Gender and Identity
- The open-ended poster design allows students to express themselves creatively and authentically.
- Students see that everyone’s journey looks different, promoting acceptance of diverse experiences and identities.
- Space-themed learning offers a non-gendered, inclusive environment for sharing and celebrating individuality.
7. Positive Relationships
- Students strengthen relationships by sharing their posters with peers, discussing favourite memories, and celebrating each other’s growth.
- Recalling group experiences encourages gratitude for teamwork, kindness, and collaboration.
- Class discussions promote belonging and reinforce a safe, supportive classroom culture.
8. Help-Seeking
- Students revisit moments from the journey when they needed help, during conflict, resilience activities, or emotional expression.
- The poster reinforces that asking for help is normal, healthy, and encouraged.
- Sharing with peers builds confidence to communicate needs and reach out to trusted adults and friends.
Suit Up Workout
Suit Up Workout brings the entire Playful Astronauts journey to life through movement, giving students a chance to embody every life skill they’ve learned across the nine planets. With each exercise representing a different skill, kindness, conflict resolution, vulnerability, play, confidence, gratitude, resilience, empathy, and adaptability, students move their bodies in ways that help them remember, reflect, and celebrate their growth. The workout becomes a joyful physical recap, blending memory and movement so students can feel their learning as much as they think about it.
As the class jumps like Mars, power poses like Jupiter, bounces like Uranus, mirrors Neptune, and spins into Pluto, students reconnect with the emotions, stories, and lessons that shaped their journey. The activity finishes with a unifying cool-down, helping every astronaut recognise their strength, teamwork, and readiness for whatever comes next. Suit Up Workout is a vibrant, energising celebration, an active reminder that the life skills students carry inside them are always there to help them launch confidently into new adventures.
Respectful Relationships
1. Emotional Literacy
- Students connect each movement to a feeling or emotional skill, strengthening mind–body awareness.
- They learn to recognise and express emotions through physical actions, kindness hugs, confidence poses, resilience bounces, etc.
- The cool-down reflection encourages students to describe how movement affects their emotional state (calm, strong, happy).
2. Personal Strengths
- Each movement highlights an inner strength (e.g., empathy, playfulness, bravery, adaptability).
- Students recognise and celebrate their capabilities by physically demonstrating the skills they’ve learned.
- Participating confidently contributes to a stronger sense of identity and pride.
3. Positive Coping
- The workout provides a fun and accessible strategy for emotional regulation.
- Students experience how movement helps them reset, calm down, energise, or express themselves.
- Skills like resilience and adaptability become embodied coping tools they can use beyond the activity.
4. Problem-Solving
- Students develop cognitive flexibility by remembering nine different movements and responding quickly to cues.
- Matching life skills to actions encourages symbolic thinking and strengthens connections between concepts and behaviours.
- Moving as a group reinforces collaborative problem-solving and staying attuned to others.
5. Stress Management
- Physical movement supports emotional release, grounding, and bodily regulation.
- Students recognise how exercise improves mood and reduces stress, especially through mindful breathing at the end.
- The joyful nature of the workout creates a positive association between movement and emotional well-being.
6. Gender and Identity
- Movements and life skills are inclusive and non-gendered, ensuring safe participation for all students.
- The freedom to move confidently allows students to express identity in a non-judgmental environment.
- Class culture strengthens as every child’s contribution is equally valued and celebrated.
7. Positive Relationships
- Students move together as one space crew, reinforcing teamwork, trust, and shared accomplishment.
- Partner-based actions, like Neptune’s empathy wave or Mercury’s conflict-resolution high five, build cooperation and caring interaction.
- The workout fosters a high-energy, supportive environment where students celebrate each other’s efforts.
8. Help-Seeking
- The activity normalises asking for support (e.g., copying someone’s movement, following teacher cues).
- Students understand that learning together and modelling each other’s actions is a healthy way to seek help.
- The class chant and group celebration reinforce the message that help-seeking is part of belonging to a team.
Mission Complete Medals
Mission Complete Medals is a heartfelt way for students to celebrate the friendships, courage, and teamwork they’ve shared throughout their Playful Astronauts journey. Each student creates a special medal, decorating it with meaningful words or drawings that recognise a classmate’s kindness, bravery, or support. As they craft their medals, students reflect on the moments that made the mission memorable, times when someone helped them, encouraged them, or made their adventure through the planets feel even brighter.
When students exchange their medals, the classroom fills with smiles, pride, and appreciation. Saying “I made this for you because…” helps them practise giving authentic compliments and strengthens the bonds built over the past nine weeks. Whether displayed on a Mission Wall of Fame or taken home as a keepsake, these medals remind students that kindness and recognition are powerful gifts. Mission Complete Medals brings the journey to a joyful close, showing every astronaut that their actions mattered and that celebrating others is a beautiful life skill to carry forward.
Respectful Relationships
1. Emotional Literacy
- Students reflect on the feelings associated with giving and receiving kindness.
- They learn to identify positive emotions (pride, joy, gratitude) and express them through words and drawings.
- Speaking about why they chose a particular peer deepens awareness of their own emotions and strengthens expressive confidence.
2. Personal Strengths
- Students recognise and celebrate the strengths they’ve seen in their classmates (e.g., bravery, kindness, helpfulness).
- They begin to identify strengths in themselves as they receive compliments and acknowledgement from peers.
- This fosters a positive sense of identity and belonging.
3. Positive Coping
- The activity teaches students that positive relationships and kind interactions help us cope with challenges.
- Giving and receiving appreciation helps students regulate emotions and build emotional resilience.
- Students learn that reflecting on shared experiences strengthens their well-being.
4. Problem-Solving
- Students practise thinking about how others contributed to their journey, who helped them, how, and why it mattered.
- They consider what makes a meaningful compliment and how to express it respectfully.
- This reflective thinking strengthens social problem-solving and perspective-taking.
5. Stress Management
- The celebratory, affirming nature of the activity boosts mood and reduces stress.
- Students experience firsthand how positive emotions and social connection can help them feel calm and supported.
- The exchange of medals promotes a warm, inclusive environment where everyone feels valued.
6. Gender and Identity
- Medals and compliments are entirely student-directed and inclusive, allowing all students to feel recognised and affirmed.
- The activity encourages students to appreciate each peer for who they are, free from stereotypes or expectations.
- This fosters a safe environment where identity is honoured and individuality is celebrated.
7. Positive Relationships
- At its core, the activity strengthens classroom relationships through meaningful appreciation.
- Students practise giving genuine compliments, acknowledging support, and celebrating friendship.
- The shared ceremony builds unity, trust, and a sense of collective achievement.
8. Help-Seeking
- Students recognise the classmates who have supported them, making it easier to identify safe, helpful peers in future.
- The activity reinforces that reaching out for help is positive and valued within the group.
- By celebrating helpers, students learn that help-seeking is a natural part of community and growth.
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