Hi everyone, happy Friday and happy official first day of Autumn! Thanks to the unexpected bank holiday on Monday, we’ve enjoyed a shorter; but no less busy, week here in Dave’s class!

We remain in our temporary classroom until mid-week next week, so this week we’ve made the most of the wonderful outdoor spaces that our school has to offer! We’ve all enjoyed the feeling of the Autumn sun on our faces and mud in our hands (sorry to all those responsible adults at home for the extra loads of washing!)

Some of our friends have been feeling under the weather this week, and we’ve missed having them with us in class. Sending lots of healing wishes to them, and we hope to see them back in school on Monday feeling rested and ready to go!

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend, maybe we’ll even get lucky and see Mr. Sunshine with his hat on again!  All the best – Dave and team 🙂

Hi everyone, welcome to Dave’s class blog 2022/2023! We’ve all had a lovely first week back, full of exploration and adventures, and have already started to form some fantastic relationships with our new class of superstars!

Our classroom is currently undergoing some building work, meaning we are using a different space for the next two weeks, but as you can see from these photos we haven’t let that get in the way of our fun!

We couldn’t be prouder of our little class; everyone has come back from their holiday full of beans and roaring to go, and we can’t wait to have front row seats to the next year of their Hadrian journeys!

Our team this year has had a few changes, and so this year our ‘and team’ sign off is on behalf of Mandy, Jess, Emma, Emily, and Isla. We hope everyone has a lovely weekend and we’ll see you on Tuesday! – Dave and team 🙂

Well here we are, the final Friday blog of this school year! We honestly can’t quite believe it’s this time of year already; it feels like we’ve just blinked and the school terms have all whizzed on by.

Looking back through the past year’s worth of photos for this blog has been both a gorgeous reminder of all of the fun times we’ve had this year, and an eye-opening look at how grown up our little class all look now compared to September! We all feel extremely lucky to have been able to spend the past ten months with such an incredible group of children; although they technically come to us to learn, we’ve all learnt so much from them and we can’t wait to watch the rest of their Hadrian journeys.

It wouldn’t be right to end this blog without mentioning the incredible staff that have given so much this year but who aren’t going to be with us in ‘Dave’s team’ next year, so…

•  Megan, our wonderful placement student, is heading back to university for her final year of her degree. Megan has been here every single day right alongside us all, and has been an integral part of our team despite this being an unpaid placement. We couldn’t have done this year without Megan; her passion and love for supporting our children has been an absolute joy to see and we wish her the best for everything that’s next for her in life.
• Christine, our gastro-feed superstar, was due to move into Phil’s class come September however has faced a period of ill health in recent weeks and remains recovering in hospital, although is defying doctors and is making amazing progress everyday. Christine has been central to the successes of our class this year; always first on hand to provide both children and staff alike with words of comfort or encouragement, buyer of the best snacks (again, for both children and staff alike!) and she has been a massive miss to the whole class over the past few weeks. We hope to see her again fighting fit as soon as possible.
• Finally, our dream-team double act of Tracy and Debbie are both moving to Marc’s class after summer. Both of these women are exceptional members of staff, whose dedication and support for our class have been abundantly clear for everyone to see. No-one is a bigger champion for our kids, and we’ve all learnt so much from watching these two extraordinary women work. We’re going to feel their loss within Dave’s team massively, and we hope our friends in Marc’s team know how lucky they’ve got it landing the pair of them!

We hope everyone enjoys having a scroll through the photo round-up of our year, we’d be lying if we said we hadn’t teared up at some of them!

Thank you so much to all who have supported us here in Dave’s class over the past school year; we’re so grateful and can’t begin to thank you all enough. We hope you all have an amazing Summer break, and can’t wait to welcome a whole new batch of children come September! – Dave and team 🙂

Halloween fun!

Three Christmas elves!

Meeting Santa!

Fun at the fair!

World book day fashion show!

Hoppy Easter!

Queen’s jubilee!

Summer fun!

Carnival dancing!

Dave’s team 2021-2022

Hi everyone, another happy Friday from all of us here in Dave’s team!

We’ve had an brilliant week this week, choc full of fun, music and exploration and with two birthdays to celebrate too! Huge thank you to the parents who sent in cake on Wednesday; it went down an absolute treat for the whole class, but especially the birthday boy!

By far the stand out moment from this week though was definitely our carnival day on Tuesday! We had a brilliant morning making sure we were all carnival ready with plenty of glitter, feathers, ribbons and paint being splashed around, before excitedly gathering our banner and our loudest instruments and meeting the Baque de Ogum drummers outside of the school doors. We were one of the very first classes out of the doors, which meant we had the best view of all of the drumming and dancing! We were all on our best behavior following the route perfectly, and when we marched into the adventure playground to hear the steel drums we were in our element!

After a hot hour of dancing along to the songs, we stopped for a welcomed ice cream break and then it was back to shaking our hips for another few songs! By the end of the day we had all danced our socks off, and I bet everyone slept very soundly on Tuesday evening!

Huge thank you to Coralie and her team for organising such a wonderful day, we had the best time ever and would love a carnival every single week of school next year please!

We’re having our last coffee afternoon of the school year this afternoon for all of the parents of our current class, and then it’s only one more week until we break up for summer; who else is excited for six whole weeks off!

Have a lovely weekend everyone! – Dave and team 🙂

Hi everyone, happy Friday!

This week we’ve taken part in the school wide Sports Week! With all of the teachers working together to plan different events, we’ve spent the whole week this week learning about new sports and taking on a new sporting challenge each day.

On Monday and Wednesday we took part in two special sessions of Jabadao with new equipment and special sensory lighting. We all loved the chance to experience a different style of Jabadao and were very excited to try out different tools to aid our exercising!

Tuesday morning brought us the chance to go orienteering which was a new challenge for almost everyone! During this lesson we had to work together to reunite Alfie the dog with some of his favourite toys that he had lost around the school grounds. Following a map drawn by one of our friends Anthony in Rachel’s class; we found clues, did challenges and reunited Alfie with his toys! On Tuesday afternoon we took part in a lovely dancing lesson with our friends from Phil’s class, lead by Coralie. We threw ourselves into the warm-ups and made sure to properly stretch before getting the chance to dance! First with scarves to relaxing music and then we got the chance to experience some belly dancing; we all loved trying on the coin belts and getting to shake our hips to fast-paced music!

Thursday morning was our chance to try our hands at an obstacle course and welly wanging in the caterpillar garden. Who knew throwing wellies down a hill was 1) a sport and 2) so much fun!

As you could probably tell, we’ve all had the best week and we couldn’t be prouder of the whole class for throwing themselves into every new challenge with gusto! Now I think we’re all well overdue for a couple of days rest over this weekend, especially as next week in Dave’s class we will have another jam-packed week, celebrating two birthdays and taking a trip to Rio for our Brazilian carnival!

Have a great weekend! – Dave and team 🙂

Hi everyone, happy Friday! Only 16 more days at school until the summer holidays, who else can’t believe how fast the time whizzed by!

This Monday was our annual class trip to the seaside! We loaded up two of our school vans and headed off to Blyth beach for the day, luckily even the weather stayed on our side and we managed to avoid the rain and even catch some sun! We all had the best day playing in the sand and splashing in the sea, some of us even went right up to our knees despite the water being very cold! We loved getting fish and chips for our dinners and eating them on the picnic benches outside before having a run around in the park. We even got to enjoy a cheeky ice-cream treat to finish the day off!

We wanted to say a huge thank you to all of the parents and the volunteers that came along and made the day such a success, we hope you loved it as much as us!

Wowee, what a corker of a week it’s been for us here in Dave’s class! With plenty of hydration, lots of rests in the shade and enough factor 50 to potentially coat the whole school twice, we’ve made it through this heatwave!

We’ve made the most of the heat and adapted all of our everyday lessons in order to be able to work outside in the sunshine everyday! We spent another morning at Babs’ and June’s seaside setup on Tuesday, where we tried out building sandcastles and serving ice-creams to our friends. We couldn’t take our usual hydrotherapy spot on Wednesday afternoon, and so some of us saw our friend Tom for music therapy while others got to keep cool by taking part in water play with our friends in Grace’s class. We all had so much fun splashing in the paddling pools and squirting the water pistols, not even the grown-ups could avoid getting soaked!

We had so much fun that we decided to do water play again on Thursday afternoon after our morning of hard work exercising at Jabadao! This time the whole class got to enjoy an afternoon of water fun and we loved being joined by our neighbours: Phil’s class! We made this into a multi-sensory activity, with different bubble baths giving each paddling pool a different scent and the hosepipe providing a different temperature than the warm pools! We all loved getting the chance to slide down the slide and splash into the pool at the end.

Lets all keep our fingers crossed that this warm streak continues, and that the weather stays lovely for our class trip to the seaside on Monday! Have a great weekend everyone – Dave and team 🙂

What a blinder of a week it’s been!

Here in Dave’s class we fought the heat on Thursday with a whole afternoon of waterplay alongside our friends in Phil’s class. We all thoroughly enjoyed hopping into the ball-pit and getting our hands on water pistols and the hose pipe to make sure we all stayed cool in the sun!

Our very own Finley got the chance to visit Blyth beach on Monday with our friends in Loveday’s class, and he had an incredible time splashing in the sea and feeding the seagulls his (and Debbie’s!) dinner! We’re very thankful to Loveday’s class for letting Finley go on their trip, and it’s making us even more excited for our very own summer trip to the seaside!

We’ve also spent the week making some little treats that went home today for Father’s Day! We loved getting the chance to get our hands dirty, and hope the presents are well received on Sunday.

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend, getting out and enjoying that sunshine, but make sure you’re slapping on that factor 50! – Dave and team 🙂

Well, what a welcome back we’ve had this week in Dave’s class! After all feeling well rested and refreshed following a lovely half-term break, we’ve dived straight into our last term of the year with gusto!

Monday was a right royal treat with a whole day dedicated to celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee; first with a whole school parade to show off our amazing outfits, crowns and jewels, then with an outdoor afternoon tea picnic complete with live band and lots of yummy treats! We all loved spending the day with all of our friends from the rest of the school, and we felt especially lucky to receive a wonderful commemorative book each at the end of the school day to continue the royal celebrations at home!

The rest of the week we (reluctantly!) removed our crowns, donned our school uniforms again, and enjoyed our usual full timetable of exploration, adventure and fun. Those of us who took part in Hydrotherapy this week thoroughly enjoyed our time in the pool on Wednesday, while the other half had a lovely music therapy session with our friend Tom, our Hope in particular was a true star during this music session and gave Tom some incredible interaction!

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend! – Dave and team 🙂