Weekly news

7th May 2021Elaine Quinn

We have been practicing our independent dressing skills for a few weeks now and we are starting to really see the progress!

Dressing can be a complex activity.

Children need to be able to master a number of skills such as co-ordination where a child needs to be able to create co-ordinated movements, using one arm and both arms. A child also needs the control of hand movement that require fine motor skills, such as fastening buttons. Motor skills where a child needs to be able to move his or her limbs and body in a full range of movements requiring muscle strength and flexibility in their joints.
Balance – being able to maintain their balance whilst changing posture/position both with eyes open and shut.
Perception – having an understanding of various sizes and shapes of buttons and also knowing the size of arm holes.
Stereognosis – being able to feel their way without relying on sight such as finding arm holes with a jumper over his or her head or fastening buttons behind at the back.
Body Schema – being able to tell right from left and the difference between arms and legs.

All very big words but helps us parents break down all the actions needed when getting dressed that can make it a bit tricky for our children.

We use most of these motor skills in our daily activities but have really been focusing on clothing and using our fine motor skills, which will help us become more independent and confident in our every day life. We were very persistent and did not give up, we tried fastening zips, buttons and shoe laces on our own clothing and trying our friends clothing, as you can see we have been very busy.

Hope you all keep practicing at home.

Look at us go!

 

A few of us in class struggled to get our coats until we mastered this magical trick!

 

Have a wonderful weekend, stay safe.

 

Sensory Art, Exploration and Rebound fun

30th April 2021Loveday Fisk

Happy Friday everyone.  We hope you’ve all had a fabulous week.  We have been very busy.  At the end of every half term, we reflect on what has worked well in class and what we can change.  This helps us plan an engaging and exciting curriculum for the half term ahead.  This half term was no exception. We chose a new sensory art topic and a new exploration session based on interests and skills of our class.

The general aims of Sensory Art are to show engagement, use our hands, explore a range of materials, notice effect of change, cause and effect and making choices.  This half term we are exploring sculpture.   Using wire and beads we are beginning to make our own class sculpture.  We have been using our hands to pull, scrunch, squash, move and thread.  Here are some pictures of our journey this week.

Our new exploration session is based around the theme ropes and string.  This is an open ended session with lots of  possibilities for learning.  Children are introduced to an exciting environment, filled with play possibilities.  The session is completely child led, adult’s role is to follow their child’s interests and scaffold their learning in a way which is individual to that child.  For example, some children show an immediate interest in the ropes.  They show their interest by walking and picking up/looking at the rope.  An adult’s role is then to explore what they enjoy doing with the rope.  It could be pulling, wrapping, tickling, swinging etc.  The interaction between adult and child becomes key to all kinds of communication opportunities.  Here are some of the photos of this week’s exploration.

 

We have also worked very hard in rebound therapy this week.  We use music and specific resources to work on a range of movement and skills: from crawling to sitting, standing to balancing. Here is a taste of our rebound programme.

On the subject of rebound therapy, our rebound therapy centre is open again to the public at weekends and after school on a Tuesday and Thursday night.  Slots are being booked up quickly.  Give school a call to book a session.

 

Growing and Seasons!

30th April 2021Tracy Gooderick

Hello everyone Becky here, sharing all the fun things that we have done this week in school!

This week, the children in our class have been continuing their new topic of ‘growing and seasons’. They have continued to read the story The Hungry Caterpillar and have been matching Red, Green and yellow fruit in our sensory group and the other children have been measuring and sorting!  They were given a range of different objects, that were the same but slightly different in size. They then had to sort them into groups of big and small. Throughout the lesson, I would place an object in the wrong circle and they had correct my mistake and tell me why I was wrong! they loved this!

On Tuesday Emma, Sophia and Nelson took part in a lovely sensory session based around hot and cold weather. They worked one to one with adults in our class and completed a range of different activities. They had hot and cold foot spas, hot and cold food, hot and cold clothing to try and different hot and cold electrical items that they could switch on and off ! They all thoroughly enjoyed themselves and gave everything a go!

In Art we are learning about an artist named Andy Goldsworthy who creates sculptures out of natural materials. We watched a video of his work and pointed out all the amazing colours that we could see. We then made some salt dough and made sculptures of our own! They were amazing!

In Food tech we continued learning about different fruit and then made our very own Hungry Caterpillars out of the fruit we had chopped up! We also made smoothies. They were very delicious!

We once again had football with Sam. He provided many different fun activities for us and the children once again loved it!

This week we are very proud of Nafisa, who has been getting the mini bus to school every morning! Well done Nafisa!

We are also extremely proud of Nelson who is our new half term achiever!

Have a lovely Bank holiday weekend and we will see you all on Tuesday!

Busy Days!

29th April 2021Coralie Forbes

Hi Everyone

We have had a busy few weeks since we came back after the Easter Holidays. Lots of fun has been had enjoying the sunnier weather outside, practising our physical skills, playing with friends and working on some individual outcomes.

We hope you enjoy these lovely photos.

Weekly News

23rd April 2021Scott Marshall

Dear Parents/Carers

We have had a lovely first week back. We have made the most of the sunshine and have enjoyed most of our lessons outdoors. We have been looking for mini-beasts as part of our new science topic habitats. We have also started our new drama the Musicians of Bremen and had great fun in casting. Yesterday afternoon we had a birthday party out by the bus which the children loved. Can we please have sun tan lotion sent into school please if we do not already have any that would be much appreciated. Have a lovely weekend.

Scott, Abbie, Andy, Ann, Jen

Weekly news!

23rd April 2021Elaine Quinn

It has been lovely to welcome the children back after the Easter break. The weather has been chilly but lovely and sunny so we have managed to get out into the outside area’s, it has been a wonderful busy first week back in class. all the children have been really focused and worked hard.

In literacy we have begun reading two new stories, ‘The Giant JAM Sandwich’ and ‘The Flower’. The children are really engrossed in the stories and have been asking some very interesting questions and also giving some very thoughtful opinions. We have been around the school grounds to see what flowers we could find, the children recorded how many different colours and sizes they could find and we made an e-book with our photos.

We had a fun art session in the music studio where we began to work on our new display for class, we have some very artistic, imaginative children the display is going to be amazing!

Our football lesson restarted on a Monday lunchtime so can you please make sure your child has suitable, comfortable footwear.

With the weather getting warmer could you please send in some sun cream and sun hat for your child please.

 

Have a great weekend.

First week back!

23rd April 2021Tracy Gooderick

The children in our class have started their new topic of ‘Growing and Seasons’. They have been reading the story The Hungry Caterpillar in English and in Maths they have been matching red and green butterflies in our sensory group and the other children have been working with data! They have been doing surveys of favourite fruit in the class and counting how many people liked each fruit and recording their results! Very clever!

We have also welcomed our lovely student teacher Becky back and Becky has been planning and teaching some lessons. This week the children took part in Yurt day and they collected lots of lovely flowers and leaves that had grown outside and stuck them on a big class collage and painted them. It was lots of fun and very messy!

We have also been to the food tech room this week to start learning about the different fruits and the children tasted and learned the names of them. They really didn’t like lemon!!!!! And some people didn’t like the noise of the blender. It was very noisy.

The highlight of the week was football with Sam! We have a football coach coming every Thursday to teach the children some football skills. They LOVED it! and can’t wait for next week!

This week we are very proud of Sophia who has been joining in all her lessons and completed her first full week back at school! Well done Sophia!

We are also proud of Mehvish who has been using her new VOCA really well 🙂

Have a lovely weekend!

ASDA launches amazing school wear range for those with sensory sensitive needs

10th April 2021Elaine Quinn

George at ASDA has become the first supermarket to release a range of school wear for children with specific or sensory-sensitive needs.

The new clothing range called ‘Easy On Easy Wear’ is designed to help children who may find traditional school uniform overwhelming or difficult due to needs such as autism. ASDA have said that they have done extensive research with customers and charities to make the clothing range as suitable as possible for a wide range of children.

During their research it was found that 9 in 10 parents of children with specific needs said that they get ‘upset or distressed’ when trying to either dress their children or watch them do so themselves. The research also found that because most school uniform is designed for neuro-typical children, there are design elements such as hard to do up buttons, tight necklines and non-elasticated cuffs that make things extremely difficult for some children, especially those with autism.

The new range has been made to look the same as other items that children would wear at school but to have design features that make getting dressed in the morning as stress free and calm for parents and children as possible. The items have buttons with easy close fastenings, softer thread on seams, elasticated waist bands and care information printed directly on the items rather than on a label.

Fantastic! This will make such a difference to so many children’s lives.

Weekly News

1st April 2021Scott Marshall

Dear Parents/Carers

We have come to the end of spring term and summer awaits. Thank you for all your support over this time and we hope you have a lovely Easter break. This week we have had birthday parties, a Ceilidh and lots of outdoor learning making the most of the sun. I will still be contactable via class dojo so please get in touch if you need to and please let us know anything COVID related. Have a lovely break.

Thank you

Scott, Abbie, Andy, Ann, Jen