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Weekly news!

28th May 2021Elaine Quinn

For the last few weeks we have been working on a special art project which was Banksy inspired! It has been great messy fun!

The children explored painting using our spray bottles! We tied our art project in with the war topic we have been working on, the children we so interested why and how the children had to evacuate, (why our art shows our class packed with their bags waiting for the train) they were so empathetic for the children having to leave their families during the war, it made everyone realise how lucky we are to be able to go home to our loved ones everyday.

We walked around the caterpillar garden in awe of the art produced by classes across the school! There were some amazing creations!

We have had a very busy week rehearsing our dance for the ‘Dance Festival’ the children looked amazing in their costumes and did a fantastic job, all will be revealed when we return to school. In between our dancing we managed a day in the yurt, where we did story yoga and had a pamper afternoon.

After this busy week it is fair to say everyone is tired now and ready for a weeks break! Hope you all have a wonderful half term.

See you back Monday 7th June.

Weekly news!

14th May 2021Elaine Quinn

We have been planting and learning about the growing process, we can now name the different parts of a plant such as the roots, stem, leaves and flower, we also know to grow plants and seeds they will need warmth, water and sunlight. Under a microscope we examined all these parts closely.

We have also planted our own runner bean which we are excited to watch grow. We have put them in a warm sunny place as we now know that what is needed to grow..

We all now know our story this term “The Giant Jam Sandwich” so well, so in our English lesson we had a class quiz and amazed the adults with our knowledge.

We made a giant jam sandwich (not as big as the one in the story) in our food technology lesson, the best part was eating it at snack time. Fair to say we are now jam sandwich experts so we decided to share our skills and make a cooking show video inspired by our book! We had some very confident instructors hope you enjoy our video.

https://youtu.be/ptgY5yla7uoz

Sending best wishes to all our families celebrating Eid this week!

Manhoor came in with her family all looking beautiful and very kindly brought a chocolate cake for her friends to share. It was delicious thankyou.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Week 5 Tracy

14th May 2021Tracy Gooderick

This week in our class we have completed our sculpture for the upcoming Art Exhibition in the Caterpillar Garden. The children have been working on using old ties to make a beautiful mosaic flower. You can even put your head in it and get your photo taken like the ones at the funfair!

We also had a very special delivery this week of Caterpillars! The children are going to look after the Caterpillars and in 3-5 weeks we are hoping they will turn into beautiful butterflies! We check how much they have grown daily and make sure to put them to bed at night. The children were so excited and very happy to have our new visitors. We can’t wait to see what they become and how they get to be butterflies!

The children have also been planting on their ‘Growing’ Theme. They have been looking at seeds and planting herbs and vegetables as well as cress. Its been hard work this week looking after all the growing things in our class! Flowers, plants and Caterpillars!

Maths this week was on the theme of flowers, the children were counting petals onto flowers and matching numerals. In English they have been learning about the Days of the week and their story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

It was Well-Being week this week and the children wanted to have a Spa afternoon. They had massages, foot spas and went to the nail bar! It was very relaxing and calm. It is a favourite activity in our class and everyone LOVES getting their nails done!

This week it was Sophia’s Birthday! Happy Birthday Sophia!

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.

Confident Parenting new dates for May 2021

7th May 2021Elaine Quinn

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!