Exploring Shape!

By Jodie Buss7th January 2026

Firstly a big welcome back!

We hope you all had a lovely well rested Christmas break!

This week we have been settling back into school routine and structure and taking some time to get to know our lovely new pupils, making new friends and having lots of opportunities for free play and regulation!

In Math’s this week we did enjoy a lovely sensory activity, exploring shape and making patterns with flour! The children LOVE flour, the feel and texture and using it to mark make! Perfect for making patterns and shapes in, and it definitely looked a little bit like the snow falling outside! We explored squares, rectangles, triangles and circles and showed good understanding of some of these familiar shapes! Here’s a few snaps from one of our sensory lessons, lot’s of eye contact and engagement!

Counting Baubles!

By Jodie Buss9th December 2025

This morning down in HUB 1 we have been looking at numbers to 10 and beyond, recognizing numerals and counting out a select amount!

We added a touch of Christmas magic and the children loved exploring a variety of sensory baubles to place on their tree! This engaged all children as they explored ‘what’s in the bag’ and enjoyed touching, feeling and seeing their reflections in the baubles! This activity was much more then just a regular math’s activity, it held the children’s interest for a prolonged period of time and was a calming and engaging activity for all learners of different abilities.

The children enjoyed counting out an amount and some of our learners enjoyed posting numerals they recognized into our Christmas post box!

Festive Stay and Play!

By Jodie Buss8th December 2025

Thank you to everyone that came to our festive ‘stay and play’!

It was wonderful to see the children getting stuck in with some festive Christmas crafts in the cabin! A merry atmosphere and an opportunity to chat alongside some mince pies and warm drinks! The children made some fabulous Christmas cards and decorations and enjoyed some of our sensory explorations tough trays with a little Christmas music!

Exploring in the snow!

By Jodie Buss24th November 2025

A fabulous sensory morning in Hub1 exploring the snow! The children had lots of fun watching it fall and exploring it in their hands! We loved touching it, smelling it and even tasting it!! We made some lovely patterns and footprints together…

Forest School afternoon!

By Jodie Buss5th November 2025

This afternoon the children in HUB 1 had a lovely afternoon exploring the great outdoors and getting crafty in the cabin! Our favourite kind of afternoon spent exploring our senses and regulating in the great outdoors!

We love anything that’s messy and involves paint, so Mrs. Buss’s idea to explore some bonfire themed colours and mix using sticks was just up our street! A great sensory session for encouraging again those fine motor skills and encouraging self expression and creativity! The children loved being outside in our very autumnal forest garden and explored the variety of leaves looking at colour, size and what happens as they fall to the ground! We had a special treat at the end of the day with some yummy hot chocolates and marshmallows, a great opportunity to sit together in our forest school circle and encourage some social and communication opportunities!

Here are some fab photos of the children highly engaged and involved in our forest afternoon…

Firework mark-making!

By Jodie Buss4th November 2025

As part of this morning activities we encouraged some independent mark making using a range of different materials to get those fingers moving! The children loved making this a sensory experience exploring the glitter and glue, even creating their own glittery gloopy firework sparkly mess! This activity allowed for some independent fine motor control and hand to eye coordination, whilst also encouraging some creative and emotional expression! The children loved spending a significant amount of time on this activity showing intense concentration and motivation! As you can see from the photos the children enjoyed this activity and stayed engaged for the full session!

Happy Tuesday…

By Jodie Buss21st October 2025

A lovely calm start to our day with some stimulation and regulation through jigsaws! The boys were particularly engaged with these activities this morning and showed deep concentration and stayed with this activity for a prolonged period! They showed persisentence, determination, independence and support to one another as they accomplished their tasks and achievements of completed jigsaws!

Another great activity to keep those fingers and minds busy, promoting fine motor skills and turn taking with others! Sometimes it’s the simple activities which allow for the most learning opportunities…

Autumn Trees!

By Jodie Buss20th October 2025

This afternoon during our ‘curriculum time‘ the children explored Autumnal colours and manipulating paint with their hands and tools! We have been spending a lot of time in our outside cabin looking for signs of Autumn and the changes in the season, exploring the leaves and colours! Today we decided to paint our own Autumn tree, using the colours we had spotted from our nature expeditions!

The children loved creating trunks and branches with a brush, working on their fine motor skills and loved getting their fingers and hands messy for a sensory experience!

More or less!

By Jodie Buss20th October 2025

Here are a few snaps of some our HUB1 children taking part in our Attention Autism Barrell activity! The children enjoy this daily in our morning routine and have really improved in giving good eye contact and made huge progress with their listening and attention skills! The children wait in anticipation for the activities from the Barrell and the session promotes an abundance of opportunity for language and vocabulary development!

Below are some further snaps of our Math’s session looking at ‘more‘ and ‘less‘. We worked on counting out amounts visually and representing these amounts with the correct numeral. We looked at the terms ‘more’ or ‘less’ and the children enjoyed exploring more and less with conkers!

 

Autumn Forest School!

By Jodie Buss15th October 2025

This afternoon we had several Autumnal activities where we explored pumpkins, made fairy stick wands and tasted yummy hot chocolate!

The children loved exploring inside a pumpkin and discovering lots of seeds and sticky squishy pumpkin mash! This was a great sensory experience and we enjoyed using our fine motor skills to scoop out the pumpkin contents and explore our senses of touch and smell!

In our outdoor forest school we joined some children in Foundation Stage to make and decorate some stick wands! This was lots of fun and got our fingers moving-wrapping and threading ribbon and bits of Autumnal foliage!

We enjoyed chatting to new friends over a hot chocolate and exploring the great outdoors, practicing our balancing skills on the logs and attempting to do this independently!

A lovely afternoon in our forest school garden where the children definitely seem their happiest!