What’s at the bottom of the garden?
The HUB enjoyed a fruit and vegetable painting activity in the garden today! Prior to the creativity, we learnt all about how the different types of fruit and vegetable grow and what sufficiency they need to be able to grow effectively.
The children had an amazing afternoon in the sunshine!
In the HUB, our new curriculum unit is ‘What’s at the bottom of the garden?‘. Today, the children took part in a fun activity which involved searching our forest school area for creatures and living things!
This half-term, our theme in HUB1 is ‘Winter‘.
Today, the children enjoyed a water activity which represented the arctic – water with icebergs (that soon melted!) and animals that are found in the arctic!
Here, Niamh, Stanley, Isaac and Adam are loving the textures and imaginative play.
This half-term, in the HUB, we are learning about shape!
Today, the children took part in an activity where they were exposed to some 3D shapes such as: cuboid, cube, cone and cylinder. They worked hard matching the shapes with ‘real life’ objects and could even name some of them. The children began to use everyday language to describe shapes e.g. pointy, curved, smooth, flat.
The children maintained eye-contact throughout and even used their fine and gross motor skills to support them with the task.
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!
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!
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!
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…
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…
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!
