Exploring Shape!

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!

Forest School afternoon!

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!

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…

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!

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!

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!

 

Chocolate Fair Apples!

This afternoon in HUB1 we made our very own fairground chocolate apples, in celebration of Hull Fair week!

The children loved chocolate tasting and watching what happens to the chocolate when it heats in the microwave. We loved stirring the chocolate and exploring it’s texture once it had melted! The children had a go at independently dunking their apples and dipping in sprinkles to create the perfect yummy chocolate apples!

This was a great opportunity for engaging in a sensory activity, listening to the sounds of the microwave and sprinkles and smelling the scrumptious chocolate! It was also a great opportunity for language development and turn-taking, sharing and helping others!

We can’t wait to take them home tonight to have a go at tasting our delicious apples!

Autumn Maths Exploration!

This morning in HUB1 we explored numbers to 10 and 20 working on our number recognition and counting out amounts. We enjoyed exploring autumnal counting objects and counting out amounts matching them to the correct numeral!

We all concentrated on this activity for a prolonged period and enjoyed the outcome!

Crafts in the cabin…

The children in Hub 1 had a wonderful afternoon exploring our new cabin space and the beautiful garden area outside!

We had great fun getting messy in the mud kitchen, mixing potions with sticks and listening to the wind blow and rustling through the trees! A lovely calm afternoon outside in the fresh air connecting with nature and providing an opportunity for some great balancing skills on the logs!

Inside the cabin we enjoyed making some paper faces and decorating them with eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hair, exploring different faces as part of our ‘Magical Me’ topic! A great opportunity for some fine motor skill practice and lots of vocabulary and communication/ talking points!