Owls Class

We all worked together this morning to make Baa-bara the sheep. She will be going out to the forest school area as part of our Easter sensory trail next week.

Monday 7th February

Good Morning, the activities we would have been doing in school today have been sent via Class Dojo. Here is a list of some of the additional activities we do frequently in class and can be easily completed at home. It is not expected that you will do all these but are suggestions if you would like to access more activities in addition to those already received via Dojo.

• Sensory exploration of a range of objects and materials. Incorporate fine motor development by giving smaller objects to manipulate.
• Responding to sounds/turning to look for the source.
• Tracking – use of lights or toys encourage them to track their movement through the horizontal, (side to side) and vertical planes, (up and down). Can they watch them as they fall out of sight? Can they find a toy that’s been hidden under a blanket
• Intensive Interaction – developing an awareness of their effect on those around them. In a quiet area copy their movements and sounds. It can take a few minutes but they will sometimes stop and look as they realise what you are doing. Look for eye contact and smiles.
• Communication – engaging with the adults around them, initiating contact and making their needs known.
• Making a choice when offered two objects. This could be through looking at the desired object, reaching for it or vocalising.
• Sharing a book with an adult, focus on looking at the pictures and sitting for just a few minutes.

If you have any questions or concerns Rae is in school and can be contacted via email, Dojo or telephone. Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow.

We've had a busy few weeks in school and have enjoyed continuing to explore the Arctic and it's animals. We have used lots of different textures and medias to make animals for our display and used frozen paint to make some very pretty paintings. We have explored ice in a variety of forms and watched it melt. We also watched what happened when it was dropped on the floor - this was a favourite activity as most of us liked the cracking noise and it gave us the giggles.

We have also had lots of opportunities to explore lots of messy and sensory materials; and although some of us still aren't keen on getting our hands in it we are becoming more confident in being around new materials. There are a few of us that do like to get very messy and happily cover ourselves, the table and anybody near by!

Hopefully, next week all the staff will be better and back in school so we can move on to some multi-cultural activities. We will be exploring art, music and dance from different parts of Africa.

We have had a busy 2 weeks but the weather has been perfect for our topic. This term we are looking at arctic animals and the cold weather has provided us with opportunities to go outside and experience some natural ice and feel the cold for brief  periods. We have also explored ice in the classroom but most of us aren't keen on touching it. We have enjoyed watching some large chunks of ice melt during water play, probably because the water was warm and felt nice on our hands! We have also enjoyed having Alison in on a Friday morning and her bag of instruments and props. She has kept us engaged with songs about polar bears.

So far we have focused our art work on polar bears and penguins but over the next couple of weeks will explore different arctic animals such as walruses, seals and snowy owls.

For the last 3 weeks we have been exploring colour, each week we have had a colour of the week which has been the theme for many of our activities. So far we have had red, blue and yellow. Next week we will be looking at green - the colour of Christmas trees, which will lead us nicely into the festive season! We have been enjoying the stories of Elmer and Brown Bear. We are continuing to enjoy sensology sessions where we use our senses to explore different objects. These sessions have also been colour themed and this week we discovered many of us liked the taste of lemon and pineapple on our lips.

Our key text this term has been One Bear at Bedtime. We have explored the text through story massage and are beginning to anticipate some of the actions linked to the characters in the book. The story has also allowed us to experience and explore counting to 10 with the support of the grown ups in the class. We have also created some characters for display in the class through sensory art; we were allowed to used our hands, arms or brushes to add paint onto pre-drawn characters. They look wonderful.

As well as out story we have been working hard exploring lots of sensory activities, participating in movement activities and focusing on developing our individual communication methods. One of our favourite activities this week has been exploring gloves filled with different sensory materials. They feel very funny and make a lot less mess than our usual sensory play activities!

How is it nearly the end of Week 5 already! We have been so busy and having so much fun that the time has flown by. We have been enjoying our key text, One Bear at Bedtime, through story massage. We are starting to anticipate some of the actions for the different characters. While story massage is very relaxing we have also enjoyed dance massage which is the opposite and very lively and energetic. In this we have focused on emotions and expressing them through music. 

Our topic of All About Me has provided lots of opportunities to get to know each other and we are starting to show our likes and dislikes for the different activities and rooms around school. 

It has been lovely to see all the children so happy and engaged in school.