What an amazing year we have had in Dragonfly Class. Our boys have experienced so many exciting things and have made some wonderful memories. We hope our blogs have been informative and great to view.
We couldn’t end the year without a graduation. All of our boys are moving to the Pelsall Lane Campus and starting September in the Lower Secondary department so we had to celebrate the transition they will be making. It is going to be a brilliant facility for the boys to explore and progress through the key stage.
Graduation Spectacular 🎓⭐️🎓
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Swimming, swimming and more swimming 💦💧💦
We have been spoiled this week by having a swimming session both days! Our boys are at home in the water so it was a real treat.
Bubble Bonanza 🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧
What a wonderful treat we had today. The bubble lady came and showered us with the most amazing bubbles. The boys had the most amazing time.
Thank you for all the lovely gifts and cards, we are so thankful and really appreciate your kindness.
Well here we are, our final ‘Full week’ blog for this academic year. Where has the time gone? We have had so much fun in Dragonflies. Our boys have made progress across the curriculum and have grown in confidence, it has been wonderful to see.
To end our topic we had the best Tropical Island party for the boys and they thoroughly enjoyed it.
Another one of our favourite Singing Hands songs, enjoy!
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As always, we had so much fun in our swimming session, practicing our floating and kicking skills. We are so fantastic that we have extra sessions next week on Monday and Tuesday so don’t forget to send in swimwear!
Take a look at our amazing art work. Our boy’s Starfish turned out brilliantly 🐠
Our weekly visit to The Dragonflies Spa was so therapeutic. The boys relaxed in the tranquil environment and allowed themselves to unwind a little with a hand and foot massage.
More exercise outside this week 🌺🌼🌸
We shall have a Graduation Ceremony next week to end our fantastic year in Dragonfly Class.
We can’t believe how quickly the summer holidays are creeping up on us, we have so many exciting things still left to do!
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We always love our daily singing sessions so here is one of our favourite singalongs to enjoy at home!
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Our Dragonfly boys are getting confident when requesting items for snack, using their PEC’s board. We are so proud of their communication skills.
PE sessions this week have been outside again, our boys have been sharing the bikes, taking turns to pedal as well as doing lots of walking. They have also been enjoying the swings.
Our Singing Hands sessions are really important for our boys, it exposes them to lots of Makaton. One of our favourite songs at the moment is ‘Dad I want to be a camel’ we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
Our boys have been really showing off in swimming this week. They are mastering the skills to ‘kick’ and to ‘float.’ We are extremely proud of their progress. Take a look at our amazing photographs below, they capture our boys skills brilliantly. 😊
Music was slightly different this week. We stayed in class and explored the musical instruments, tapping along to our under the sea themed melodies. To end the session we calmed our minds using the parachute and some relaxing music to reset and unwind, it was great!
We ended the week at the luxurious Dragonfly Spa! What a treat our boys had. 🌸
We dimmed the lights, played some calming music and massaged the boys hands and feet. It was a delight to see the boys relaxed and peaceful. They all thoroughly enjoyed this quiet time, try it at home because it is always a huge success for our Dragonflies.
Our Dragonflies have been spoilt this week, we have had two swimming sessions and thoroughly enjoyed every minute. We are focussing on kicking and floating and the boys are making good progress. Even the adults excelled with their modelling of the tasks!😄
We have taken advantage of the glorious sunshine and enjoyed our PE sessions outside, once again. The boys are becoming confident on the go karts, peddling independently. We also enjoyed walking a daily mile!
We explored some new instruments in our ‘Under the sea’ sensory experience with Bev. Lots of tapping and banging on the xylophone’s and a little trip to the beach with buckets and spades, made our music session very magical.
Dragonflies always enjoy exploring new sensory experiences. This week we chose the calming scent of lavender. The boys liked the rough and smooth texture and really liked the smell. We were pleased they enjoyed the experience.
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Cooking was a huge success, we made some outstanding Oyster Cookies. Once again, we used our fine motor skills to spread the tasty butter cream! Photos to follow. 😊
We always have fun during choose time. We decided to explore the soft play this week. Lots of gross motor skills were being developed as we climbed, jumped and rolled!
Look at our fabulous Octopus! Our creative art sessions have been very colourful this term. Textures and various materials have been explored as we’ve been on an under the sea adventure.
What a wonderful, fun packed week Dragonflies have had. We can’t quite believe how many fantastic activities we have done!
Once again we worked really hard in music, listening to our under the sea songs, enjoying the multi-sensory experience and playing instruments. Our boys are really confident with the instruments, they were fantastic!
Swimming was amazing. Our boys are learning to hold onto the side bar and kick their legs. We are so proud of them. They also worked on their floating skills!
In our creative/art lessons, our boys are continuing to blow us away with their fabulous under the sea themed creatures that they are making. This week we made some super colourful fish, using our fine motor skills to glue and stick. Also, we have started to create some Octopus, gripping the paintbrush correctly and paining with an upwards and downwards stroke.
PE is always an adventure! The boys have good gross motor skills and show this off by climbing, cycling and catching. They really are a sporty bunch!
In cooking this week, our boys made some tasty tuna sandwiches. They are mastering the skill to spread and are becoming really confident.
There are so many photo’s below of our fantastic week, enjoy taking a look through them!
One of our favourite Singing Hands songs this term is ‘Down there under the sea,’ we hope you enjoy it too.
We have had a super treat this week. To keep in with our ‘Under the sea’ theme, we managed to have two swimming sessions. Our boys were so excited and showed off their super swimming skills, floating, blowing bubbles and lots of splashing.
Music was an ocean spectacular as usual. We had lots of sensory experiences and really enjoyed Bev taking us on another journey under the sea. The boys showed good listening and sitting skills and focused well throughout. We were so proud of them all.
Following on from our Croissant Crabs, last week, our boys showed a creative flare by creating these lovely crabs! They used their fine motor skills brilliantly, painting and gluing galore. The boys worked really hard to bring these 3D crabs to life.
We have had a maths theme running though our lessons this week, in PE we were counting the beanbags and placing them correctly into a particular coloured hoop! It was so much fun.
Domino’s has nothing on our Dragonflies…
…We hope you enjoyed the tasty fish shaped pizzas we sent home this week. The boys selected their own toppings and spread the tomato base really well. Practicing the skill to ‘Spread’ over this summer term is definitely paying off.
Down their under the sea – in our very own bottle! More great creative work! The boys were pouring with accuracy (maths) and making choices to fill their ocean in a bottle. We were pleased with the results. Fish, seaweed, starfish and salty blue sea made our bottles come to life. 🐠🦀💦🐳🐬🐙🪸🐡
Dragonflies had great fun creating beautiful hand print tree cards for Father’s Day. We hope all you amazing Dads have a wonderful day relaxing with your boys. Our Attention Autism sessions are definitely helping the boys to remain engaged for longer periods of time. They focused well and did really good listening and sitting throughout the task. The cards turned out great!
With the glorious sunshine shining down on us we decided to take some lessons outside. We had the most amazing sensory experience in music. Bev took us all on an ‘Under the Sea’ journey where we experienced the blue waves of the ocean, along with the spray of the sea breeze. Many more experiences were shared with our boys. They had a multi-sensory session that was fantastic and enjoyed by all!
In PE we have been practicing throwing skills. Our boys worked hard aiming the bean bags towards the bucket. They also managed really well to throw balls at the skittles, making super progress with their gross motor skills (running and throwing). We can’t wait to do this again next week!
Croissant Crabs 🦀
What amazing results we had in cooking this week, look at our brilliant Croissant Crabs! Our Dragonflies certainly know how to spread, slice and decorate. Excellent fine motor skills were displayed. What a great way to keep in with our ‘Under the Sea’ theme! We hope you love our cooking creations as much as we do.
We have skills!
Every morning we practise our fine motor skills. This week we were building towers, what a fun way to do it.
More sensory play 🦀🐬🐠🦭🐙🐡
Making Memories
Our Sports Showcase was AMAZING!
It was absolutely fantastic to see our boys engaging with their parents in a swimming session this week. It isn’t always possible for parents to attend these events but when they can it is marvellous. The boys were confident, focused, relaxed and most importantly very happy! They were also splashing, gliding, blowing bubbles and moving around the pool independently. What wonderful memories were made.
Thank you for your support.
Have a wonderful weekend and a fantastic Father’s Day.
It’s great to be back after a sunny half term break! Our boys have been superstars all week, wowing us with their engagement in tasks, focused attention and excellent listening skills. We have had a week to celebrate and hope you enjoy scrolling through all of our successes below.
As always we have enjoyed our swimming session this week. The boys are working very hard to tolerate manovering around the pool in close proximity to their peers. It is going really well and improvements are being made week after week. We are looking forward to our parents joining us in the pool next week. Prepare to be splashed. 😄💦💦💦💦
With our ‘Under the Sea’ topic this summer term we are continuing to explore arts and crafts with a sea theme. We have enjoyed painting, glueing, exploring materials found at sea, as well as having a sensory experience to waken all of our senses! It has been fantastic.
To give our boys a multi-sensory experience of the sea, we had a visit from a fabulous storyteller this week. We were taken on a sensory journey to the seaside with lots of tactile objects. The sea really came to life in Dragonflies class during this story time session and all of our boys engaged with the storyteller brilliantly. He captured their imagination with his box of multi-sensory wonderfulness! 🐳🪸🐬🐠⚓️🐙
Music, as always, was lots of fun and we were also taken on a journey to the sea. Musical instruments were used to shower our boys with the sounds of the ocean. Floating blue sheets brought the sea to life, along with the musical magic of the crashing sea waves and crunching sand.
We are looking forward to having lots more fun at the sea next week.
The Dragonflies team hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Take care
In Dragonflies we have had a wonderful last two weeks of this half term. Please enjoy scrolling through our fantastic gallery, showcasing all of the skills our boys have been developing.
In music we had the opportunity to experience various string instruments. We enjoyed playing and exploring both the violin and cello! We are not sure who has the most fun, the boys or the staff 😄.
Our topic for the Summer term is ‘Under the sea’ so we are creating some amazing art work to link with this. You will see all of the finished pieces next half term so watch this space. Look out for lots of sea, fish, shells, sand and so much more! 🐠🌊⚓️🐬🐙🪸🦭🐳🐡
We have been focusing on the skill to ‘Spread’ in our cooking sessions. Our boys are becoming more confident when using a knife to spread. Their grip and fine motor skills are impressive, we are so proud of the progress they are all making. Some tasty pancakes and croissants were spread with melted chocolate and jam – yummy!
It is always great to be outdoors, especially when the sun is shining. We have had so much fun with water and sand play, linking to our topic. We have also taken some PE sessions outside and had a workout using the go karts! We really hope we have lots more sunny sessions outside next half term.
We hope you have a lovely half term break! Take care.
Our Dragonflies are always happy to get their fine and gross motor skills working! We have seen their confidence and abilities really develop in these areas over the school year as you can see below.
We have worked hard on our spreading and cutting skills in some of our cooking sessions. Not everyone was keen to have a go at the start of the year, some of the children needed lots of support, they had to work hand over hand and needed lots of verbal encouragement . Now they are much more independent, all willing to have a go and we can see real determination to get the job done. They are mostly happy to touch the different textures of food that are available and quite often willing to taste the different ingredients. When offered two different sandwich fillings this week they confidently made a choice between jam or cheese. Some of the boys still need support to cut their sandwich but we can really see this skill developing. Super work!
During our music session this week, Bev supported our understanding of the colour monster story and our emotions. We looked at the emotion happy. We always start music with a warm up to prepare us mentally and physically. We looked at a picture of the yellow colour monster who represents the emotion happy. Bev then put on the song Happy by Pharrell Williams. She interacted with each child on a 1:1 basis using yellow fabric to fan the children, they could hold and touch the fabric, they could run under the fabric and dance and move around. Everyone sat and played their instruments whilst waiting patiently for their turn. We saw excellent participation from all of the boys and it certainly left us all feeling happy, joyful, smiley, positive and cheerful!
We are still working hard on our Rock Hopper Awards in swimming. All of the boys are able to enter the water safely and independently. They all respond to water being gently sprinkled over them and definitely show enjoyment of being in the water. They all move limbs whilst moving around the pool. They all look, listen and feel for splashes in the water. Everyone is able to push a floating toy around in the water and we are working on being able to blow a floating toy on the water. Some of the boys can float completely independently on their front or back in a relaxed position, whilst others still need adult support to achieve this but they are all happy and relaxed enough to be gently towed through the water by an adult on their front or back. It was lovely to receive a comment from a parent saying they had noticed how much more confident and comfortable their child was on a recent family swim, this confirms how hard the boys have been working. We are super proud of them for trying new things and the amazing progress they are making 🥰.
In Dragonfly class we love any form of physical activity. As well as swimming we enjoy 3 PE sessions across the week where the boys can climb, swing, balance, dance, jump, spin, throw and catch bean bags and balls, kick balls, roll around on the body boards, rub their feet on the textured mats and get a full body and mind work out. They also have access to our lovely new soft play area and lots of outside play where they can access the slides, swings, hula hoops, go karts and the grassed area. We even get outside in the wet weather and even though we put on our wellies and coats we still manage to get very soggy from all the splashing around! Apologies to parents for any wet or muddy clothes but we hope you understand the messier we get the more fun we have had! Being physical and getting outside is so important for mental well being, it strengthens bones and muscles, relieves tension and anxiety, it can aid sleep, gets oxygen pumping around our bodies. There are so many incredible benefits that our boys get during these sessions.
We can’t wait to show you what we get up to next week.
