We started our week by making delicious milkshakes with strawberries and cream. We carefully counted out how many spoonfuls of milkshake powder to put into our cup and hen enjoyed pouring the milk into it before giving it all a good mix. After that, we used our aided language displays to choose which toppings we would like with cream, strawberries and sprinkles being the favourites! Our milkshakes were really yummy. 

As part of our topic work we used a sound board to listen to different animal sounds and then had to find them hidden in the sand. We then practised matching animal symbols to photos. The children all demonstrated a really good understanding of the different animals we might see on a safari.

Luckily the rain held off for our summer festival on Wednesday and we all had a brilliant time. It was wonderful to see so many families come and share this fun with lots of a smiles and laughter. The African drummers were brilliant to dance along to and it was great to have a go at drumming ourselves. The circus skills were a big hit with lots of children practising their hula hooping skills and practising walking on stilts! Finally the gruffalo trail was great fun and we all enjoyed looking for him in the deep dark forest, although we had to be careful in case he tried to eat us! 

We have had a brilliant week and are looking forward to celebrating our last week together next week 🦔

We have had a wonderful week in Hedgehogs class. We have seen friendships blossoming and superb turn taking skills being shown. 

This week we have enjoyed painting safari pictures, thinking about what colour paint we needed to use to create a sunset in Africa. We then chose our favourite African animal to create beautiful pictures. We are all so proud of how well the children engaged in this activity and how well they remembered the names of the animals we have explored during our topic work. 

Attention autism is always one of our favourite times of the day and this week we were exploring long and short. We enjoyed using cornflour gloop to make long and short worms dangling from a baking sheet. It was really relaxing watching the worms drip down! 

To continue our work exploring long and short, we used play dough to make long and short snakes and then compared lengths. Again the children were really engaged and enjoyed exploring length. They demonstrated their understanding of this concept by using choose it maker on the interactive whiteboard to make a choice about longer and shorter items. Amazing work Hedgehogs! 

Finally, this week we have enjoyed nurturing our friendships within our own class and with others. We have enjoyed our playtime with SRP and it was beautiful to watch the children play together and become more confident with seeking out others to play their favourite games. 

Have a lovely weekend Hedgehogs 🦔 

What a wonderful weather we have had this week! Although a little hot at times we have had a brilliant time in the sunshine and have thought about ways to keep ourselves safe in the sun such as wearing hats, putting on sun cream and sitting in the shade. 

During the hotter parts of this week, we have cooled off by engaging in water play activities. We have enjoyed standing in the water and exploring how we can make waves and splashes by jumping up and down. The adults had sneaky spray bottles and water blasters and we all enjoyed hiding from them as they squirted water at us! We’re not sure who got more wet, the children or the adults! We have also brought some learning into our water play and have explored different capacities by pouring different amounts of water into different sized jugs and cups. 

As part of our safari topic we enjoyed making our very own elephant masks that we then used to go on an elephant march around the classroom. We followed a set of instructions to find the different parts of the elephant such as ears, eyes and trunk to create our mask. They all looked fantastic with their masks on! 

Swimming was a welcome relief from the heat this week and we all enjoyed splashing in the water. This week we were working on floating skills and the children all worked hard to lie on their backs and complete a star float.

Finally, during our music lesson this week we explored high and low notes using the chimes. We sang our song about Jack climbing up and down the beanstalk and used the parachute to understand what is meant by high and low before using our chimes to make high and low sounds. 

Have a lovely weekend Hedgehogs 🦔

We have had an amazing start to our last half term in hedgehogs. We have really enjoyed our sensory story of Handa’s surprise this week. We have really enjoyed exploring the different animals and fruit from the story. 

We started the week by trying the different fruits that were eaten by the animals in Handa’s surprise. We tried guava juice, pineapple, mango, oranges, bananas, passion fruit and avocado, then we offered our opinions about whether we liked it or not. The mango was liked by many of the children with lots of request for more whereas the passion fruit was looked at and smelled however not tasted! 

Using the fruits that we’d tried, along with apples and pears,we made our own fruit salads. We used aided language displays to choose the fruit that we wished to use in our fruit salad and worked on our cutting skills to up the fruit up to make our fruit salad. As always tasting our fruit salad was our favourite part. 

This half term we are swimming again and it was wonderful to see lots of confidence within the water and definitely lots of splashing! The children are working hard to lift their legs and feet off the floor and are starting to kick their legs to propel themselves through the water. 

Finally, in music the children had a fantastic time using the parachute to sing a song about climbing up and down a beanstalk. We then used the chimes and practised making a beat and playing one at a time. 

What a wonderful week we’ve had. We can’t wait for our school trip on Monday! 🦔

What an amazing end to another half term we’ve had in Hedgehogs. 

This week we have opened a Hedgehogs tuck shop where we have all enjoyed taking turns in coming up and choosing an item we would like to buy for our snack. The children have then practised exchanging a coin or swiping a card in return for their chosen item. We all had a great time choosing what we would like to pick for our snack and then enjoyed practising being the shopkeeper ourselves! Well done Hedgehogs! 

During stage 3 of our attention autism sessions we have had our favourite activity which was bouncing up and down on the gym ball. It was fantastic to see every single child watching their friends whilst waiting for their turn and the look of sheer joy on their faces as they were jumping was brilliant. 

Thank you to all the parents who came to support our sports showcase. Unfortunately our original plan of going on a lion hunt in the forest was completely rained off however, we all had a brilliant time exploring different activities in the hall. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did! 

Finally, in cooking this week we continued practising our spreading skills and made a jam sandwich that we then got a little creative with and made it into a lion using orange segments for the mane and matchmakers for the whiskers. They looked and tasted amazing! 

We hope you all have a brilliant half term 🦔

This week in hedgehogs class we have been exploring all about the different animals that we may find on a safari.

We started the week by finishing off our lion sculptures that we have been working on for a little while now. We added a face to our lion’s body and used paper tubes to create legs with some paws added on. Finally we looked at some photos of lions and realised that we needed a tail and so attached this behind. Don’t they look amazing? 

The next animal we explored was giraffes. We watched a video of a giraffe and its baby running across the plains and explored the spotty pattern on them. It was then our turn to create our own giraffe. We listened and watched carefully as an adult modelled what to do and used symbols on an ALD to make choices about the materials we needed. The children demonstrated fantastic independence during this activity and we created 9 beautiful giraffes! 

Continuing with the giraffe theme we had a fantastic afternoon painting our hands and using them to create a giraffe. We all found it very tickly and funny to feel the paintbrush on our hands and then enjoyed using our fingerprints to create the spots.

This weeks cooking lesson was absolutely amazing. We finished our last week of making pizzas in different ways and the children really demonstrated their learning by independently knowing which steps they needed to take in order to create their pizza. If there were ingredients they needed the children were using symbols to request what they needed and all showed good waiting whilst their pizzas cooked. Well done hedgehogs we are all so proud of you! 

We were exceptionally lucky that the rain stopped for forest school this week and we all had a wonderful time exploring, pretending to cook, picking daisies and making new friends. 

Bucket time has been another huge success this week and the children have all really engaged with stage 3. We enjoyed pretending to be butterflies with the parachute but our favourite activity was spinning on a chair with lots of smiles and giggles. 

Finally, on Friday we had a special treat during our playtime with ARP class and we had some water play out. We had a fantastic time splashing and jumping in the water and especially enjoyed the sprays and water blasters that the adults had. 

We hope you all have a lovely weekend and we are looking forward to our parent showcase next Wednesday. 🦔

This week our focus text was giraffes can’t dance. We have explored different animals that we saw within the book and have practised matching them to toy animals. We have also introduced colourful semantics where the children build a sentence from a picture. The children did exceptionally well creating their sentences and enjoyed looking at the pictures of giraffes and monkeys. 

During attention autism this week we enjoyed lots of different activities including watching a giraffe being made out of paint. We have started joining in with some key phrases during our sessions and are doing really well at waiting for our turn during stage 3. Well done Hedgehogs. 

As part of our technology lessons we have been exploring the cosmo switches and have enjoyed playing a game of whack o mole where we have had to wait for one switch to change colour and we have to quickly tap it before it changes again. This was so much fun and we were getting faster and faster at spotting the odd one out.

In forest school this week we found the field covered in daisies which could only mean one thing…. daisy chains! We had a fantastic time exploring the flowers and sniffing them to see what they smell like. We made some daisy chains and enjoyed seeing how long we could build them. 

Cooking is always a favourite part of our week and this week was supposed to be chocolate pizzas but when we were cooking the pastry we realised that the wrong one had been picked up in the shop oops! Instead we made chocolate eclairs with sprinkles on which tasted absolutely fantastic. 

In music we were learning all about maypole dancing and took it in turns to dance around and under the maypole. The children then enjoyed using the boom whackers to create different sounds and worked together with a partner to explore sounds that they could make together. 

On Friday we had a lovely time playing with ARP2. The children on the field opposite had some water play items out and enjoyed trying to spray us! It was so much fun ducking and diving to try and avoid getting wet. 

We hope you all have a lovely weekend and we’ll see you all on Monday 🦔

What a brilliant week we have had in Hedgehogs. 

During our problem solving sessions this week we have been continuing to explore 2D and 3D shapes. We have explored the differences between 2D and 3D shapes recognising that some are ‘flat’ and some are ‘fat’. We have then explored which ones can be used to build the tallest tower. 

During our technology sessions we have been using cosmo switch buttons to play lots of different games such as recognising the odd one out, making all the colour the same and whack a mole. We really enjoyed our sessions with cosmo and are hoping to explore more games. 

We have worked really hard to develop our fine motor skills this week. We have had a new hedgehog toy this week however he had lost his spines. As a team we worked together to give the hedgehog his spines back and demonstrated good perseverance when it got a little tricky. 

During forest school this week we explored the changes that have happened in the forest. We found lots of flowers growing such as bluebells and daisies. We took it in turns to smell the bluebells to see if they had a fragrance and enjoyed building daisy chains on the field. 

On Friday we had our playtime with ARP2 from Rushall and it has been wonderful to see firm friendships being formed. The children really look forward to their playtime with their friends and there are lots of high fives and games of tig and tag being played. 

We hope you all have a lovely, restful bank holiday weekend and we look forward to seeing all our hedgehogs on Tuesday 🦔

We have had yet another fantastic week in Hedgehogs. This week we have been exploring 3D shapes and have been hunting for them round then classroom to see if we can match them. We then explored which shapes could roll, which ones could stack on top of each other to build a tower and which ones felt round or pointy. We used a mystery bag to feel for different shapes and had to try and guess which one we had in the bag. This was so much fun and the children all did really well guessing which shape they had. 

Tuesday was St George’s day so we had lots of celebrations in hedgehogs. We had a special bucket time where we made the English flag and then made our very own shields to fight off any dragons that may come along! We continued learning about St George’s day in music where we enjoyed waving flags and using the drums to tap to a steady beat. 

In cooking we continued making pizzas however this time we made vegetable pizzas. The children remembered the steps to take to make the base for their pizzas and then carefully chose which vegetables they wanted on top. The children were excellent at trying different toppings to make a choice about what to include. Sweetcorn seemed to be the favourite topping. 

For our stage 3 of attention autism this week we took it in turns to build a tower out of paper cups and then knocked them down by throwing balls at them. The children got better and better each day and by the end of the week we were all experts in building the tower and knocking it down!

We hope that you all have a lovely weekend and we’ll see you on Monday 🦔

We’re going on a lion hunt we’re going to catch a big one…. 

This week Hedgehogs have been on a lion hunt! We have had a fantastic time with our sensory story and firstly we had to walk through the long, wavy grass. Next we came to a lake. We couldn’t go over it, we couldn’t go under it, oh no we had to go through it! We splashed through the water and tried to avoid disturbing the ducks. Then we got to a sticky, slimy swamp… we all had a turn at walking through the swamp although one hedgehog was a little unsure about this one and made a spectacular jump over it! Finally, on our journey to find the lion we encountered a deep, dark cave. We took in turns crawling through the cave before running away from the lion that we found inside! 

On Tuesday we had our TACPAC session where we explore communication through music and sensory experiences. The children enjoyed exploring the different objects on offer including the small mops where they enjoyed the sensation of the strands on their hands and shoulders. It was lovely to see the children requesting more of particular sensory items and indicating a preference for one. 

Cooking was on of our highlights this week as we made pitta bread pizzas. The children all used the ALD to request different items to make their pizza. The children’s spreading skills are coming along so beautifully and for the first time this week we used the cheese grater with help from an adult but we were all so sensible and took care to make sure that we used it safely. When our pizzas were cooked we enjoyed having them for our snack and there was not a single crumb left! 🍕 

We really enjoyed forest school this week and luckily the rain held off and the sunshine came out 🌤️. We enjoyed exploring the changes that have happened in the forest since we last went in and then some of us looked for good climbing trees. We took it in turns to climb different trees with some adult support and encouragement. The best part was being taller than the adults! 

Finally, every Friday we will be going to the library to choose a new book to share with our family.  The children are really enjoying having a choice about which book to take home and we really hope that you enjoy sharing the stories at home. 

Have a lovely weekend hedgehogs 🦔