We began the week making and decorating pancakes for Shrove Tuesday , the children practiced the skills we use every week during cooking including ; hand / eye co- ordination , fine motor to strengthen hands , communication and problem solving .
When the pancakes were made there was a selection of toppings to put on top.

We celebrated World Book Day this week to encourage the children to enjoy books through activities , music , resources , dressing up and as a method of communication , developing language and the simple pleasure that a story can bring.
A big thank you to you all for making paper plates and the wonderful costumes you provided for the children – they all looked amazing !
The whole school concentrated throughout the week on Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell , we searched for animals throughout the school and took part in a variety of activities based on animals. The children really loved the story and have been great at listening , concentrating on the text and resources.

Ladybirds really enjoyed this song video as part of our activities;

Makaton , Family Fund , Singing Hands and Wouldn’t Change a Thing created a visual storytelling film to celebrate this years World Book Day. The video tells the award winning story Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson CBE .

Our Superstar of the week was Charlie who has grown in confidence since he joined Ladybirds and is now using his voice at school . Charlie has amazed us with all the language and communication he has used in class this week .

We are amazed and so proud of you , it has really bought a tear to our eyes finally hearing your voice 🥰.

Love and friendship have definitely been in the air this week as we celebrated love , friendship and kindness .
We explored lots of sensory resources listened to songs and stories , decorated cakes and enjoyed a disco and party at the end of the week .

We hope you have an amazing week with the children and look forward to seeing them all after the holiday .
Our letter of the week will be ’n’ and our story will be Goldilocks and The Three Bears when we come back after the holiday .

No superstar assembly this week as we were all enjoying our parties.

On Monday afternoon’s the children enjoy taking part in a sensory train ride , it is a simple sequence of events and visits to different lands accompanied by sensory resources and music to support the journey.

We visit a collection of lands ; bubble , water , material and foam, children use their ALD boards to make choices for each part of the journey. We use simple narrative using a mixture of symbols and complimentary sensory experiences. A sensory story encourages listening and responding skills.

When children are learning they are often using all their senses to do so by touching and listening etc . By using sensory stories we can ignite all the different senses and our brain will react in a more engaging way to stimulate learning .

Today we took part in Number Day for the NSPCC , the children engaged in lots of number and problem sorting activities ; using fine motor skills to squeeze icing tubes to put numbers on our biscuits, finding numbers in the playground and classroom and exploring number related activities in our tuff trays.

A big thank you to all parents who sent your child dressed up and made costumes.

Thank you everyone for returning your child’s library book and letting us know about the lovely experiences you have shared together.
We will continue to send one every Monday for you to keep and share for a week .

Our Superstar this week is Archie ’O Mara for consistently tidying up after our activities

Well Done We are so proud of you ⭐️

We have enjoyed our week celebrating Chinese New Year and exploring another culture. The children have developed their fine motor skills and socialisation skills with a wide range of activities . The start of the week we made lanterns and dragons, listened to Chinese music, played instrument’s and danced around under our dragon’s head. Conrad’s family sent all the children and staff sweets to join in with their celebrations – thank you so much. The end of the week we tasted a variety of Chinese food, made fruit fireworks and relaxed to music and lights.

Hephzibah is our Superstar this week for signing ’please’ and ’finished’ when she was asked if she wanted ’more pegs ’ to complete her puzzle.

Well done – we are so proud of you !

We are so proud of our Ladybirds 🐞 they are all working so hard using their ALD boards at snack time , we have seen lots of progress from the children as they choose what they want for snacks.

We are using different boards for a variety of activities to aid and reinforce the children’s communication .

Ladybirds have been using their fine motor skills to sort , match and post shapes .
Matching and sorting activities help children to develop a range of thinking skills and build the foundations for later concepts.

Our Superstar star this week is Charlie , he has been so kind and shared with his friends – well done Charlie you are being a kind and thoughtful friend.

Ladybirds were so excited to see that our playground was finished when they arrived at school on Monday we can not wait to explore !!

Everyone could not wait to get outside at break to explore all our new and exciting things,
the children coordinated their whole body movements as they jumped and climbed , they also used their fine motor and hand eye – coordination skills to use the musical bars .

Gross motor develops large muscles in the arms, legs and torso . It also forms the basis for fine motor skills and relate to body awareness , reaction speed , balance and strength.

The children are having fun with a new song ‘ Hey Tiger’ by Robbie Williams this links to our book The Tiger Who Came to Tea – we are sure you will be singing it yourself by the end of the day .

Our Superstar of the week goes to Conrad – we are so proud of you this week for constantly following an instruction to ‘put your chair under the table’ after registration.

We began our week by decorating cakes to take on our forest trip on Tuesday. The children used their fine motor and hand /eye coordination skills to spread the icing and sprinkle the decorations . Some of the children needed a little support to decorate their cupcake , some children even ate their cake before the tiger could get it.

On Tuesday we had a trip to the forest , we hid tigers for the children to find and took drinks and the cakes we had decorated. The children explored the forest looking for tigers and some even climbed the trees just in case one was hiding there .When we found all the tigers we had our drinks , biscuits and cakes which was enjoyed by all.

Later in the week we used our fine motor skills to cut or rip paper stripes , the children negotiated using scissors and they all did so well , only needing a little help in some cases. When we had cut or ripped our stripes we stuck them to a plate to make our tiger faces.

This week we have started a new activity which we are engaging in daily, we are so proud of how the children are participating in this activity and are looking forward and excited to see how it develops.

The activity is a learning approach created by speech and language therapist Gina Davies, it aims to develop natural and spontaneous communication skills through the use of visually based and highly motivating activities.

The first stage is the bucket to focus attention:

We put visually engaging items in the bucket that the children have not seen designed to help the children to focus their attention. The activity is lead by an adult leader who makes simple comments about each item/toy to help introduce them to the children and expand their vocabulary.
The aim is to build up to 3-4 minutes of engaged attention.

The first stage is where we are at the moment and we are so proud of how the children have began to engage throughout the week.

To finish our week we had our Superstar Assembly- this week our superstar is Ollie for excellent sound blending , making and reading words.
Well Done Ollie , we are so very proud of you !

It is so lovely to see our little ladybirds 🐞, we are sure they have all grown so much. We hope you all had a good Christmas and we wish you a Happy New Year .’ The children have engaged wonderfully this week especially during our new story ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’ and our music session where we have practiced listening to simple instructions and being creative with our movements. We moved to the beat of different songs and interacted with our peers, carefully listening to directions of ‘start and stop’ some of our children are able play and stop their instruments at the correct time . Excellent listening and concentration , well done ladybirds 🐞

The children have had lots of fine motor activities during focus sessions , we are working hard to develop our skills to enable our children to become independent getting dressed , picking up small objects and using different utensils, this will prepare the children for early writing . We have created tiger masks using marbles in trays which we tipped from side to side in paint to make stripes. The children have enjoyed role play with our story resources and making jam sandwiches for our tiger !

Our Star of the week is Alex for independently helping one of his peers to put his coat on ready to go home .
We are really proud of you Alex !

Ladybirds have had a busy fun filled festive week , we have been using our fine motor skills to make decorations , melting snowmen chocolate biscuits and calendars. We have listened to Christmas songs, and provided our own music as an accompaniment using a variety of musical instruments. Wednesday was our party day followed by pass the parcel , dancing and a surprise visit from Father Christmas and his elf.

The children have also been very excited and curious to see lots of work going on in our playground and are looking forward to play on and explore the new equipment!

We hope that you all have an amazing Christmas, spent with family and friends making memories.

We look forward to seeing our Ladybirds in 2022 ready to begin a new term, we will be using ‘The Tiger that came to Tea ‘ for our story and looking at the letter D for our letter . Below is the story song we will use to accompany our book and the song we will use for our letter.

Our Special Superstar this week is Jasper ; for playing instruments in time with the music during our music session . All our Ladybirds have been stars this term , we are so proud of you and I’m sure Santa will be too . 🎅🏻

Well Done !!

See you in 2022 – Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from The Ladybirds team 🐞

Hello,

To celebrate Christmas, Ladybirds have produced a Christmas video to share with their families.

Happy Christmas!

We will send the password out tomorrow

Anne