Just a couple of days of fun for our Rabbits this week. Our beach fun session plans had to change to indoors due to our unpredictable British weather on Monday, but the children did not let this stop their fun, thoroughly enjoying dispersing the play balls in the paddling pool across the classroom and throwing them at us! Thankfully Shannon was super at catching them!
Despite Racheal’s best efforts, we had very little interest from our Rabbits with the face painting, although some children did allow a little blob of colour on their faces! Thank you to everyone that sent in some party food, the children enjoyed sharing and having some tasty treats 😋 We thoroughly enjoyed having our outdoor disco and enjoying some extra play sessions in the soft play and play ground.

On Tuesday, we were so happy to have an end of term visit from the Bubble Lady and what fun we had! Everyone got involved and loved watching the MASSIVE bubbles! No one wanted the fun to end. We especially loved the big foam machine, and everyone was brave, even though it was a little bit noisy.

We would like to thank each and every child in Rabbit class for a fantastic year. We have had so much fun working with you all and we are so proud of your achievements. We would also like to thank all of the families too for your continued support. It has been a pleasure to teach your children this year and I am going to miss working with you all very much. Thank you for all our lovely gifts and kind words, they are truly appreciated by us all.

Have a great summer everyone. We hope everyone stays safe and healthy and makes lots of happy memories 🥰

Take care, from all of the Rabbit team 🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰 Sarah, Shannon, Racheal, Michelle and Zoe xxxx

This week we enjoyed celebrating all of our class achievements and progress for this academic year. This was our first celebration assembly since before Covid, so the hall was set up a little bit different for our class than usual, but everyone coped really well with the lights, noise and lots of people.

Thank you to Hillary school in Walsall for coming to sing and sign for us, we really enjoyed it! We hope you will come back and visit us again soon.

We would like to congratulate and thank all of our class for all their hard work this year. We hope you have also seen how hard they have worked and developed, especially with their physical skills, self-help skills and communication.

Although we are very sad that it is the end of the school year and all of our current Rabbit class are moving on to different classes we are very much looking forward to our beach party next week to celebrate all of our hard work. Don’t forget it is non-uniform on Tuesday for our class. Please remember to return consent forms if you haven’t already done so if you would like your child to participate with glitter tattoos, face painting and nail varnishes. Thank you ☺️

Have a wonderful weekend,

Sarah and all of the Rabbit team

We were very lucky to have our end of year trip to the sea life centre today.
The children have been so well behaved both on the bus and whilst travelling around the sea life centre despite it being quite busy and new surroundings. We were proud to take the children out of school to represent Oakwood school – well done everyone!
We saw the penguins having their fish dinner. As we moved around the sea life centre, we loved spotting lots of different fish that we have seen during this topic ‘Under the sea’. Some of our friends spotted Nemo and Dory as we walked through by the tunnels and we liked playing with the pretend seaweed and swishing it around us. We also enjoyed watching the sea otters and jelly fish play in their tanks. We even spotted some GIANT stingrays and some baby sharks (we liked singing their song to them – you may have heard it before!) We didn’t see Barry the fish with fingers though, perhaps he was busy doing his knitting or finger painting!
We had our lunch in the Penguin room and liked seeing lots of other school children, all in matching hi viz jackets as us, and then we made our way home on the bus back to Oakwood. A wonderful day had by all. A big thank you to our teaching assistant Michelle for driving us there safely and navigating us around Birmingham, it was a big responsibility and she was super, thank you🌟

This week in Rabbits we have been busy consolidating our skills. Even though it had been a few months since we last practised, we remembered how to use our cutting blocks to collage some fish templates and practised using our dabbers and glue to create a lovely colourful puffer fish for Barry the Fish to play with!
During music, Bev encouraged the children to use their sense of taste to experience the seaside and we tasted some vanilla ice cream as we sang and played along to our songs. Some children gobbled up their ice cream, but for others it was a little bit too early!
We have been really happy to see some super physical skills. Deacon was feeling brave in the soft play and we are really proud that he tried out the slide for the first time. Poppy has also been doing fantastic work with her new sticks and practising her walking.
During cooking this week, we made some more smelly sardine sandwiches, which made our classroom smell delightful 😂. Lots of children had a little taste this week, which just shows how repetition helps! We were pleased to see lots of independent work and good looking as adults modelled the task. Well done!
We hope you have a fantastic weekend, hope you enjoy the sunshine ☀️

Sarah and all of our Rabbit Team 🐰

This week some of our children have been off school celebrating Eid, we hope you had a lovely time making memories and sharing happy times with your family.
At school we have continued our work with Barry the fish. We have been busy creating some beautiful playdough fish, practising our pincer grasp to select shiny sequins to represent the scales of the fish. We have also practised our mark making which the children are getting very confident with- this week using dabber pens to add scales to the fish templates.
We have been seeing some massive improvements in the ability to sit for longer periods to share a turn taking activity, listen to a story and participate with cooking sessions. This is all due to Attention Autism strategies that have helped engage our children to focus on an adult led activity and wait for their turn. We are so proud that the children have all sat to wait for two turns of a speech and language game, joining in with their own communication but also watching their friends take their turns. This was also the same during Cooking, when the children watched an adult make a sandwich, then we all had a little taste and then the children took turns to make their own. Good sitting everyone – Well done!
During Music, Bev took us on a sensory journey to the beach. We experienced walking barefoot along the beach, and then joined in with our instruments to the seaside themed songs. Our class have thoroughly enjoyed having our music sessions outside and this will continue until the end of term.

We hope you all have a fantastic weekend! From Sarah and all of the Rabbit Team 🐰

In Rabbits we have been doing lots of work around how we keep ourselves safe and healthy. We have enjoyed exploring the sensory resources to talk about personal hygiene and eating healthy, as well as keeping fit through exercise. We also listen to the Pantosaurus song at toileting to help deliver the message about Pants being private.
During story time this week, we have continued with our work with ‘Barry the fish with Fingers’. The class have loved listening to the story and have been showing great anticipation with the actions and sounds the adults use as we help role play out the story. We have been using our own fingers to have a go at finger painting and knitting, just like Barry, and we were pleased to see Deacon and Corey Tyler doing some lovely tickling interactions in the MSR – giggling as they reached out to each other.
We have been very proud of Preston this week. He did some work with Amy from speech and language and she was really pleased to see how well he is focusing and beginning to communicate with his Makaton and ALD – Fantastic work, well done!
It has been very hot this week, so we enjoyed lunch outside again and had a bubble disco on Friday, and taking song requests from our friends in Bumblebee class!
In Cooking we practised making our Barry Finger sandwiches again, with everyone showing excellent waiting for their turn and demonstrating greater independence with the utensils.
The children have been growing in confidence when using the soft play equipment and we have been pleased to observe some of the less mobile members of the class being brave, getting about more easily and testing out their strength to climb the steps.

After all the hard work this week, some of our Rabbits needed to have a little snooze to restore their energy! 🥰

This week in Rabbit class we have been reading a new story which we all found very funny, it’s called’Barry the fish with Fingers’. We found out that Barry uses his fingers to finger paint and to TICKLE!!! The children loved meeting our new friend Barry and we heard lots of laughter as we tickled the children during the story. We participated with some sensory under the sea play using the sand and water trays and enjoyed getting messy and finding out what fun Barry had with the finger paints when we designed him some new gloves. We then transferred these skills by using the same finger paints to make some hand prints into fish to design some cards for Father’s Day- we hope all the Daddies like them!
We have been so pleased at all of the class for doing their ‘good listening’ this week, everyone went to line up ready for PE on Monday, everyone is coming back to class when we do the countdown and everyone does ‘good sitting’ at the table when they hear the cue song for dinner. When we did our Attention Autism session on Wednesday, were pleased to see some great responses to the water pistol. Fabulous everyone, keep up the good work!
We have thoroughly enjoyed staying safe in the sun this week. We have kept cool when using the paddling pool and enjoyed eating our lunch outside on Friday as a special treat.
During cooking this week, we linked our learning to our story time and made Barry some tuna fish and cucumber finger rolls (We would like to say a big thank you to our cook Nicky who saved the day and gave us a cucumber as silly Sarah left it at home!) Everyone worked really hard, remembering their spreading skills and tasting new flavours. Two more people tried the tuna this week and decided they quite liked it and had some more! Yummy! 😋

This week, Rabbit Class were very happy to have a special visitor to come and read us some sensory stories. All of the children sat well and did their good looking and listening. All of the resources were multi sensory and tactile for the children to explore. We had two stories, the first one was about the fair ground and the second was about going to the seaside. The children especially loved pretending to steer the dodgem car with the steering wheel and counting out the money for the rides. We were all scared of the seagull as it tried to swoop down and land on our heads!
Later in the week, we completed a cooking session, in which children continued to work on their spreading skills. We created some under the sea themed rice crackers. We used soft cheese (coloured blue) to represent the sea and added on salt and vinegar flavoured fish to create our scene. Some of the children were surprised by the taste of salt and vinegar, but some children loved it and gobbled up their whole rice cake for their snack time!
In PE this week, we were amazed by the children’s anticipation. They all helped get ready by cooperating to put on their T-shirts and then when shown the card for PE using the now and next board, all went to line up at the door. The excellent work continued through the session and we moved from the warm up song to exercise fantastically, recognised tidy up time and went to lie down on the floor mats for relaxation and bubbles. Super work everyone!

This week in Rabbits we were happy to invite parents into school to share our swim session. Thanks to those that were able to attend, we hope you had fun.
We have continued our work with commotion in the ocean, we loved taking our playdough work outside, to create some shapes and prints of sea shells to create an ocean scene.
We have been happy to see Minahil developing friendships with other children around the school and sharing hugs 🤗

The children have been doing some excellent communication to request ‘more’ especially for their snack times and playtime on the swings and in the soft play. Corey Tyler, Minahil Deacon, Poppy and Preston have been doing some super work with their Makaton and AB has been smiling as he has been supported to sign for ‘more’ when using the swings.
We have thoroughly enjoyed spending lots of time outside in the sunshine, especially when using our new paddling pool. We were very brave splashing in the water and sharing the resources.
We will be continuing our work with commotion in the ocean after half term.
We hope you all have a fabulous week off. See you all back on Tuesday 6th June. 😀

This week in Rabbits we have been exploring some sensory experiences linked to some beautiful underwater themed poetry. We loved learning about how turtles lay their eggs in the sand. We used tapioca balls to represent the eggs and used coloured sand for the beach. We also created a feely tray with jelly for the children to experience the feel of jellyfish.
We have continued some work on the colour monster story. This week , in Music, it was the colour Blue which represents feeling sad. Bev brought us some violins to play along to some sad classical music. We were very good at making squeaky sounds, but weren’t particularly tuneful! Anmol enjoyed having a cuddle from Michelle, cuddles always makes us feel better when we feel sad!
In Swimming, the children did some excellent communication to request some favourite games. Preston and Minahil enjoyed choosing the large ball to play a game of ‘on your head Fred’ and Poppy loved doing her stretches with Zoe and making a big splash 💦 in the water, being very brave and putting her face in the water.
In Cooking we made Rainbow Toast. The children did some excellent choosing between colours, Poppy was able to sign her colours independently to convey her choice. Deeya did some lovely mark making on her bread and Preston did really good sitting for his turn as he was so excited to have a go.
During outdoor and soft play time, Rabbits have been enjoying doing some cooperative play with some of the children from bumblebee class. Corey Tyler and Preston loved exploring the mud kitchen and getting mucky!
We have been really pleased some super independent work with our daily mark making activity. Children are beginning to remove their own pen lids and choose from a choice of two colours. Some children are beginning to recognise their own photograph and understand to scribble over the letters of their names. Well done Rabbits!