Author: Clare Russell

Outdoor Education Update

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As the weather gets cooler, classes have been making a bug hotel in the new sensory garden.  We have been exploring different plants and textures to make a place where insects can keep warm over the winter.  We have used grasses, thistle down and a variety of plants to create a cosy environment for our tiny guests to stay in over the colder months.

We have also been setting up tasks for pupils to help keep our playground tidy, like raking the sandpit.  These jobs are great experience and provide a fantastic opportunity to be involved in real work.

We have also been establishing bird feeders outside class and in the new sensory garden.

Welcome Back to Room 17

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Room 17 have had a busy few weeks settling back into a routine. We have enjoyed getting to know each other through our welcome routine in the mornings. We have been busy making displays for our classroom walls and making the most of the good weather by going out for local walks and enjoying our new sensory garden. Pupils have also had fun with some sensory play and music.

Working Hard: Room 13 Enterprise

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Class 13 are all together again after almost 5 months disruption. We are all glad to be back to something like normal.

One of our jobs this year is to collect food from Tesco at Westhill and take it back to school for distribution. We have had some teething problems but hopefully it will be a weekly enterprise for us in Room 13, alongside the students in Howes Hoose.

Here you can see us offloading the food from the school bus so that it can be classified.

Keeping Safe and Healthy in Room 16

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This week Room 16 were using some EXTRA long straw and paint to make some ‘germ’ posters. We will be completing them next week by drawing on some scary faces, adding some googly eyes and writing a note to remind people to wash their hands. We read a social story about all the different times of day we need to wash our hands to keep healthy and safe and why this is so important!

Room 12: Brightening up the Outdoors!

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Room 12 have been very keen to decorate their new outdoor space. A rummage in one of Anne’s many boxes of bits and bobs turned up some ready to decorate wind-chimes, in the shapes of bees, butterflies and flowers. We painted these and decided that a bit of glitter improves absolutely everything, so we added some of that too. A spray of varnish and they are weather ready and looking beautiful in our “patio area”! The sounds they make are peaceful and musical too.

Good Luck to all our Leavers!

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At this time of the term we would usually be preparing for our Leavers to leave school with all the celebration they deserve: lots of events, a party or two, an Awards Ceremony, some hand-shakes, hugs and a few tears! This year we cannot do this before the end of term, but we can say a huge and heartfelt Thank you to all our leavers and wish them good luck for the future.

Room 17

To all the wonderful pupils in Room 17 – Thank you! You have been an absolute pleasure and joy. Although I was only your teacher for a short amount of time, it was an absolute privilege to get to know all of you and to teach you. You have all worked hard this year and tried your very best. We couldn’t ask any more of you and we are all so very proud of you.

To the parents and carers, thank you for all your support this year, especially during these more recent times. I have really enjoyed getting to know you and hearing all about how our young people are getting on at home. I have especially enjoyed seeing all the photos and hearing about all the personal stories, and I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you for sharing those special memories with me.

We are all really going to miss you. I wish each of you all the luck in the world and hopefully, I will hear from you again in the future and how you are getting on. Take care, from Ru and all of us in Room 17.

 

Room 19

To our young men – two years have flown by but that is what happens when you are having fun! For all staff in Room 19, it has been a joy and a privilege to work with you both and support your deserved progress. We have learnt together and my goodness we have laughed; both of you have such wonderful senses of humour which have kept everyone in Room 19 smiling – thank you! You should both be proud of your achievements and successes; you have faced fears, overcome challenges and made enormous progress throughout your time at school – you are stars!

To your Mums and Dads – thank you for your constant support. It has been lovely getting to know you and working in partnership with you has resulted in your wonderful sons achieving so much.

So, you are young men moving on to the next chapter in your lives; keep on believing in your abilities, keep on learning and keep on having fun!

We are so proud of you both! Good luck in the future and please remember to pop back and let us know about your continuing successes.

Be proud of yourselves and take care.

Miss S, Carol, Jill, Lisa, Noreen and Sharon.

 

Howes Hoose

To the pupils who have been in The Hoose I want to say a huge THANK YOU!! You have all been absolutely amazing. We have had some serious times and some silly times! We have worked hard but also had time to have fun. You have achieved so much and should be so proud of yourselves. You have grown into exceptional young people, young people who are able to meet a challenge and be as independent as possible. Each one of you has pushed yourself and taken on tasks I am sure you never thought you would do and I cannot tell you enough how proud we are of you all.

Also to you, the parents, thank you for trusting us with your most precious gifts. Without your support and faith we would not have been able to challenge the pupils and show them what they are capable of. Opening the door and letting our young people walk through is very scary, together we have given them the key.

So our Howes Hoose Heroes, you are ready to go, to open that door to the next stage in your life and make it your own!

You are all amazing, don’t ever forget that.

From all of us who have had the privilege to work with you over the last 2 years – Sharon, Catherine, Grace, Lynn and I, THANK YOU SO MUCH and good luck.

Missing you already!!

Smithy

 

Secondary Update: Wk Beg 29th June 2020

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Welcome to the final week of term! We enjoyed the sunshine last week, perfect for our Virtual Sports Day activities, and there was lots of fun had by everyone that participated. We also had a range of activities ongoing through our Google Classrooms with remote learning taking place across the classes. If you’ve not yet engaged with Google Classroom but would like more information please contact the Class Teacher. Here are some of the fun activities from the last week.

 

Literacy

One of our classes read the story of the Rainbow Fish and produced some art work in response to the story.

 

Some other pupils have been reading the Picture News each week and completing a range of literacy activities connected with it. This week, the focus was on Zoos. One of our young people designed her own zoo. She also did some research into Sea Turtles and learned lots of interesting facts.

As we move into the summer holidays it would be good to see reading continue. Did you see the post on Friday about the Reading Challenge from Aberdeen City Libraries? It would be great to get involved with, either individually or as a family. Have a look for more information:

Aberdeen Reads: Join the Summer Reading Challenge

 

Science

It was hot last week and we had some appropriately timed Science activities in one of our classes. We painted with ice cubes!

 

Life Skills

We continued our Home Economics. One class made a Caterpillar Salad to practise using a knife for cutting.

Homemade ice lollies were also on the menu, perfect for the sunny days that we had!

If you’d like to try making your own lollies, have a go by following one of these recipes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cnKNWjgH06Q8oRPPCOjZZIeXNxeNp_Vx/view?usp=sharing

We also continued our Life Skills around the home. It’s great to see so many young people becoming so independent!

 

Transitions

Looking ahead, we’ve been putting plans in place for transition of pupils to their new classes, staff sharing information with one another in virtual meetings where pupils are moving on. It may be that there are things about your child that have changed during the time at home. We’d be really grateful if you would share this with us – information such as any changes in likes or dislikes, motivators, sensory needs, communication or diet. These will be passed on to the new teachers.

Virtual Sports Day

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Huge thanks to Amanda and Salvi, our PE teachers and Scott, Active Schools, for organising our Virtual Sports Day, and thanks to everyone that took part. Pupils and staff have been joining in over the course of the week to complete up to 8 challenges. It’s been fun seeing how you’ve been getting on, how things have been adapted to support our individual strengths, and also to see some healthy competition within your families! We hope you enjoy the photos. If you’ve not had a chance to get involved yet, why not try out some activities over the weekend, or even in the summer holidays?

 

Beat the Goalie

We set up our own goals and took on a challenge. The different options suggested were:

  1. Kick from further back
  2. Kick backwards
  3. Pass to someone before trying to score
  4. Kick blindfolded

 

Obstacle Course

Your challenge was to be creative and have fun, using various objects around the house and garden to build obstacles.

 

Throwing

We practised throwing with different challenges for anyone finding it easy:

  1. Throw from further back
  2. Throw backwards
  3. Throw under leg
  4. Throw blindfold

 

Water Run

Always a popular activity on Sports Day, thankfully we’ve had some sunny weather! As you can see, some of us really entered into the spirit of things and got very wet! Trying out the different options, you can see we had some team work in action:

  1. As a team
  2. With obstacles
  3. With holes in the cup
  4. Add food colouring to water

 

Egg and Spoon

A sports day classic, this can be adapted by using a frying pan or plastic bowl instead of a spoon. All sorts of things can be improvised in place of an egg, such as a potato, a scrunched up sock, newspaper, and anything else you can think of!

The options included:

  1. Race against each other
  2. Add obstacles
  3. Time yourself

 

Bowling

Our challenge was to practise bowling using empty plastic bottles as the target – a good way of re-using plastic. Keeping things safe for indoors, rolled up socks, a toilet roll or even a teddy were suggested alternatives to a ball.

Again, different options to increase the challenge:

  1. Bowl from further back
  2. Bowl from sitting
  3. Bowl standing
  4. Bowl blindfold

 

Running

The only event I personally tried, again there were options to make things a bit more interesting:

  1. Have a race against each other
  2. Run backwards
  3. Shuttle run with toys
  4. Run with obstacles (hurdles)

One inventive Grandad even encouraged running by turning on the garden hose!

 

Tower Building

This activity allowed us to be even more creative, using any number of objects to:

  1. Build a tower and push it down
  2. Shuttle run to build a tower
  3. Build a tower as high as you can
  4. Build a tower as a team

It looks like good fun was had by all.

A fabulous effort! We hope you had fun. You’re all winners!

Aberdeen Reads: Join the Summer Reading Challenge

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Aberdeen City Libraries have announced an exciting new reading challenge for the summer. Starting tomorrow (27th June) and running until 29th August, everyone is welcome to register as an individual or family / group. Register for the challenge online: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=aw-pJD2_E02ip4k2nOs16xSlCSTRm75Nn6t-EpSexzdUN0kySlJWRlpJUEdRSEdZUlhLRTczUDZDTSQlQCN0PWcu

There are 9 reading related challenges and you can choose those that appeal. Full details of all the challenges are on the Aberdeen Reads website:

Click to access Aberdeen%20Reads%20final%20form.pdf

 

There is something for everyone!

 

Some ideas of how you might use the challenge are:

 

Places

Read some of your favourite stories that are set in other countries (real or imaginary). Two of my personal favourites are:

Where The Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak), a lovely picture book for younger readers, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (C S Lewis) for older readers.

 

Get Creative

Across the school we’ve seen lovely photos of our children and young people engaging in Life Skills and Arts & Crafts during our period of remote learning. Why not challenge yourself to bake or cook something new? You might find a no-cook recipe that will encourage even greater independence. Try a new craft project and make something useful, or use some of your old junk to create something inspired by a book. Lots of exciting crafty projects can be done using recycled materials and this helps our environment.

 

Ec0-Friendly

Use recycled materials to create a favourite character or a scene from one of your books. One young man from Room 14 did this previously, creating his favourite scene from Harry Potter.

 

Cover Versions

Some of our Secondary pupils enjoy the Harry Potter books. These are magical stories to escape into and are very enjoyable to read aloud. Why not compare the film and the book to find out which you like best? Horrid Henry is always a favourite and episodes can be watched on TV. Do you like the TV episode or the story best? Popular with many of our younger pupils is Disney Cars or any other Disney movie. Again, see what you like best – the film or the book. There are also lots of E-comics on the library website, including Disney.

 

Favourite Place

Try reading in different places and find out what your favourite place to read is. I like to read in the garden, particularly on a fine day.

 

Let us know how you get on and feel free to share with your teachers the stories that you have enjoyed.