At the Hoose, we have been working hard on our independent living skills. Over the last few weeks, we have focused on budgeting, washing windows and cleaning the house.
We have had a productive couple of weeks in Room 12.
One young man absolutely loved his new trike. It’s been quite a while since he’s been on one and he took to it like a duck to water. Chris Hoy needs to look out for competition!
We did some sensory art work. We did some spice painting. You can do this at home with whatever you have in your kitchen cupboards. Add spices/flavourings to different colours of paint. You can smell the paint, make pictures and in some cases see different textures of paint depending on what you use. We used vanilla flavouring, cinnamon, turmeric, chilli powder and ginger.
We also made some wool wrap leaves. We cut out some leaf shapes in cardboard (Amazon packaging comes in handy here!), making sure your leaves have jaggy or rounded edges. We used pastels to rub/colour in the leaves, then used wool to wrap around them. Some of us went extra fancy and did more than one colour of wool on our leaf.
In our life skills lessons we have been working on Personal Care Routines: personal grooming, looking smart, appointments at local services and finally a project. We chose to tie dye T-Shirts. We practiced with scrap material and blackberries first. Then we tie dyed T-shirts. It was so much fun we decided to dye bags too with the leftover inks. We then had to wash them all and hang them up to dry. We were so proud of our efforts we had an impromptu fashion show and paraded around the school showing off our creations. It was messy, but a lot of fun.
Room 16 have been using technology this term. We have had good fun!
One of us enjoyed the robot, another enjoyed using the laptop, while someone enjoyed laughing at all the activities.
We enjoyed Busy Things, loved using Bee Bots and played touch screen music programmes.
Room 15 have had an extremely busy first few weeks back at school, working hard on our communication skills throughout the day and skills for regulation as well as jumping into our ASDANs for this year. At the start of the year we had a mini project to pop together a wee video for our former drama specialist Sam, and we’re very proud of the finished result! You can find the video here:
Our ASDANs have focused on the positive relationships we have at school and beyond. At the start of term we explored who is in our class and being able to recognise them and communicating our relationship with them – friend or teacher. We’ve revisited communicating how we feel, and this year we have begun to explore recognising emotions using zones of regulation as well as character portrayals from the film “Inside Out” (and some fabulous acting from the staff team!). We’ve explored what a good friend is through role play, and it has been wonderful to hear some of our learners applying this outside of school too. We’ve explored what rules we have in school and matched signs around the building to our own pictures, then practiced following these rules around the school. We’ve shared messages with our own in-class mail system.
The secret to Room 15 though is how much work we sneak in pretending to be play! We’ve been building our focused and shared attention skills as well as spontaneous communication with bucket time, and we’ve had bubble machines, talking birds, a flying snitch and skateboarding dogs emerge from the bucket so far this term! We’ve revisited our road safety skills practicing crossing the road as independently as possible. In role play sessions we’ve pretended we’re at the fairground and the theme park, using our communication systems to share our experiences. We’ve used daily group games to enhance our communication and team-work skills as well as showing fantastic progress with several numeracy skills (one of our learners has learned to say a new number, another is telling time to the hour with minimal prompting).
Well done Class 15!
Liz and Grace have had a busy start to the session, working with many pupils across the school. In our primary classes pupils focus on experiencing foods with opportunities to handle, taste and talk about a variety of foods. Hygiene is also a very important part of the routine at all times.
In Secondary, pupils continue working on routine and hygiene, experiencing different foods. As they progress, skills and independence are developed. Pupils at Senior Phase make a range of snacks and meals, some showing great aptitude and skill. We use our skills in literacy and numeracy to follow recipes and practise measurement. We are very adept at cutting and chopping. We’ve enjoyed fruit pancakes and have made apple crumble, enjoying the seasonal produce available.
The children in Room 14 enjoyed doing some masking as part of an art activity in class. We used masking tape to create individual designs, painted over this and then peeled off the tape to reveal a lovely pattern.
Some pupils in the secondary department and pupils working at home have been busy colouring, painting, sticking and collaging panels for a collaborative rainbow display.
We have been collecting raspberries and brambles in the lane near school and making jam. Then a colleague, kindly, brought in plums and apples from her farm. So we all practised using a butter knife to chop up plums and apples to make more jam. Our favourite recipe is for plum and cinnamon jam.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/cinnamon-scented-plum-jam
We also used a traditional apple press to make our own apple juice. We all took turns to mulch and squash the apples it was hard work. “Don’t break it!” we were warned by one student. After that we all enjoyed the apple juice. Some quotes from the students:
“Yum”
“That actually tastes really good”
“Thumbs up from me!”
“It’s horrible!”
At the start of term, Room 18 planted some seeds. We planted carrots, lovely red radishes, cress and some lettuce.
We have already enjoyed eating the cress with egg in sandwiches.
We have watered the plants using our watering can and kept an eye on them as they grow. This week we re-planted the seedlings into the sensory garden vegetable trough which one of our young men had painted. The radishes will be ready for snack very soon. Watch out for more carrot updates!
