Category: Inter Disciplinary Learning

Inter Disciplinary Learning

Back to Nursery

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Our morning and afternoon nursery children at Howes Road have been very busy since starting Nursery this term. Many have been showing an interest in vehicles and we have been listening to stories and songs about cars, buses and other things that help us to move around. A favourite song is ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ and great fun has been had playing the desk bells which sound like the bell on the bus. Some children have been using vehicles in the paint and looking at their tyre tracks. Others have been exploring the paint with their fingers. The garage and toy cars have proven very popular as the cars go up and down ramps whilst some children have been exploring cause and effect steering wheel toys or completing puzzles.

We also made lots of playdough as part of a group and have been using transport cutters to make shapes of planes, cars, trains and motorbikes. Some have been rolling the playdough in their hands and squeezing it as it is lovely and soft. 

We have had fun in the nursery garden, watering the flowers when it has been sunny and jumping in the puddles when it has been raining. 

Primary Department Activities – Week Beginning 27th April

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Here are some fun activities for you to try at home this week.

Remember, we’re always delighted to see what you’ve been doing so please, feel free to share you photos and videos with us either through the school Facebook messenger page, your child’s class teacher or email adunnett@aberdeencity.gov.uk

 

Story Of The Week: The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

This week’s story is a wonderful shimmering underwater adventure – The Rainbow Fish.  Troughout this story, the Rainbow Fish gradually realises the importance of friendship and sharing!

Using the link below you can watch and listen to the story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifXlc0QI2kY

The book study below has some great activities for you to try at home based on the story.

Links and additional documents to support the activities can be found below:

Activity 1: Fish Outlines

Activity 3: Aquarium Sensory Bag

Activity 5: Fishy Biscuit Recipe

This recipe can also be found at https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/easiest-ever-biscuits

Other Activity Ideas:

Science: Rainbow Experiments

In keeping with our Story of the Week, The Rainbow Fish, why don’t you have a go at some more of our Rainbow inspired science activities?

 

Learning Grid: Life Skills

Here is a learning grid for Life Skills.  It contains 16 activity ideas for you to help develop and promote your child’s independence in a range of household and life skills tasks.

These activities are only suggestions and we would recommend that, where appropriate, you adapt these activities to meet your child’s ability level.

 

Learning Grid: Get Active!

Here is a learning grid for Getting Active!  It contains 16 activity ideas for you to help promote physical activity both in and out of the home on a daily basis.

These activity are only suggestions and we would recommend completing one activity each day.  However, we would love to see what other creative ways you and your family are using to Get Active daily!

Links to YouTube Channels and websites can be found below.

Oti Mabuse Official YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/mosetsanagape

Joe Wicks – Body Coach YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/thebodycoach1

Cosmic Kids Yoga: https://www.cosmickids.com/

Cosmic Kids Yoga YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/CosmicKidsYoga

Learning Station YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLearningStation

Bumble Bee Physio: https://www.facebook.com/bumblebeephysio/

Bucky Bear Hosts A Picnic

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On Wednesday all the boys in room 5, were invited to a picnic in Duthie Park. The picnic was hosted by the class bear Bucky! Bucky has been going home with the boys at the weekend to meet their family and have adventures with them. To say thank you he decided to host a picnic were all the boys could bring their favourite stuffed toys (even the staff brought theirs). Bucky and the boys all had an amazing time eating lots of different food and getting to meet their friend’s teddies. Bucky Bear had the best time ever as he loves getting to meet new people and go and lots of different adventures! He will remember this picnic forever and can’t wait to plan another one!

The Self Portrait

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The topic, All About Me, provides children with the opportunity to answer the all-important question “Who Am I?”. Activities as Self-Portrait, Facts About Me, My Opinions, Me Poem, My Hands Can, and Me Recipe are just a few of our planned activities for this term.

One of our favourite activities has been The Self-Portrait.

We needed several photographs of people from magazines or internet pictures, scissors, glue, card.

STEP 1:  We pre-cut the body parts of the people from the magazine or internet pictures.

STEP 2: The pupils took a ‘look’ in the mirror and determined what they like best about themselves – a great exercise for building character and self-esteem!

STEP 3: The children got a piece of card and glue. They created a cubist-inspired collage by assembling and gluing eyes, noses and lips from multiple angles.

Have fun!

Story Time in Room 3

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The pupils in Room 3 love story time!  Our stories are always brought to life with props, smells and sound effects which help bring the words and ideas to life.  You never know what might happen during story time in Room 3… monsters might come to chase us, Katie Morag could take us on a journey to deliver the mail, a pirate ship to jump aboard for an adventure or even up into the night sky in a rocket to visit the moon with Baby Bear.  Items go flying, the room descends into darkness and there can be very loud or quiet noises – our senses are well and truly awoken and the engagement is fantastic.

During stories we have the chance to practise some of what we learn through our targets or other curricular areas – a really good chance to generalise our skills.  We always leave gaps so that the pupils can join in with signs and vocalisations.  It is really helpful to repeat the same stories so that we become familiar with them and can begin to anticipate what is coming next.  Sometimes we find that things which can be tricky in other contexts i.e. particular textures we aren’t sure of or having to pass on something to a friend which we would rather keep ourselves is much easier to cope with or work on during all the fun of story time.

 

The children’s active participation in story time has developed so much, we are really proud of them.  They are joining in not only during their own turns but also paying so much more attention to their peers, lots of careful watching and listening.

 

We are looking forward to sharing some favourite stories from home with each other and getting to know some new ones while working through our context of ‘All About Me’ and answering the question ‘Who am I and who am I within my class?’.

Room 3 – What is Christmas?

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Three weeks ago, Room 3 started exploring the question ‘What is Christmas?’ as part of our Winter Festivals theme and as you will see from the photographs…we have certainly tried our hardest to answer it!  We have been building on our prior learning and have used means of learning which are motivating to help us discover more about Christmas.

We have participated in many music sessions where we have used Christmas props and have been practising our Makaton signing – we look forward to performing some of the Christmas songs to an audience at the show tomorrow.

Exploration of a wide range of objects has happened through Sensology sessions as well as focussed turn taking games as we continue to develop our awareness of each other – Christmas pass the parcel was a lot of fun and we did so well at sharing what we found inside with our friends.  We have explored exchanging money as part of a Christmas counting song where we bought mince pies at the bakers shop.

During free play we have explored a wide range of Christmas items and found some of them very interesting.  One boy found it great fun to knock bells off his standing frame, meanwhile another young lady was delighted to find a chocolate coin hiding in the Christmas exploration bowl as you will see from her selfie!  There have been many Christmas activities set up including festive playdough which we made together and our favourite exploration tubes which we have been motivated to request through vocalising or move towards by crawling or in our equipment.

There are so many lovely Christmas stories and poems and we particularly enjoyed learning about the ‘Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bell’ – there was much hilarity as she swallowed bows, parcels, a sack and even a sleigh which we made fly across the classroom!  We learnt about the Christmas story and joined up with friends in Rm 2 and 8 for this – we took on different roles, dressed up and acted the story out.

We have loved exploring Ian Bean’s online Advent Calendar with a daily activity we could do using the switch or eye gaze machines.  The Christmas tree lights have been a real motivator to press the switch for too.

A real highlight was the sensory 12 days of Christmas…unfortunately there was so much fun and hilarity that it was tricky to get still photos but the classroom was very animated as we anticipated each item coming back – one boy was beyond excited about the 5 gold rings which he shook with gusto each time!  There were lights flying, crackers cracking, tooters tooting, Christmas puddings and a beautiful dancing snowflake which sparkled on the tree.

We have been busy doing lots of crafts including using the salad spinners to make pictures for each season – this is definitely one of our favourite art techniques!  We posed to take a picture for our Christmas cards and have done lots of crafts in art with Diane too.  The room smelt amazing when we made jam to take home as a little Christmas gift.

We all looked fantastic today for our Christmas party before going to visit Santa and having a wee sing song with him.

Is it any wonder everyone is tired?!  Yet another busy term in Room 3 with so much hard work.  Enjoy your well deserved holiday and we look forward to what 2020 has to bring.

 

We love exploring the moving world in Room 11

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Children in Room 11 have been exploring different moving things around them. They have been encouraged to use their senses to look, touch, listen and feel sensory environment of the relaxation room. Some of them enjoyed playing with the sensory tunnel, some preferred playing games with catching lights, when some were loving looking at their mirror image. All of the children loved listening to music of their choice too!

A Busy Week In Room 5

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Room 5 have been very busy this week exploring Our World Of Movement.

On Monday the pupils were learning how to make a Tornado in a bottle.

We filled a plastic bottle with cold water and added some washing up liquid and glitter.

We then worked together to shake the bottle in a circular motion creating a water vortex that looks just like a tornado.

 

On Wednesday, we enjoyed a trip to the Maritime Museum to investigate our World of Movement. The boys enjoyed walking around the museum and looking at the large boat displays. There was a large scale display of an Oil rig which was very interesting but the boys enjoyed looking out at the views of Aberdeen harbour the most. The boats were huge!

Halloween In Room 3

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The children in Room 3 have been busy having lots of spooky fun this week.  We had our own (home grown!) pumpkin patch in class and enjoyed exploring the story of ‘Splat the Cat and the Pumpkin Picking Plan’.  We went jumping in leaves after sweeping them up, had lots of fun picking the perfect pumpkin while taking in the sights and smells of the patch then it rolled all the way home!  The children particularly liked our very interactive spooky singing session.  We have explored lots of interesting toys and objects which might dance, sing, light up or blow bubbles – some amazing visual and auditory tracking has been happening.  Halloween messy play was a big hit…we tried out jelly, gloop, spaghetti and rice crispies – some of us even tried it out with our feet!  We participated in the school pumpkin carving competition and took great delight in getting hands on with a drill to make a starry night pumpkin.  Everyone looked fantastic in their costumes on the big day itself and we even celebrated a Halloween birthday.  Well done Room 3 for your very active participation.

 

A Busy Term in Room 15

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This has been a busy term in Room 15, with lots of new experiences!

We have lots of fun with messy learning in Room 15. In our Secondary Department, all S1-S3 pupils complete the ASDAN New Horizons course – we have begun with building our communication of key information about ourselves.  We have hidden under blankets and revealed ourselves when our name is called (activating a switch talker to announce “I’m here!”), we have practiced our Makaton signs for our names (and those of our friends) and (best of all!) located our photos in sensory resources and written our names in mixed media.

We’ve also introduced bucket time to Room 15. This activity looks to build focused attention – and it seems we’re more focused the messier it gets!  We have used bucket time to build our spontaneous communication too – ready, steady and … “go!”

We have been using intensive interaction to build our communication skills in a variety of different contexts – we’re speaking and using more signs since the start of the year already!

We have been working a lot on life skills, particularly road safety. We use our eyes and ears to look out for traffic, and use our communication devices to say when to stop and when to go.

We have also begun to explore using talking mats to share our thoughts about our day – what we liked, what we didn’t like, and what we’re not sure about. On the whole, we’re liking our school day!