Celebrations – Ashgrove Nursery (Bumble Bee Room 1)

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We have been busy learning about different celebrations in Nursery.  We explored lots of different crafts to help us learn about these:

  • We printed fireworks on black paper and added some glitter for sparkle.
  • We coloured in some Pudsey’s and used fingerprints to make spots for Children in Need. 
  • Printing and sticking to make poppies for Remembrance Day.  
  • We used cars to make tartan for St Andrew’s Day.
  • We have been busy painting, sticking and glueing for Christmas.

November

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We invited our parents to come to our class to see how much we have been learning. Then we worked together to create a textured Pudsey picture. It was so nice to spend time together with our families in our classroom.

Movement, mess and more in Room 10!

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We’ve been as busy as ever in Room 10, with core focuses on sensory regulation and communication throughout our daily routines.  We’ve been exploring organising activities as part of a sensory circuit, and did a brilliant job engaging with tasks which required more planning and thought to complete.  Alongside our immersive communication approach with our existing AAC, we’ve also recently been using the Sounding Board app more – this has been great for supporting engagement and has enabled more opportunities to share pupil voice.  We’ve also been loving free movement and dance activities, including dance with specialist Katie and class discos, giving sensory regulation opportunities through movement breaks as well as a brilliant means to build relationships with those around us.

We’ve been continuing our Book Study with the Supertato series, which has provided lots of fabulously fun and messy opportunities to engage with the plots – we’ve had mashed potato sensory play, frozen pea sensory play for “Supertato: Veggies Assemble” (oh, the smell!), which alongside being fab to run our hands through we also discovered made for a slippery slide to walk through!  For “Supertato: Carnival Catastro-Pea” we had paint messy play, with paper down across the whole classroom floor – however, aside from a few exceptions, we were impressed how reserved everyone was for this!

Any Room 10 families wanting to can find out more about any of what we have been up to on our Google Classroom.

All of these have been fab opportunities to link back to our communication aims too – making choices, sharing likes and dislikes, requesting more and naming what we can see around us.  The progress with speech and AAC use has been phenomenal, and we look forward to continuing to build on this in the new term.

Letter To Parents/Carers – December 2022

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Dear Parents, Carers and Friends of the school

New Post

Mrs Karen Gebbie-Smith, Head of Primary will be stepping down to take on another new and exciting role within the ASN service. 

Karen started in June 2010 and has given dedicated service to both Woodlands and Orchard Brae Schools and although this is not goodbye, we will miss her not being around school daily.  However, I am pleased that we will still be able to call on her skills and knowledge to help support our ever-growing Orchard Brae ASN community.

Karen takes up her new post on January 16th and we wish her all the very best.

Retirement? Really?

Mr Jim Johnston will be leaving his post as class teacher at the end of this term.  Jim has worked with many pupils and families and has also given many years of dedicated service to both Orchard Brae and Woodlands Schools.

Orchard Brae staff, pupils and their families will miss Jim with his pupil centred, nurturing approach.  However, I am sure you will join us and colleague’s past and present in wishing Jim a long and happy retirement.

Performing Arts

Through the power of technology, we made an appearance at the Evening Express Carol Concert and this year, we also opened the Music Service Concert on Tuesday night.  Once again showcasing our talented group of signers, #proudheidie moment!

The adverse weather we have had recently has meant the postponement of our first live Christmas Show in 2 years until Tuesday 20th December, we have limited space in the hall so are only able to allocate 2 tickets per family.  I look forward to seeing you then.

And finally, a thank you to you, the whole team in Orchard Brae and our wider community.  Despite the many challenges we have faced, we do it together, this has been wonderfully exemplified by the care and thoughtful support provided recently by our neighbours at Heathryburn.  I wish them and you all the very best Christmas wishes and look forward to seeing what the new year brings

Elaine

Important Dates

Thursday 22nd December – last day of term

Monday 9th January -return to school

Tuesday 10th January – potential strike day – school closed to all pupils

Monday 13th February – Mid-term holiday

Tuesday 14th February – In-service day – school closed to pupils

Wednesday 15th February – In-service day – school closed to pupils

Life skills in Room 8

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Mug cakes are the perfect, low-mess solution for our sweet tooth and easy enough for our pupils in Room 8 to make under supervision. There was no hot oven; instead, we had a personal-sized treat ready to enjoy in mere minutes with the help of a microwave.  

Our favourite mug cake is a mug cookie. It’s got a classic chocolate-chip cookie flavour but a bit of a cakey crumble. We may have overdosed on the chocolate chips, but we weren’t sorry, especially for a Friday afternoon. 

Here are some helpful tips we used for making our mug cakes:

Mix, mix, mix! 

While most of this mug cake recipe is stirred upright in a coffee cup, we made sure we mixed everything well. 

From our experience, we suggest using a fork to whisk the ingredients and a small spatula to clean the bottom before you cook. Nothing ruins your mug cake faster than finding a glob of flour on your fork.

Take it slow. 

Microwaves vary in wattage and strength, so we had to take care not to overbake. We started at the low end of the recipe recommendation and checked, then added 15-30 second bursts until the cake was puffed and looked dry.

We enjoyed it! 

Christmas Spirit

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Room 4 have been getting into the Christmas spirit while using fine motor skills. We made Christmas decorations with outdoor ed and put them on the school Christmas tree. Salt dough decorations have been made and painted. Melted snowman art was lots of fun as well as Christmas cards. 

Christmas Cooking

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Today we had a fun and active festive cooking session with Liz. 

We worked together to measure out all the ingredients we needed before putting them into the food processor to mix. Using a switch we were able to take turns mixing everything together. Everyone did a fantastic job taking turns, smelling and touching the ingredients and actively participating in the baking process.

Exploration In Room 4

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Room 4 have been working on exploring their mark making skills in class. The children have been making amazing progress with this as you can see.

The pupils have also been exploring different technologies and how we use them. We decided to use a blender to make some tasty smoothies using milk, strawberries and bananas. It passed the taste test! 

Room 8 class project ‘What makes someone a superhero?’

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Did you know there are SUPERHEROES all around us? 

Superheroes are ordinary people who do EXTRAORDINARY jobs.

Absolutely anyone can be a SUPERHERO if they want to. All you need is imagination, hard work and lots of kindness.

During this term, we had many activities where we encouraged the children to listen carefully to how that person’s job involves helping others and gave them time to ask questions about what they have heard. We used a selection of photos of ‘Superheroes – people who help us’ in activities as matching pictures/words/sentences. Also, we introduced and explained new vocabulary and encouraged them to listen to each other’s suggestions.   

One of our favourites has been the ‘People who help us’ themed role-play – ‘I’m a dentist’, inspiring the children to use the new vocabulary they learned during the topic. 

We created a class display, ‘All about our superheroes who help us.’ We had a big poster, ‘You are my superhero’, and we took pictures with all staff around the school that help us daily. We want to say a big ‘Thank you’ to all of them.

The most important activity has been with our superheroes – the parents. We spent one hour singing and dancing, having an excellent time together.

 Well done, Room 8!#


Futures Event

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Thanks to all parents, carers and partners for supporting the Orchard Brae Futures Event last week. It was great to be back in person for this annual event and there was a lovely buzz in the hall as you took the opportunity to network and chat informally to the providers in attendance. The presentation from the event is below. Feel free to get in touch if you wish to discuss anything further.