Room 19 Working Hard

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Coming into the last weeks of term Room 19 are continuing our good routines and embedding those relationships with both staff and peers. The pupils have been working hard to follow the class timetable this term and take part in all activities throughout the day around the school. 

We have been focussing our efforts and looking at Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood. We have been utilising resources from the https://rshp.scot/ website. For more information about supporting or reinforcing these lessons, adults at home can follow the link which provides a vast range of resources. 

When some of our peers were away in Bendrigg on their residential trip, we took the opportunity to come together outside for class novel time, music and enjoyed some fun in the sun. 

During the second last week of term Room 19 engaged in the Whole School Event of Safety Week. This focus was on valuable lessons before the summer holidays focussed on Water Safety, Fire Safety, Internet Safety and Road Safety.

30 Days Wild with Room 16

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Room 16 have been taking part in 30 Days Wild, an annual challenge run by The Wildlife Trusts. We have to “do something wild” every day! With our pack we received a poster wallchart and cards with ideas we could choose from, and every time we do a “wild” activity, we write it on the wallchart and add a sticker. 

For this activity, we used some flowers to explore and print with. We discovered that the rose made an excellent paintbrush and some of the flowers and grasses made lovely patterns when we printed with paint. You can find more information on this initiative at https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/30-days-wild .

ASN Sensory Story Time

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Aberdeen City Libraries are delighted to be hosting Sensory Story Time sessions especially for children and young people with additional support needs, in conjunction with Ailie Finlay, at Mastrick Library on the 9th of August. These sessions will be in high demand and booking is essential. Please book using the link below;

http://bitly.ws/JjEa

KidsOut 2023

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Last week many pupils in the Primary department enjoyed participating in the annual KidsOut Fun Day which is organised by the Rotary Club.

The event, held at the Gordon Barracks, saw 450 children from across Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire come together to take part in lots of fun activities including bouncy castles, emergency service vehicles, magicians, horses, owls and other small animals including The Critter Keeper!

Here are a few photos of the fun we had.

Friends of Orchard Brae Fun Run

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We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone that turned out to support our 3rd running of the Friends of Orchard Brae 5k (ish) Fun Run. Having seen lots of runs recorded on Strava we may need to remove the ‘ish’ from the name if we run our event again as it’s as close to 5k as a parkrun gets!

A huge thank you goes to the Brig O’Don Restaurant (King Street) for hosting our registration and making us so very welcome post race. It was great to see a number of people returning for food or drinks to support the business! Our senior pupils made a sign for us and once again it was like the Pied Piper leading everyone across to the park for our start.

We were blessed with a beautiful evening – if anything, our participants found it a little bit too hot! For those of us that were volunteering, the weather was spectacular and made for a very pleasant evening. I’d like to say a personal thank you to the colleagues and friends who turned out to support. You helped to make the evening truly special – your enthusiasm did not go unnoticed!

Feedback on the event has been really positive. Whether running or walking, everyone seemed to have fun and it was a very friendly, welcoming event, epitomising the inclusivity of Orchard Brae School.

The results are out: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rCsrh3pN62bRXina6x38lO6JzIDlbticyPZom9kidRE/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks to Jackie Stewart and Peter Jennings (Metro Aberdeen) for processing the results and supporting with the course marking.

The spot prizes were gratefully received by those that were picked out by our random number generator, so thanks to everyone involved with those (George especially!).

Your donations were incredibly generous and very much appreciated. With a combination of our online fundraising page and the charity buckets, we are delighted to have raised a grand total of £1185-81. This will be put towards the upgrade of our sensory rooms. These spaces are so important in supporting our children and young people to regulate and learn.

A fantastic evening once again! See you all again next year?

Room 8 Pupils Make a Difference on National Environmental Day

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The pupils of Room 8 showed their dedication to the environment by actively participating in the celebration of National Environmental Day. They took part in a unique activity held in nature, focusing on collecting plastic waste littered around their surroundings. With bags in hand, the pupils scoured the area, picking up every piece of plastic they could find.

Their efforts were rewarded with a delightful treat—a well-deserved 20 minutes of playtime in the nearby park. After their diligent cleanup, the pupils happily embraced the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors, playing games, running around, and simply reveling in the beauty of nature.

By engaging in this littering activity, the pupils contributed to a cleaner environment and learned about the importance of responsible waste disposal. They gained firsthand experience in understanding the impact of plastic pollution on our planet and how small actions can make a significant difference.

The Room 8 pupils demonstrated their commitment to creating a better world and setting an inspiring example for others. Their active participation and enthusiasm made National Environmental Day a memorable and impactful event.

Houses and homes with Room 10

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Our topic this term is “Houses, Homes and Buildings”, which we’re exploring through the story “In Every House, On Every Street”.

We started the term with a big focus on understanding the concepts of “house” and “home”, including playing communication games with our photos on the symbol for home and making cereal box houses. Our numeracy focus for this term is building with blocks, and the engagement with communication resources for this topic as well as the understanding of directional language has been brilliant. Our favourite prompt is definitely “knock it down!”

We’ve explored what we do in the kitchen, with communication games exploring who is in the kitchen (“me!”), moving to songs about baking, food art and craft and some fabulously messy sensory play! Bucket time that week whisked up a bowl of bubbles, had a cake splat and a flying balloon of flour!

We’ve also used this theme as a chance to understand our daily routines. We’re learning about what we need to have to go home, such as our bags and coats, and building independence with accessing them.

What makes a house a home? The relationships! We’ve built our confidence talking about the people around us and our comfort sharing preferred activities and taking turns, and have been developing our shared attention skills with our Attention Autism sessions.

We’re only just getting started! Look out for bathroom week, we’ll be making a splash!

Exploring Houses And Homes In Room 12

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Here are some pictures of the work we have been doing on the topic of Houses and Homes.

We have made both 2d and 3d constructions. We recycled materials to make a colourful village.

We used Google Maps to find our own houses and then made a map of our own.

We used large cardboard boxes to explore den-making and imaginary house building.

We have been out and about, visiting Doonies Farm to see how animal homes are different from ours. 

We have also been looking at nests and bird houses. Then we used crackers, suet and bird seed to make some small edible bird houses for our school garden.