Autumn 1
Pink class
Hello and welcome to all of our children and families joining Pink class this academic year, we hope that you have had a summer full of fun and fantastic memories!
We would like to begin by introducing ourselves to you all. My name is Ashlee Cummings and I will be your child's teacher for their educational journey throughout this year. I am very excited to embark on this learning journey with you all and to getting to know all of your children, helping them get those little steps in place to achieving the bigger aspirations! We also have two brilliant members of staff in pink class who are Claire Wayman our Higher Level Teaching Assistant and Margaret Myers who is our Curriculum Support Worker. Together we are the staff in pink class this year and we are eager to support and share with you all of our activities and lessons as we progress throughout the year.
This term our topic is:
All about me!
We have had a fantastic start to the academic year beginning our topic 'All about me!'. Our focus this half term is to really get to know the children as well as they begin to get to know themselves, exploring their interests ,their senses and identifying their own features and body parts. Soon we will share lots of pictures of the lovely things that we have been up to in pink class.
Week 1 & 2 What do we look like? and What can we taste?
What a super start to our first couple of weeks back at Columbia Grange School in Pink Class.
Whilst we settle back into routine, we have got so much to tell you all about what we have been up to already!
Within our 'All about me!' topic, we have been learning all about ourselves and what our bodies can do! Specifically, we have been looking at what we look like and what we can taste. We have had lots of fun exploring the tuff spots having new face pictures each day created from cocoa powder, flour, pasta, rice, citrus fruits and cereals. We have been getting lots of sensory input and physical activity like climbing in the Discovery park and exploring the park, practicing our gross motor skills and balance, on our weekly outing. Pink Class have also been having fun lessons looking at different faces and trying on masks in the Hobbit House which we have thoroughly enjoyed!
Attention Everyone lessons have been a class favorite this week where we found some very interesting spinning toys, stomped on 4 flour towers and magically made it rain in Pink Class!! We have been trying really hard to squeeze, squash and press the cinnamon scented play dough that we made to develop our fine motor skills. In our sensory den we have been using the computer to explore in ICT, looking at interactive counting songs and creating fantastic digital pictures of our late Queen Elizabeth to remember her by.
Everyone in Pink class has joined in with sensory dance, PE with our coach June in the hall and Sensology where we explored all of our senses and what we can see, hear, touch , taste and smell in Autumn time. Everyone has enjoyed our massage story lessons where we began to accept the massage movements to the song 'This is me- The Greatest Showman' to perfectly fit in with our topic.
Week 3 - What can we see?
In class this week, we have been focusing on "What can we see?". Around school and in class we have been exploring our surroundings and sharing what we have found. We went on a walk in the school's discovery park to see what we could see, where we found leaves, pine cones, sand, planted herbs, trees and even birds flying too! We had lots of fun in cookery too learning how to make toast together and we enjoyed eating it too. On the bus we practiced our safety skills by keeping our belts on and walking sensibly from the bus to the park. We have also been gaining more confidence in using our PECs files to communicate with staff and to begin to understand the class routine.
During this week we have began to look at the Autumn changes, what we can see. We created some pictures using colours that we chose and painted our own interpretation of an 'Autumn scene' with sticks, brushes and prickly pine cones to stamp with. Sensology, sensory massage and music have also been thoroughly enjoyed this week too!
In Attention Everyone we looked at a brightly coloured toy that when we pressed the big blue button it spun vibrant and shiny spheres around REALLY FAST!! Then we watched the lava sensory timers, floating up and down as well as bouncing the flashing, rainbow ball SUPER HIGH, which was very exciting. Lastly, we watched big metallic splodges of paint being put on to a big piece of card, counted them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then each spot was covered over. Until...we got the blue hammer and went SPLAT! We took turns and let our friends have a turn at splatting the spots and we made a fantastic picture together.
Week 4 - What can we feel?
Our weekly focus has been to look at what we can feel at school! We have had lots of fun exploring our numerous tuff spots throughout the week filled with different textured surfaces like grass and hay as well as touching hot and cold things to begin to understand the difference between them. We had warm bubbly water to feel and splash with and FREEZING cold ice that we held. We had put food colouring in the ice so that we could create some super ice painting leaf pictures which we did this week.
In sensory story we looked at a book called 'My Body' and began to engage with our fantastic props looking at what our arms, legs, face and whole body is! We especially loved the puppet who came to show up her flippy, floppy legs that made us giggle.
Within our numeracy exploration we have been building some fabulous towers, counting them with support and knocking them right back down! This has been great practice for our learning to stack, balance and anticipate whats to come next!
Well done Pink Class!
Week 5 - What can we hear?
Sounds are all around us, we are so lucky that we get to hear all of the wild and wonderful sounds that we have in school! We have accepted new sounds in our space in Pink Class that we may not have heard before, lots of natural sounds of the rain, storms, the rain forest and even whale noises on the screen! In the light and sound room we really enjoyed pushing lots of different buttons to hear a variety of new sounds. We even hunted in the discovery park for new sounds that we could hear on our listening walk too and we could hear birds, airoplanes, a ball being kicked and children laughing in the yard.
We have been looking at our communication box and exchanging symbols for what we would like a turn with, some children really loved the barking dog toy. We created an Autumn tree picture with our own hand print and used some prickly items to splodge on our paint as the leaves that fall in Autumn time. All of our class sat beautifully at the front getting stuck in the sensory story, sensory massage to 'This is me' and Tacpac too!
Pink Class headed out to the park this week and had a splash in some puddles with our waterproofs on, we put in some great effort in keeping our wellies on too! PE with June in the big hall has been lots of fun exercise to join in with.
Another great week Pink Class, super!
Week 6 - What can we smell?
This week in Pink Class we have all been exploring our senses and smelling lots of new scents! Blue lavender play dough which we made, allowed us to roll, squash and squeeze. Lots of smelling the play dough to see if we could smell the scent and it was even on our hands too! We ventured onto the discovery park to see what we could find that had a scent where we collected our fresh mint leaves and brought them back to class to have a smell of and even a little taste! In our tuff spots we have had a big pumpkin, tee tree scented conditioner, lavender and floral bubbles and cinnamon flour for us to smell, feel and explore.
We have been mark making this week, in the cinnamon flour tuff spot and by creating track lines with the cars and rollers in the painting tray. In our attention everyone session we had a lemonade fizzy explosion and we also had egg splat where we dropped the eggs from a height and out came a surprise burst of foam and colourful paint splats!
Communication is a big focus for us in Pink Class and all of the children have tried super super hard to use their PECs symbols to exchange for something they want or need.
Excellent work Pink Class!
Week 7- Our bodies!
In our last week of term we have learned all about our own bodies. We have explored the tuff spots made up of lots of different textured foods in the shape of people. We have shook flour in the air to reveal mystery bodies and skeletons that were hidden in our attention everyone session as well as splatting ghosts and getting the Halloween projector to shine lots of bright colours in our class.
We ventured on to the adventure trail and climbed and played with the PE equipment too! Whilst still learning about Autumn we saw a squirrel in the trees near school so we created footprint squirrels with paint and different sponges and brush textures on our feet, some were very ticklish! We have also been looking at a well-being focus in pink class and we have been washing hands and trying out the foot spa to experience the bubbles and warmth on our feet.
Tacpac, massage story, sensology, PE and sensory story about the human body have all been favourites this half term so we are really looking forward to trying lots more when were back at school.
As we finish our Autumn 1st half term we would like to say a huge well done to all of the children in Pink Class! We are aware that transitions can prove to be difficult for some children however, Pink Class have settled in really well and have began to make some fantastic progress, we are so proud of each and every child and we look forward to what the next half term brings!
Have a brilliant half term holiday Pink Class!
