Hello everybody: I hope you're all having a lovely week! It's lovely to see everybody at circle time and story time on zoom. If you have any news or photos you'd like to share, please let us know! Hopefully everybody is enjoying the nice weather we've been having - I've loved walking in the park and by the river. Especially now that I can walk a little bit farther from home and not do the same walk I've been doing for 5 weeks! As you know, we usually celebrate Intercultural May at this time of the year with a specific focus on another country/culture. This year we will be hoping to continue looking at other cultures but in a slightly different way - each family is encouraged to explore the culture of their choice for the month. We have so many nationalities, traditions and cultures represented in the school that it would be great to see what everybody comes up with. If you'd like to explore a culture through cooking, art or music, please do! We will have more information about this shortly. Food desensitisationIf you would like to continue working on food desensitisation, you could encourage a sensory play activity with a thick, liquid food like custard. We recently made the transition from dry foods to wet food, with last week's activity involving jelly. If at any stage your child has been less than comfortable with one of the activities, you can go back to the previous week's activity and allow them more time to become comfortable with it. The transition from dry-wet might be challenging for some children so don't feel you have to rush! If your child is comfortable with the thick, wet texture of custard, here are some activities you can try: - pouring and scooping with a variety of cups, jugs and containers (this can be extended into a maths activity by introducing concepts related to volume - empty, nearly empty, half-full, etc. and by comparing the volume of one container to another - estimate how many cups it takes to fill a jug, etc.) - "painting" with the custard - drawing shapes in the custard with a finger or a tool like a pencil (this can be extended into a writing activity by dictating letters or words for your child to write). - "hide and seek" by hiding specific items in the custard and asking your child to try and find them (this can be extended in a variety of ways - hiding magnetic letters or laminated letters/words/numbers allows this to become a literacy or maths activity by asking, for example to find the letters to spell "cat" or by finding the numbers to complete "2+3="). - have fun with it! Children can be encouraged to just play and explore the textures either on its own or by introducing preferred toys. Children can drive a truck through the custard, use it in a tea party with play-utensils or have figurines to play with. Just a reminder that becoming comfortable with foods is a really long process that involves many steps so taking it slowly and encouraging the positives is the priority. There are many steps that a child has to go through before becoming fully comfortable with a food. These steps include: - tolerating the food being in the room - tolerating the food being on the table they are sitting at - tolerating the food directly in front of them - touching the food - smelling the food - holding to the face/mouth - tasting - tasting and chewing - swallowing It's important to reinforce whatever stage your child is at, even if it's just tolerating the food being in the room! Circle TimeThanks so much for joining us again this morning for Circle Time! Delighted to see so many faces at it!
Good morning everyone, hope you had a nice bank holiday weekend and enjoyed the good weather! Following on from our blog post last week with some of our spring plating, Louise very kindly took pictures (through the fence!) of some of how some our plants are coming along. Hopefully they survive until we come back! Looking forward to seeing some of you on zoom this week. Remember to get in touch with any questions you might have! NewsClive's news: Clive wants to let everybody know how much he's missing them and hopes you're all getting on well at home. Clive has been taking advantage of the nice weather to walk his dog in the sunshine! Have you been going for any walks during this nice weather? Clive has also been doing some gardening at home. Here you can see that he grew some cress plants! Very impressive Clive! He's also been doing some great gardening outdoors and has been building a raised bed. Do you like gardening and growing plants? Let us know! Patrick's news: Hi everybody: I hope you're all in great form! I miss you guys so much but it's lovely seeing people at circle time and story time when you can make it. I just wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know what I've been getting up to. I've been doing a few things to keep busy at home - it helps me enjoy the day if I have jobs to keep me busy. I had a small cactus collection so I moved it all into one pot - I think it looks nice, what about you? What sorts of things have you been doing to keep busy? I also try to get some exercise every day - usually a walk or a run. On Sunday I was supposed to be going for a run for the AsIAm charity - I did it last year and really enjoyed it! Unfortunately I couldn't do it this year - right now we're not able to do all the things that usually make us happy but that's OK, we can try something else! Because the run was cancelled, I ran in the park near my house instead - I even wore the T-shirt I got at last year's run to make it feel special! What do you do to get some exercise at home? Yesterday I went for a walk in the park during the evening because it was still such a nice day: I got really lucky and saw some of the deer in the Phoenix Park! I had a nice weekend - I hope you did too! If you'd like to share some of your own news, we'd love to put it on the blog too! You can send it to [email protected] or [email protected].
Hello all and I hope you are having a lovely Friday and looking forward to the Bank Holiday weekend! As you know, usually for the month of May we learn about different cultures and countries. We are hoping to keep this going with distance learning so we look forward to coming back to you with some intercultural activities and lessons beginning from next week. Circle TimeIt was great to see everybody who made it to circle time this morning: it always puts a smile on our face! It was lovely to see everybody greeting each other and waving and a good reminder that even if we are not together in school at the moment, we're not alone. A big thanks to Rafael for doing some lovely reading at the end of circle time - we might ask a few more of you to help us with reading or singing next week! NewsWhen we come back next Tuesday we will have a section for news from all of us in Holly and Hawthorn class -what we've been doing, messages to all of you at home and maybe some pictures. If you want to do some news for us any time, we would love to share it with everybody too!
Hello all: we hope you're doing well! Hard to believe tomorrow is the first day of May! As we move on, it might be nice to look back at the planting activities we did to celebrate Spring! Salt PaintingMarta has done a lovely art activity at home and wanted to share it with everybody: salt painting! You will need paper, pencil, glue salt, paint and paint-brush. Use your pencil to draw the outline of the shape you'd like to make. Put glue along the outline you have drawn and stick the salt on. Paint the salt and admire your finished artwork! Thanks Marta! That's a really interesting idea for art. If you get a chance to try it out we'd love to see your creations!
Zoom eventsWe love seeing everybody who can make it to the zoom events! Thanks so much for all your participation. We think it gives all the children a lift to be able to see each other these days, not to mention how thrilled we are on the staff to see as many faces as we can. Hopefully we can build on these and make them more interactive as we move along, thanks for your patience! Highlights of the weekIf you have any news, highlights or photos you'd like to share on the blog you can send them to [email protected] or [email protected]. We are hoping to start sharing some of our own news and highlights here too: it might help to see what everybody is getting up to during these days to keep ourselves busy! Five Skills ChallengeFirst class have been working on the Five Skills Challenge - taking one skill every day and working on it for five days. It might be a nice activity to try at home to work on physical activity! Good morning everybody. We have loved seeing everyone's photos of all the great things you are doing at home. Keep up the good work! Conor has made a lovely video showing you how to make tulips! Thanks Conor! Share your finished tulips with us at [email protected] or [email protected]. Sharon has shared some of the activities she has been doing during this time at home: lots of patience required for this jigsaw!
We have loved our check ins via zoom, so we are going to start these on a daily basis from next week. Please see the poster below for times.
Hello everybody. We hope you're having a good week so far! We just want to take a moment to congratulate the parents at home for all the work you've been doing: well done! If there is anything we can do to support you at home right now, don't hesitate to get in touch at [email protected] or [email protected]. Zoom circle timeThanks for joining us for the Circle Time event on Zoom this morning! It was great to see the children singing along and saying hello! We will be making these events a regular part of the week in the future. Please don't feel under pressure to attend - these events are for the benefit of you and your child - we hope that by participating in familiar activities like circle time, story time and news, we can make this time a little easier for your child.
If you're looking for a (messy) sensory play idea to try, you can make slime from corn-starch and water:
Gather your supplies. Necessary items for this recipe include:
Hello! We hope you're all doing well! We're excited to get back into the swing of distance learning and to try and bring you all some materials and resources that might be helpful at home. Video materialsWe have started to put together a few video materials to demonstrate some activities you can try at home. They might provide you with a few activities to try and it will also be a chance for the kids to see a few familiar faces! Videos are being shared in Google Classroom: Ildi has made an arts and crafts video where you can paint with broccoli and Marta has demonstrated sensory circuits for us. Live zoom eventsWe are very excited to try and bring you some live zoom events as part of the school week - we are hoping to make them a consistent part of the weekly schedule. We will be hosting a circle time via zoom tomorrow morning (Wednesday 22nd) at 9 a.m. We are hoping to do our regular activities and songs, such as saying good morning, reporting the weather and so on. Details to log in to the meeting will be sent via Aladdin. Fun with foodIf you're looking for a fun recipe you can do at home to make cooking fun, why not try this yeast-free pizza recipe! It works with all-purpose flour or strong flour and doesn't take long to prepare. You can double up the ingredients for more pizza! Ingredients per pizza: 175g flour 4g salt 8g baking powder 85ml water 10g olive oil Combine the flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl and give a good stir. Add the water and the oil and stir until they all come together. It will be pretty dry. You should have a ball that looks like this: Knead the dough for about three or four minutes, then you can roll it out flat with a rolling pin or press it out with your hands. Preheat the oven to 200 C or 180 C fan oven. Add the toppings you like. I made a very simple pizza sauce by putting tinned tomatoes and some garlic in the blender and added some mozzarella cheese but you can add whatever you prefer. Leave it in the oven for 15-18 minutes and it should be nice and crispy!
Welcome back everyone! Hope you had a relaxing break and have managed to find some calm amidst theses strange times. Zoom classesWe loved seeing some of you for the zoom check in just before the break. We are putting together a weekly schedule for some sessions and this week we would like to invite you to: Wednesday 22nd April at 9am - Circle Time Friday 24th April at Midday - Highlight of the week and Story Time Remember these sessions are optional! Check your google classroom on each morning for the link. BoardmakerIf you require any schedule pictures / visuals made on boardmaker for home use, these can be made and emailed through to you. Please let us know if you would like any made! Home School PicturesThanks as always for the great pictures of what you are getting up to at home. Remember
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