Welcome to the Chaffinches Class!
Staff
Teacher: Kimberley Maxwell
TAs: Kirsty Kelly, Pam Seers and Yvonne Gallagher
Mid Day Leader: Elaine Owens
Newsletter
Earth, Wind and Fire
We have had another fab half term in the Chaffinches with lots of earning through our topic ‘Earth, Wind and Fire’.
We have really enjoyed our rebound therapy sessions this half term. These sessions are absolute great and help us to develop lots of great skills in a very engaging and fun way. They help us to develop our physical and sensory skills, working on our balance and developing our core muscles and strength. We also really develop our communication skills during these sessions. We are able to communicate our likes/dislikes in our own preferred way. We have also really developed our receptive communication skills, listening to instructions and responding! Well done Chaffinches!
Our sensory play sessions have really helped us to develop lots of fab skills throughout this half term. We really enjoy developing our understanding of object permanence by finding different motivating items in sensory materials, one of our favourite things to hunt through is shredded paper. We have also further developed our understanding of cause and effect using different resources such as musical instruments. One of our favourite cause and effect activities was squirting coloured water on to icing sugar using syringes, although we did get a little messy!
For World Book Day our class theme was ‘That’s Not My Robot’. We engaged with the story in lots of different ways. We really enjoyed exploring our different sensory robots and communicating a clear/like dislike for different textures. We also chose the materials we would like to use to decorate our own Robots and made some lovely pictures.
As always thank you for another fab, engaging and learning filled half term Chaffinches. We look forward to more fun through in Summer 1 engaging with the topic ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’.
Signalong
At Kingfisher we use Signalong as a part of a Total Communication Approach, we are constantly using core vocabulary with the children to support their language development and then through each of our topics we introduce new signs and language, which extends their vocabulary further. We also have two “Signs of the Week” which helps maintain and extend key knowledge and skills of everyday vocabulary.
Each half term we will be creating a short video showcasing and demonstrating signs relavent for the current term so that you can learn the signs and further this learning at home.
You can view this half terms signalong video below:
Lunchtime
If your child has a school dinner, the school menus can be accessed by clicking here. For children who bring a packed lunch, please remember to provide healthy and balanced options. We are a Healthy School and will be focusing on healthy eating and how children can make healthy lifestyle choices.
How You Can Help at Home
The following activities are suggested as appropriate homework activities which you can enjoy with your child and reinforce the learning we are focussing on this half term.
- Dress appropriately and go out and explore the wind; for example take a kite to the park.
- Practice dressing ourselves using different types of seasonal clothing e.g. coats, hats, scarves, sunglasses etc.
- Get crafty and make marks on paper using our bodies or different types of media such as paints, pens etc. If you’re feeling very creative you could make a wind chime or mobile for your garden.
- Explore different types of sensory foods e.g. porridge, corn flakes, coco pops, jelly etc. and work on our tolerance to different textures.
- Read the story ‘The Windy Day’ by Anna Milbourne and Elean Temporin together or watch on Youtube.
- Sing different songs together e.g. ‘five little ducks’, ‘ten green bottles’.
- Learn the signs of the week from our school website.
