Welcome to the Ducklings Class!
Welcome to the Ducklings!
At Kingfisher Special School, children aged from two to four years old who have severe and complex needs are provided with a bespoke and personalised Early Years provision within the Ducklings Nursery setting which meets all their specific needs. We use and adapt the underlying principles of Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Development Matters in structuring our offer to ensure children’s stages of development are recognised, understood and appropriately planned for. All children within Kingfisher’s Ducklings’ provision have severe and complex additional needs and have or are undergoing assessment for, an Education, Health and Care Plan.
Children at Ducklings Nursery attend either a morning or an afternoon session.
Session times are:
- Morning: 8.45 – 11.45
- Afternoon: 12.15 – 3.15
Staff
HLTA: Kim Firth
TAs: Cath Hunter
Newsletter
The Wheels Go Around
Wow! I cannot believe we are at the end of another very busy and exciting year here in the Ducklings nursery.
The children have all made so much progress and we are so proud of them all.
This half term we have all been very busy with our topic (The Wheels go around) in which lots of fun and exciting learning has taken place.
We have used vehicles to make tyre marks in different materials such as paint, rice crispies and angel delight powder. Some of us have used chalks to make marks on vehicles drew by the adults in the outdoor area.
We enjoyed going through a car wash as part of our sensory story on our old pull along truck. We smiled and laughed as bubbles were blown and water sprayed onto us as we got pulled through the pretend rollers.
We have also enjoyed learning some of the actions and words to the song the Wheels on the Bus.
As part of sports week, we enjoyed being pulled around on the wheely toy and playing human skittles, which we were all very good at.
With the very hot weather we have continued to enjoy our water play sessions and have been able to do this outside quite often to help cool us down.
As part of our communication the children have continued to enjoy choosing from the pirate treasure box. Some of the children are also making fantastic progress when choosing what they want to eat and drink at snack time.
During sensory exploration we have enjoyed exploring lots of different materials using our hands.
The sensory garden has now been cleared and we have some fantastic wind ornaments out there that the children have all enjoyed watching.
We all enjoyed languages day and were very lucky to be invited to a music session listening to a very talented man play us Spanish music on a guitar.
Finally, the time has come were we have to say goodbye to a lot of our children some of whom have been with us since the nursery opened 2 years ago and when they were only 2 years old. We will be sorry to see you all leave us but are very excited to see you continue to grow on the next steps of your learning journey. I think there will be a few tears shed on the last of term!
We look forward to seeing the children who are staying with us after the holidays having fun with our new topic – The Circus
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 send home relevant Signs of the Week for our Two Year Old Provision classes via SeeSaw.
How You Can Help at Home
- Listen to songs and stories, such as Spot goes to the Circus on YouTube.
- Purchase or make some dance ribbons these make lovely big circles representing the trapeze artists flying.
- Keep a look out for flyers when out and about, advertising when the circus is coming to town.
- Put down an old sheet and make custard pies on paper plates for the children to explore.
- Explore the smells and textures of foods found at the circus such as popcorn and candyfloss.
- Explore bubble wrap to make a popping sound for the popcorn sounds, this can be done using hands, feet, or wheels.
- Visit a Multi-Sensory play centre such as Boomerang in Bury. They have an interactive floor where the patterns and pictures change as the children move on the floor. Jolly Josh is another charity based multi- sensory environment and it also has a hydrotherapy pool and is based in Rochdale.
- Use Intensive Interaction daily with your child.
- Learn the signs of the week from our school website.
- Go to a local park and experience different environments.
