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
Garden Explorers
This half term we have been busy continuing to learn how to play together and share activities, areas and toys.
We have continued to be supported by Jordan from the Manchester United Foundation Trust and these sessions have been great fun and provided fantastic learning opportunities for the children, including learning new ball skills, turn taking, developing attention, showing anticipation, and developing independence.
We have had another change around in the classroom and have now made a bigger movement area with equipment such as slides, seesaw, trampette, yoga balls etc. We have also created a messy play area and the children can now access this more easily.
Our sensory story ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’ has been a huge success and the children have enjoyed exploring different scents linked to the fruits in the story. We made a caterpillar out of old socks which we filled with crunchy paper and the children have enjoyed feeling this and listening to the sounds it made.
The children also learnt a new song about a caterpillar, and we have made a lovely display of the children’s artwork which included caterpillars and butterflies linked to the story.
The children continue to enjoy the communication game and are making choices from 2 objects.
In sensory art we have been very busy making Mother’s Day cards, Easter cards and art linked to the topic.
We have also celebrated World Book Day and we enjoyed dressing up as dalmatians. We celebrated Red Nose Day and combined this with our family open day which was a huge success.
Hope you all have a lovely Easter break, and we look forward to seeing you all after this with more exciting learning taking place with our new topic – ‘Colourful World.’
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
- Plan a trip to a local garden centre
- Get wrapped up and go for a walk enjoying the fresh air
- Visit a local park – and explore the plants, trees and flowers
- Visit a play centre such as Boomerang in Bury
- Visit Wheel for all which operates from within Alexender park in Oldham. To make a booking telephone – (0161 503 1543)
- Use a washing up bowl and add some warm water and a herb smelling soap such as mint encouraging your child to smell this whilst playing and splashing in the water
- Smell and explore some of the herbs that you have in your kitchen cupboards
- Visit a local swimming pool together
- Learn the signs of the week from our school website
- Help your child to join in with actions to familiar nursery rhymes such as ‘Incy Wincy Spider,’ ‘There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden,’ ‘Little Green Frog’ etc.
