The children have settled really well into school life. It has been great to see them happy to arrive at school and willing to engage in more activities around school. We regularly visit the school library, engage in weekly cookery activities, access P.E in the hall and visit soft play, the OT room and our Light and Sound room. We also attend weekly Speech and Language sessions, TAC PAC and Attention Autism sessions. It has been amazing to see how far Wagtails have come in such a short space of time. We are very excited to watch their learning progress further over the coming months.

Have a great week!

The Wagtails Team

Our final week in Wagtails

** Wow! ** What a warm week it has been!! Wagtails have been amazing at coping in the hot weather. We spent a lot of time indoors keeping safe and hydrated, but we did manage to visit the orchard early one morning before it got too warm.

We can’t quite believe it has come to the end of another school year. It has been an absolute blast!! We have achieved so much in the space of 9 months and we could not be more proud of the children’s achievements.

I’m sure we will still see you from time to time around school (yay!), so stay safe and have an amazing summer!

Team Wagtails

Wonderful Water!

Our current topic is ‘Wonderful Water’. Our class books are ‘The Big Red Bath’. ‘Pig in the Pond’ and ‘There was an Old Lady who swallowed the Sea’.

Wagtails have had a very fun-filled few weeks. As you can see in the photos, it has included getting a little messy!!

So far, we have been reading ‘The Big Red Bath’, with the other two stories making an appearance in the coming weeks. We have read the story as a whole class, with a smaller group also taking part in a Big Red Bath sensory story.

We are learning about floating and sinking and are exploring using all our senses. This has involved:

• Exploring red sand, glitter and gloop
• Counting and sorting animals
• Water play (which was extremely popular on the humid days!!)
• Floating and sinking tasks using a variety of different items
• Painting our own big red baths
• Making boats out of a variety of different materials – will they float or will they sink?
• Going on an adventure using our own Big Red Bath and animals that feature in the story
• Role-play with small world toys to re-tell and re-create stories
• Learning to read key vocabulary linked to our topic: water, bubble, empty, full, float, sink.

The Wagtails Team :)

This week we have been exploring sensory trays filled with feathers and sorting animals, with the added challenge of using one handed tools such as tweezers to pick up and transport materials and sort them into sets of colour.

We have spent some time colour mixing and identifying which two colours make secondary colours, observing the results of our actions.

We have explored the properties of different objects and have been sorting/counting objects according to simple properties.

We hope you have a FANTASTIC half term break and we look forward to welcoming you all back in June – eek!! Where does the time go?!

Team Wagtails

Our lovely Wagtails show lots of enjoyment in engaging in Stage 3 of what we call ‘Bucket Time’. This is where the adult leader demonstrates a simple activity, often modelled with another adult in the group. Some children are then invited to have a turn but only if they are comfortable to do so. Not every child in the group will get a turn, which then teaches important emotional regulation skills, as well as the essential skills of waiting, turn-taking and learning through modelling.

This week we took it in turns to choose a coloured paint, squeeze it into a paint pallet and then paint a flower petal. We received some ‘Wow!’ commentary, which was lovely to hear.

There are many Attention Autism recordings to watch on Gina Davies’ YouTube Channel – ‘Gina Davies Autism Centre’. Check them out! :)

Gina Davies Autism Centre – YouTube

Our current focus in Wagtails is ‘Paint a Rainbow: Colours and Flowers’. We have been very busy creating handprint animals from our book of the week ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear’. We have also been selecting materials to collage a yellow duck and blue horse from the story, using different pieces and textures of the same colour.

Option 1: The Singalong Version!

The Brown Bear Rap | Miss Nina | Children’s Book Song | Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See – YouTube Kids

Option 2: The Read-along version!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you see? Whiteboard Animation READ ALONG – YouTube Kids

Wagtails have read Brown Bear, Brown Bear as a class and have explored symbols, pictures and words linked to the story. Some of the children have been arranging different types of bricks to make houses for animals.

Enjoy the rest of your week! :)

Team Wagtails

This term we have been learning about different Fairytales. Our first focus was the Three Little Pigs. Wagtails have been busy building houses with a variety of materials, from bricks, to pom poms, to cream crackers!

Some children thought of their own ideas of materials to build houses with. This included gummy bears, meatballs and pizza! They would then decide whether the house was too strong or whether the big bad wolf would ‘eat, eat, eat the house down!’

Mr Tumble’s very special edition of the classic tale can be found below

Happy New Year to all of our Wagtail families! We have had a busy couple of weeks!

Our topic at the moment is ‘Around the world in 80 days’ and the story that we have been basing our play and learn activities on is ‘We all go travelling by’ by Sheena Roberts.

We All Go Travelling By (UK) | Barefoot Books Singalong – YouTube

We have been dressing up as different transport drivers, painting with large and small vehicles and mark making on different transport vehicle templates.