Term 6 blog

Dates for your diary:
Wednesday 10th July 2019- End of term trip to Avon Valley
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Top tip for talking;
Talk to your child about what they are doing. Come alongside your child when they are focused on something and comment about what they are doing "I can see you are making the big bricks into a huge tower". Use words and sentences that the child will understand. 

Makaton sign 
Sing; place index and middle finger together and place next to left side of your lips. Move fingers out towards the left in a spiral position.

Stickosaurus at Forest Club
The children have been showing lots of interest towards dinosaurs over the past couple of weeks, exploring dinosaur land in a tuff spot, talking about if they are herbivores or carnivores and the types of things they might eat and practising their big dinosaur stomps. Following this interest the children who attend our forest club session wanted to make a dinosaur out of sticks. 
First of all we went on a hunt to gather together the resources we thought would be good to use to create our dinosaur.
The children found different sized sticks to use for the body, which helped to support their  mathematical language development using words such as long and short to describe the sticks. Once the sticks were placed in the places in which the children wanted, we began to talk about the features in which we could add. The children came up with some very good ideas "We could use spiky leaves to make the sharp teeth" "Different coloured leaves like yellow and green for the body as that's what colour lots of dinosaurs are" and then they began the search to find these things. 
Once all of the features were added, the children stepped back to look at what they had created. They were all very pleased with themselves and as a group decided to call him; Stickosaurus.
Find more pictures of Stickosaurus at the end of this blog!
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​School visits
Lots of our school leavers have had their transitions days at school over the past week or so, visiting their new school environment and having a taster for what a school day at their new school may be like.
Children have come back positive from these visits, keen to tell adults about what they have been up too and the names of their new teachers. To support children's transitions to school we have made contact with all of their new schools, completed relevant moving on documents and are in the process of making transition books with each of the children. Transition books will help to support your child in becoming familiar with the school they will be attending and the names/pictures of their new teacher and can be discussed when you feel is relevant for your child. We will be sad to see our school leavers leave Stanton Drew but hope all transitions are a smooth and enjoyable process.

Changing for PE
As you are aware our older children are preparing for transition to school and we are doing as much as possible to help make it a smooth transition. Through discussions with reception teachers, changing for P.E and using a knife and fork are a couple of areas that children struggle with when they initially start school. To help with this we are planning on giving the children practise changing on an afternoon before practising for our sports day.
Over the past week the children have really enjoyed having the opportunity to practise changing into a PE kit, promoting their independence skills and also offering their peers a helping hand if they can that they need a bit of help.

If your child attends till 2.45pm could we ask that you send them with a bag with and a t-shirt & shorts in to keep on their peg so that we can continue practising this over the next couple of weeks. 

Knife and fork practise
Following on from the discussions we have had with the reception teachers recently we have been promoting the children's fine motor cutlery skills, using plastic knives and forks to cut spaghetti. At first and adult demonstrated the way in which a knife and fork is held and that the motion we need to create to cut things is moving the knife forwards and backwards. Lots of the children took this on board and were very eager to try cutting the spaghetti independently with their knives and forks "The spaghetti is really slimy but if i put my fork in it I can make it not move so I can try and cut it". 

Children's cutlery skills are promoted lots throughout our sessions with children helping to prepare and cut up the snacks for each-other.  We are aware that using cutlery is quite difficult for children to grasp and it is stated that; 

Children between 2 and 3 years  further develop their spoon feeding skills as well as learning to use a fork to stab.  By 5 years a child is learning to spread and cut with a knife.  It is often not until they are around 7 years of age that a child can use a knife and fork together to cut up food and are truly independent with self-feeding.

If you would like to more information regarding the use of cutlery, the link below is a great tool in which you could potentially use to support this;

https://www.nhsggc.org.uk/kids/resources/ot-activityinformation-sheets/using-cutlery-information-sheet/ 

Week 5 of our Early Years Public health programme; Looking after our teeth
We have been speaking to the children lots over the past 2 weeks about when to brush our teeth, how we brush teeth, looking at toothpaste and talking about its texture and taste and who we need to visit if we have any problems with our teeth. They have all demonstrated great understanding of how to brush their teeth and the importance behind this and have told about their experiences at the dentist "We have some special water we wash our mouth out with its pink" "After the dentist has checked your teeth, they give you a sticker to say well done".

The children have been given a brand new toothbrush each to take home, to keep up the great cleaning of their teeth, like they already do!

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