Category Archives: Hopetoun

A Busy and Joyful Term in Music

🎶 A Busy and Joyful Term in Music

This term has been a wonderfully busy one for Music, filled with creativity, participation, and plenty of joyful noise. We’ve been fortunate to continue our partnership with Live Music Now, whose visits always bring excitement, inspiration, and high-quality live performance experiences for our pupils. Alongside them, our Music Therapists have continued their invaluable work, supporting children through personalised, expressive sessions that foster communication, confidence, and emotional wellbeing.

🌈 Early Years Musical Adventures

Our younger learners have also enjoyed a rich musical experience this term. Caterpillar Music visited Hopetoun class, with Lammermuir joining in for a series of lively themed sessions full of songs, actions, instruments, and sensory play. Early Years music has also included further activities focused on movement, choosing favourite nursery rhymes, and opportunities for gentle musical relaxation. These sessions have supported early communication, turn‑taking, and joy in shared musical experiences.

😌 Dance Therapy: Movement, Music, and Mindfulness

Our Dance Therapy sessions with Charan have also been a highlight. In addition to regular groups, a special Thursday lunchtime session has been running, where Charan collaborates with Gordon, who provides flute accompaniment.

The combination of gentle melodies, soft percussion, and expressive movement has created a calm and relaxing space for the children. It’s been lovely to see pupils engaging in this soothing environment, with singing and vocalisation in response to the calm movement and sounds.

🎧 Making Musical Choices: ASDAN Awards

Several of our secondary pupils have been working hard toward their ASDAN awards, focusing on skills such as making choices and expressing preferences in Music. Using switches, students have been selecting pieces of music and choosing which songs they’d like to hear in full.

The range of musical tastes has been fantastic—from rock classics and ABBA favourites to Gigglebellies, Louis Armstrong, and more. The sessions have often been full of energy, with pupils showing good attention and engagement. Scarves and ribbons have added extra fun as the children move, sway, and dance along to the music they’ve chosen.


It’s been a term full of creativity, expression, and meaningful musical moments. We can’t wait to see what next term brings!

Spring term in Hopetoun

What a busy term we have had in Hopetoun. We have enjoyed some of our regular activities like messy play when we have had lots of chances to get messy and taste some new foods. We have been learning how to look after babies and we had a visit from Baby Koa. We have been going to the local library to choose some books and we can check them out ourselves. We also had great fun doing some science experiments and we made some bang bag monsters and watched them explode then we made some giant bubbles in the garden. Some of us have been horse riding

For St Patrick’s day we went on a shamrock treasure hunt to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We had to follow the clues to find the next shamrock all the way to the pot of gold (chocolate) coins at the end .

This week we have made some Easter bonnets and had an Easter egg hunt as well as making some cakes. Have a lovely holiday everyone and we look forward to seeing how much fun we can have next term.

Winter term in Hopetoun class

Wow, what a quick and busy term we have had in Hopetoun. We have made the most of being able to go on the minibusses so we have been to Dobbies and the centre to see all the Christmas lights and listen to the Christmas music, we even got to smell Christmas at Dobbies! We have had a visit from the pantomime and we have enjoyed going to see the special visitors in our garden. We have enjoyed playing with the snowballs but these ones are a bit warmer than real ones.

The term has not all been about Christmas though- we had great fun at our MATP event and it was very encouraging to have so much support. It was lovely being able to show off all the new skills we have been learning. Some of us have been to swimming at Bathgate and we have even started horse riding at riding for the disabled at Ravelrig.

We wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year!

MATP Challenge Event 🏅

This term we hosted our very first Special Olympics Motor Activity Training Programme (MATP) Challenge Event.

Athletes in Hopetoun, Lomond, Pentland and Glendevon had the opportunity to showcase the skills they had been working on during training for their family and friends.

Every athlete did absolutely amazing and handled the spotlight so well! 👏 🌟

A HUGE thank you to everyone who came along to support our athletes and make the event such a success. I loved all the cheering, signs, posters and t-shirts ❤️

We asked for some feedback and this is what our parents said…

 

Autumn term in Hopetoun

We have had great fun in Hopetoun this term as we have settled in to our new class. We have enjoyed lots of different activities like gardening, going on the wheelchair bike and art. We have been exploring new foods during our messy play food group and some of us got messier than others! We are looking forward to seeing what the winter term will bring.

Term 1 Primary PE

Our athletes in Hopetoun, Lomond, Pentland and Glendevon have been working hard, training towards our first ever MATP Challenge Event on Monday 1st December. They can’t wait to showcase their unique achievements to family and friends (more details will be shared closer to the time, but I am excited to see everyone supporting their athlete with posters, banners or maybe even personalised t-shirts!).

What is MATP?
The Special Olympics Motor Activity Training Programme (MATP) is a unique programme specifically designed for athletes of all ages with Profound and Multiple, Physical and Intellectual Disabilities and/or Complex Support Needs.

It focuses on developing individual skills and abilities rather than direct competition, ensuring each athlete can achieve personal bests and celebrate their achievements.

It is made up of 4 core sport specific MATP skill areas:
• Mobility (gross motor skills)
• Dexterity (fine motor skills)
• Kicking (lower body skills)
• Striking (upper body skills)

 

MATP enables our athletes to increase physical activity, improve motor skills, build confidence, increase participation in sport activities and foster a positive self-image.

Hopetoun Athletes

Lomond Athletes

Pentland Athletes

Glendevon Athletes

 

Summer Term in Hopetoun, Our Local Community Topic

Spring term in Hopetoun

What a busy term we have had, Christmas seems like a long time ago now! We have been very busy with lots of different activities since then. Our topic has been Looking After My Body- Hygiene and everyone has been involved in this through learning about our bodies and how to look after them. We have also taken part in lots of different activities for things like Red Nose Day, Numeracy Day and World Book Day as well as having visits from Happy Hoofbeats therapy ponies and live music now. Some of the pupils have also been to visit the Yard in Edinburgh and have been swimming at Bathgate pool. Hydrotherapy has also continued this term. We are looking forward to another busy term after the holidays. Have a lovely Easter and fingers crossed the sun continues to shine.

 

Winter term in Hopetoun

What a busy term we have had in Hopetoun class, there has been lots of lovely learning on display as well as lots of fun activities. This term we have been learning all about “my favourite sound” and we put quite a few of these together into our Christmas show with recording of some of these sounds like explosions, giggles,  and different types of music. We have also enjoyed drama this term where our naughty horses have caused chaos! We have also been out and about to see lots of different Christmas lights and listen to Christmas sounds. We even went into chocolate production!We can’t wait to see what learning we can do next term. Have a very Merry Christmas!

Harvest Cafe and Foodbank

Last week we celebrated harvest time by hosting a cafe for all our friends and families.  There were lots of visitors. The pupils made some delicious autumn treats to share with everyone. There was also a collection for the foodbank and a raffle. In total we made £134 and also had lots of donations of tins and packets of food. The secondary pupils are looking forward to visiting the shops to spend the money buying other essential items for the foodbank. Great work everyone!

Global Goal 3: Good Health and Wellbeing

Global Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production