We have been really busy this term doing lots of fun things for Christmas. We have all worked so hard on our Nativity performance. Everyone look fantastic in their costumes and they all used their switches independently at the appropriate time too! We have been doing lots of Christmas crafting and Christmas cooking. We made truffles, Christmas bark, melted snowman biscuits in our cooking groups. We made some lovely decorations, calendars and Christmas cards and coasters in Art. All the children enjoyed our Christmas music and movement group, everyone liked the Christmas songs, ribbons, bubbles and the parachute. We hope you all have a lovely Christmas and Happy and healthy New Year. See you in 2025!
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Duntarvie End of Term round up
As always Duntarvie have had a jam packed and fun term and we can’t quite believe it is almost Christmas already! After our harvest fundraising cafe we have been busy shopping every week to buy items for the West Lothian foodbank. We delivered it all last week and managed to collect a whopping 62.2kgs in total! Thanks again to everyone who donated items or money.
We have also enjoyed lots of time out and about in the community including Swimming, Potter Around, Gentle exercise, Musically Active Dudes and Growing Together gardening project.
Hope everyone has a lovely Christmas and New Year and we look forward to welcoming all the pupils back in January.
Love Team Duntarvie
Term 2 in Pentland Class
What a fantastic term we have had here in Pentland! The pupils have been exploring hydrotherapy and pool play sessions and have increased in confidence and skills while having so much fun. We have also been busy with our fashion topic and have loved exploring all the different costumes and materials. We engaged well with all of our activities including lots of singing, music, drama and listening and attention activities.
We have also been working hard on our body awareness and co-ordination skills during our PE sessions, we were working hard on balance, jumping, crawling and sliding.
Another of our favourite activities this term has been our session with the Clown Doctors – we love to play and interact during our sessions and are always so excited to see the Clowns.
Merry Christmas to all our lovely families when it comes!
Toy Appeal
We have been very busy over the last few weeks in Lammermuir. We have been collecting toys for River Kids toy appeal so that children all over West Lothian will have a toy to open this Christmas. Thank you to everyone who kindly donated. Our class went and delivered all the toys this week and then went to Dobbies afterwards to look at all the decorations. We enjoyed looking at all the lights, smelling all the festive scents and feeling lots of different textures.
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
Lammermuir
We have had a very busy term in Lammermuir – we have been growing strawberries and rhubarb in our garden along with some parsley we planted as part of Earth Day activities. Our highlights have included Clown Doctors, learning to go on the trike and graduating from Nursery to P1.
Lammermuir staff would like to wish everyone a lovely summer holidays!
Circus drama
Roll up, Roll up and welcome to the circus!
In drama Glendevon, Lomond, Lammermuir and Thea and Indiana from Hopetoun have been at the circus developing their independence skills over the past few months.
They have been exploring the big top tent, helping the rocket man zoom up high, taking a risk on the tightrope and taking part in a wonderful light show. Well done everyone!
Earth Day 2024
Earth Day 2024 Happy Earth Day 2024! Every year on April 22, we celebrate Earth Day. This annual event is a time to focus on the environmental issues we have across the planet and highlight the efforts being made so we can continue to protect it.
Earth Day is a reminder of the importance of environmental conservation and sustainability, encouraging us to come together and take action for a healthier planet and brighter future.
December Update (From Debbie Green – Acting HT)
I just want to take this chance to give another little update on all the great work that has been happening to develop our school.
Since my last update in October, we have continued to work together to develop different aspects of the school. All of our Advanced Pupil Support Workers are part of working groups looking at different activities and sharing ideas and resources to promote high levels of engagement for all pupils. These include PE, effective use of the promethean panel, cooking, singing and messy play groups.
We are continuing to develop hydrotherapy and are starting to widen out the use of rebound therapy to more pupils across the ELC and school.
We have also been continuing to develop activities and resources to promote children’s rights and are planning to apply to sustain our Gold Award status later next year. Some pupils attend a regular Learning for Sustainability group where they have fun and look after the environment at the same time! We have had lots of donations for the West Lothian food bank and toy appeal this year so thank you to everyone who donated. We have also celebrated a number of national days including World Food Day, Children in Need, World Children’s Day and International Day of People with Disabilities (see blog posts for more info).
We had our first curriculum evening in November. Although we didn’t have lots of parents who managed to make it along this time, those who did gave great feedback and really enjoyed the opportunity to speak to staff about different areas of our curriculum. We plan to continue developing our life-skills framework next term focussing on strategies to develop functional communication and cognitive (including earl numeracy) skills for our pupils.
Our Christmas show was very well attended and I think those who made it along will agree that the pupils and staff were fantastic! Everyone had a great time. The feedback so far seems to be that people liked the new lay out and format although possibly cakes and drinks at the start next time!!
Next term we plan to develop further opportunities for PE, and are planning to introduce an activity afternoon where pupils will split into different cross class groups focussing on developing physical skills. We are also continuing to develop consistent use of all the facilities and technology that we have in our new building.
I would like to wish you all a fantastic Christmas and happy New Year and look forward to seeing you at our parents’ evening in January 2024 (Wednesday 17th Jan 3-6 and Thursday 18th Jan 6-8).
Debbie
Oily Cart!
What an amazing experience we all had last week when we welcomed Oily Cart back into Beatlie. The performance team engaged our children and young people in a fully immersive sensory spectacular with ‘When the World Turns’. We had some very posiitve feedback form our staff and parents throughout the week and the reactions form our pupils just had to be shared!
