A fantastic end to our Spring Clean Week with a whole school litter pick.
Thank you to all the pupils and staff for their great effort in helping to look after our environment and keep our local community looking clean and tidy.
Unique Fundraising Café
Thank you again for the wonderful support you all gave our S6 pupil in fundraising for the charity Unique and helping him to progress on his Bronze Duke of Edinburgh journey.
These are just some of the photos from the event and thank you again to all the children, staff, parents, carers, family members, friends of Beatlie and community groups who attended or donated for such a great cause.
Craig (Chief Operating Officer) at Unique also thanked Luca ‘Goodness me Luca, that’s absolutely amazing! £900 is incredible and we are so grateful to you all for your wonderful support. Unique is a small charity and we can only exist because of fundraising like yours… it means we can be there to help and support families when they need us most.’
UNICEF OutRight Campaign
Take a look at our video to learn more about how climate change is damaging our world and affecting children’s rights along with how we have been exploring this in school…..
Music Autumn 2023
This term we have focused on making choices in Music. Lammermuir joined Hopetoun for some fun for Hairy Scary Castle, first choosing spooky sounds from switches for Halloween and then using symbols to select animals to sing about for Old McDonald’s Farm. Pentland also made musical choices with instruments and symbols and appreciated movement and relaxation.
In Lomond the children greatly enjoyed coming together, singing nursery rhymes and playing along with instruments. Sometimes this could be up tempo or more relaxed, depending on the needs of the day.
Glendevon focused on our regular routines, structure, and exploring instruments, including playing along on wooden instruments and dancing to a percussion track by Moondog – an American improvisational composer and performer.
Duntarvie worked towards their SQAs by playing different ranges of instruments for different moods and textures, such as tuned instruments in A minor or wooden instruments. This is to work towards a project in 2024 with Ochiltree, who followed similar lessons.
All the classes enjoyed some Song Massage with All the Leaves and then All the Snow as we got to December. The children had a great time moving to some Christmas songs and playing along to Jingle Bells. In case things felt too busy, we also had some sensory music time, taking some time to relax while exploring instruments to gentle music with subdued lighting and festive lights.
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
Term 2 in Lomond
We have had lots of fun in Lomond this term, here are some of our highlights for you to enjoy.
Hopetoun News
What a busy busy term this has been in Hopetoun!! We’ve been enjoying lots of fun activities and events such as music, swimming, drama and cooking, raised lots of money for Children in Need and have been getting well and truly into the Christmas spirit. We all loved the Snow White pantomime and all did amazing in our Christmas performance which we hope you all enjoyed. Have a look at our video to see how much we’ve managed to fit in, it’s no wonder the time has been flying in!!
We hope you all have a lovely Christmas and New Year and we look forward to seeing everyone after the holidays.
Term 2 in Duntarvie 2023
Merry Christmas from Glendevon
We have had a lovely term in the Glendevon class. We have had a brilliant time attending Bathgate Excite for swimming – we have all grown in confidence using the pool and have had so much fun each week. We have also had lovely sessions with The Clown Doctors and enjoyed playing with and developing relationships with them.
We have fully embraced the Christmas spirit and taken part in lots of crafts, messy play activities, cooking/baking, songs and games in class. We worked hard on our performance for the Christmas show and loved sharing this with all of our parents and families.
We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year when it comes.
Lammermuir Term 2
This term in Lammermuir we have been busy celebrating lots of different events – From Children in Need to St Andrew’s day, World Children’s Day to Christmas. We have taken part in cooking and baking activities, arts and crafts activities and some relaxing activities.
We hope you all have a lovely Christmas and Happy New Year!
From everyone in Lammermuir
