⭐️ Week 7: The Christmas countdown ⭐️
This week in the Rainbow Room we have enjoyed celebrating the Christmas season by getting stuck in to different festive activities! 🎄 We have played many Christmas games, had a Christmas dinner, sang in our stage, kept an eye on the different things that Sprinkle the cheeky elf does each day and also even had our extra special visit from Santa Claus who joined us in some play!🎅
🎅 Special memories meeting Santa 🎅
Here is a look at our very special visitor 🎅 Santa was kind enough to take some time out of his busy schedule to visit the wonderful children at Dothill Primary School.
Santa loved taking the time to play with some of our toys that each child enjoys, and giving us an early classroom gift of a new storybook to share 🎁
The children were very excited to read our new book at story time 📖
🧑🍳 Baking Christmas Wreaths 👩🍳
This week we visited the Meadow provision to try some baking in their kitchen area.
We verbally and physically explored each ingredient and utensils needed for our session and discussed how we would use them to create our Christmas wreaths.
Some of the children shared the idea of using an oven to melt the chocolate 🍫 We then looked at what a microwave is and listened for the ping before checking whether our chocolate was still solid or was now a hot liquid ready to mix. The children loved mixing and creating their circle shapes and adding a variety of Christmas sprinkles and marshmallows. Once we finished everyone carried their wreath to the fridge and placed them carefully to set overnight.
🎁 Pass the parcel 🎁
Here’s a look at just how fun our game of pass the parcel was this week! Every child waited patiently, listened to the music and made sure to only open one layer at a time. They even reminded Miss Coomber when she lost that “it is okay, you try again”. We are so proud of our wonderful role models ⭐️
Week 6: Just the job for Santa 🎅
Our storyland adventure this week was: Just the job for Santa! In this story Santa was feeling very sleepy. Mrs Claus told Santa to try a new job! Santa tried lots and lots of new jobs such as, being a builder, an Astronaught and a race car driver. However, Santa realised the job he LOVES most was…. flying on his Christmas sleigh after all 🛷 All the children loved seeing Santa explore different jobs, and escape Italy the touch and feel aspect to explore the different uniforms (e.g. tassels on his sailors suit) that people in these jobs wear.
This week’s learning goals include:
- Explore the different uniforms people wear.
- Role play different jobs that we want to try.
- Recognise who wears what uniform.
- Understand what people’s roles are in their job.
This week we have loved embracing the Christmas chaos and celebrating the end of our first term in the Rainbow Room.
🎄 Rainbow Room Christmas event 🎄
This week in the Rainbow Room the children had their festive Christmas event. They enjoyed getting stuck in to their nativity costumes, singing their Christmas songs, creating memorable keepsakes with their families and many Christmas themed activities such as:
- Decorating Christmas cupcakes,
- Building gingerbread houses,
- Making Christmas wreaths,
- Painting Christmas ornaments,
- Delcrating hanging photo ornaments,
- Making reindeer food,
- Making Christmas bead keychains or jewellery,
- Party games: Dancing, Reindeer toss, stick the carrot on the snowman,
- Photo Booth dress up.
🍂 Autumn 2: People Who Help Us
This term, we are learning all about the real-life superheroes in our community! Our focus is on community roles, safety, family, and understanding emergencies.
Our Key Learning Questions:
• 🏠 Home & School: Who helps me in my daily life?
• 🚑 Community Heroes: What do police, doctors, and firefighters do?
• ⚠️ Safety First: How do we know what is safe or not safe?
• ‼️Getting Help: Who do I go to when I need help?
Week 8: Room on the Broom 🧙♀️🧹
Our Story Land adventure this week is Room on the Broom. This delightful Halloween tale follows a kind-hearted witch who shares her broomstick with a growing group of helpful animals. Through spooky skies and a dragon on the prowl, the story shows that friendship, generosity and teamwork can create powerful friendships.
This week’s learning goals include:
- I can show what sharing is
- I can take turns and wait for my turn during play
- I can explore teamwork
- I can demonstrate teamwork in the Rainbow Room
- I can begin to problem-solve with adult support
👻 Rainbow Room Monster Mash 🎃
In the Rainbow Room we celebrated our last week of Autumn 1 with a spooky monster mash disco 🪩
We enjoyed getting dressed up in our costumes and attending our SEND friendly disco 🕺
🦕 Staying safe with PANTS 🩲
We were thrilled to have a special visit from Pantasaurus, who helped us learn all about the importance of keeping our private areas private and staying safe. The children joined in with discussions and activities building a lovely understanding of staying safe in their own individual ways.
Of course, we couldn’t resist singing and dancing along to the classic Pantasaurus song. Everyone joined in with great enthusiasm, using actions, movement and lots of big smiles throughout.
Week 7: Ruby’s Worry 💭
Our Story Land adventure this week is Ruby’s Worry. This story helps children understand that worries are normal and that sharing our worries can help us feel better. It also explores who we can talk to and how others can support us.
This week’s learning goals include:
- I can understand what a worry is
- I can understand how worries can make us feel
- I can understand why it is important to share worries
- I can recognise who I can share my worries with
- I can begin to show or talk about my worries with adult support
Crossbar Taster Session 🪩
Last week we enjoyed our Crossbar session so much, we decided to join in on another one. This weeks session was dance! Take a look at some of our super moves 🕺
A special visitor 🚒
Ahead of our next half term theme ‘People who help us’, the Rainbow Room were surprised with a visit from some firefighters 🧑🚒 We explored how their uniforms feel, looked at what tools they use and the sounds of their sirens 🚨
Calming connections
Here is a look at one of our group co-regulation activities. We enjoy a range of stimulating activities from dough-disco 🪩 to Sensory massages 💆♀️
During sensory massages the children explore safe boundaries, calm connections with their peers, and attentive listening skills.
These develop safe and secure relationships, and build regulation techniques that help them to feel calm.
Week 6: Sharing a Shell 🐚
Our Story Land adventure this week is Sharing a Shell. This heart-warming story follows three sea creatures who learn that life is much better when they share their home — and their hearts — instead of keeping everything to themselves. The story beautifully shows that kindness, cooperation and friendship make the world a lot brighter (and roomier!) than going it alone.
This week’s learning goals include:
- I can understand what sharing is
- I can recognise how sharing can make us feel
- I can join in with a turn-taking activity
- I can recognise why teamwork is sometimes better
- I can begin to explore how to wait for my turn, or what my other options are
- I can begin to ask to share or take turns using visuals or words, with adult support
Crossbar Taster Session
This week we also enjoyed taking part in a Crossbar taster session. The children were incredible transitioning into the school hall, listening and waiting, and trying their best at new skills!
Stay and Play
We also enjoyed sharing our first Stay and Play event. We loved welcoming all our families to take a look at their child’s learning environment and partake in some hands on activities!
💬
Week 5: How Do You Feel? ❤️
This week’s Story Land adventure encourages children to name, recognise and talk about their emotions, helping them to understand how they and awareness of how others may feel.
This week’s learning goals include:
- I can understand different emotions
- I can begin to recognise my own feelings
- I can begin to recognise other people’s feelings
- I can talk about how I am feeling.
A surprise visitor 🐸
In our Rainbow Room garden we were surprised to find a toad hopping around! We took a moment to explore what a toad looks like, how the toad may feel if it is lost, and we discussed where it lives and where we need to return it too.
Mr Busby was very brave and helped us to carefully move it back to a safe space.
Week 4: I love you everyday ❤️
This week’s Story Land adventure focuses on exploring feelings and emotions, helping children begin to recognise how they feel and why.
This week’s learning goals include:
- I can begin to explore different emotions
- I can demonstrate emotions
- I can begin to match emotions to events
- I can begin to practise self-care activities (e.g. brushing teeth, washing hands)
- I can begin to explore ways to regulate my emotions
Week 3: Elmer the Patchwork Elephant 🐘🌈
Our Story Land adventure this week is Elmer the Patchwork Elephant. This story explores celebrating being different and recognising what makes us unique. Children will also explore different colours, patterns and textures in the world around them.
This week’s learning goals:
- I can celebrate me
- I can explore differences and similarities
- I can recognise different colours
- I can explore and create different patterns
- I can begin to explore different textures through my senses
🎨 Colour mixing experiment
Whilst setting up our Rainbow Room activity the children started asking some questions about different colours.
This was prompted by our Elmer story where we looked at the different patterns and colours the elephants created!
We loved the children’s curiosity and let this lead use in an explorative activity where we all had a go at mixing colours to see what we could make.
We discovered:
🔵 + 🟡 = 🟢
🔴 + 🟡 = 🟠
🔵 + 🔴 = 🟣
Week 2: The Colour Monster 🎨
Our Storyland adventure this week is The Colour Monster, a lovely story that helps children explore different emotions and begin to understand them. Through this story, children are learning to recognise their own feelings and start developing ways to express and regulate them.
This week’s learning goals include:
- I can follow our school timetable
- I can explore different emotions
- I can show different emotions
- I am beginning to learn ways to regulate my emotions
Rainy Days Experiment ☔️
This week in the Rainbow Room, we experienced our first very rainy day, which meant the outdoor area was closed. This was a new change for our Rainbow learners.
To help the children understand what was happening, Miss Coomber introduced some special equipment and explored the question: What is rain? 🌧️
We used paint tubs covered with tissue to create our ‘clouds’ ☁️ and pots of blue water to represent the rain. Using pipettes as our ‘sun’, the children carefully sucked up the water and slowly dropped it onto the clouds. When the clouds became too heavy, the rain began to fall!
The children loved this activity so much that they spent the afternoon independently recreating the experiment themselves, showing great curiosity, focus and creativity.
Week 1: Harry and His Dinosaurs Go to School 🦕
We loved welcoming our new learners and starting our school adventure together! Take a look at some of the fun and exciting activities from our first week. 😊
Our first Story Land adventure begins with "Harry and the Dinosaurs Go to School" a lovely story to support children in feeling safe and excited about starting their school journey.
This week's learning goals include:
- I can explore my new classroom / school.
- I can follow parts of our daily routine.
- I can express how I feel about starting school.
- I can begin to explore facial features.
