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Monday 15 December 2014

Counting down!

Well friends we are on the downhill run to the end of our school year.  Reports have been written, proofread and edited and sent home.  IEP meetings have been scheduled, I only have 2 more on Monday then they are done!  We have started Christmas crafts and the classroom is looking very festive, we have had our Christmas assemblies and have only our Graduation assembly in the last week.

So with only 4 more school days  I want to share a little story with you about a little group of kiddos I have been working with.

I have had 2 little boys who have delays in so many areas the list would be too long for a single blog post.  These 2 little boys have a seperate education program that has a focus on literacy and numeracy as well as a social program.  The social program among other things involved social play, which I believe is very underrated in schools.  To help achieve this we took the boys to the Kinder/Pre school room which is on our campus and didn't have the Kinder/Pre-School students attending on this day during the week.  The Kinder teacher would let us use the play based resources that were out for her kids that week and we would guide the boys through appropriate turn taking, oral language development and imaginative play.  We also had a focus on gross motor skills by using the outdoor equipment and fine motor skills.  During the year our little group grew to 3 boys and for me to say that this visit was the highlight of the week for the boys is to downplay how much they loved going.
We were only able to do this with the co-operation of the Kinder teacher and the support of our Principal both of these amazing people went above and beyond what I expected.  The Kinder teacher would greet the boys at the door and show them the new items she had put out, this was her planning day and she would take time out of her day to interact with the boys and create a welcoming environment for them.  Our Principal very early on saw the benefits of play based learning and valued the gains the boys made.

Well our final visit was last week and we were all sad.  The Kinder teacher and I decided that we would have a morning tea with some fairy bread and fruit skewers as a little surprise for the boys.  The boys made her a card to say thank you and gave her a bunch of flowers which made her cry.....then made me cry.



The boys followed a procedure to make their fairy bread.



We made some great gains in fine motor over the year together!


This was my fave part of our little morning tea party, how cute are they!




I just love that we as teachers all feel that we have made a difference for these boys and help each other to increase their development.  It has been a special part of my year in a role I have never done before and I am grateful to have been part of it.