Work is fun!

This week I thought I'd put a few picture of just some of the things we get up to during the week in Room 10. On Mondays we go on an outing in one of the school vans. We visited Eastgate Mall. Joshua discovered that there was a guitar in the library. Yes - I was surprised to find a potentially noisy musical instrument in the library, but we played with it really quietly so that we didn't annoy any other people. 

Meanwhile Rawiri headed for the library computers.

And Joshua joined him.

William had a play on the guitar. He has been attending music therapy with Jenny Lee, and has been developing his skills in strumming on the guitar.

Matthew, who loves to play with toys, got Mrs Frog to play the guitar. I think Tigger and Mrs Frog had been having a tea party before that.

We love to head out to our Hohepa garden. Our silver beet has been growing like mad. We all help with watering. There isn't a hose next to our garden so we have to go over a bridge and find the tap by the glasshouses, fill our watering cans and carry them carefully back.

 William is starting to get the idea. He has been in a supervisory role until recently, but has now decided to take a more hands-on approach.

 Matthew is a keen helper now. He can carry the watering cans to and from the tap.

Back at school Aimee-Lee showed us her cycling skills. We have not seen her ride a bike in several years because she decided that she didn't want to, but, as the saying goes, you never forget, and she could jump on a bike and carefully go up and down the biking area. Fantastic work Aimee-Lee.

Kyle is becoming a really enthusiastic writer. I am kept busy thinking up inspiring ideas to get everyone into writing. On Mondays we write about our weekend news. Kyle could tell us about his weekend activities, and then had a go at doing some writing independently. During the week he also wrote about the All Blacks doing the Haka.

 Alex is one person who needs no encouragement to read books. Each week we have a shared book. This week we read a wonderful book called My Red Balloon by Kazuaki Yamada. It was all about a balloon that gets lost and is chased down by an ever increasing group of animal characters. When the balloon is finally almost captured it goes "pop" - of course we had to act out the story, complete with animals and a big red balloon (every day!). Yes, the balloon went pop, much to the delight of the class.

 Each Tuesday we schedule a shopping trip. Students who wish to buy something can bring along some money and make a purchase. We support students to be as independent as they can. Rawiri chose himself a rather extravagant looking cream bun from the bakery at the supermarket. We told him it will have to be a healthy choice next week to make up for it! He bought it himself.

 I think the most important thing we all do during the week is communication. We base the whole programme around providing opportunities for communication. This week William used his i-Pad to share his thoughts for two great pieces of writing. On Thursday (soup day) he created a recipe for olive soup which we all thought was brilliant. William loves olives with a passion and his soup recipe contained corn, black olives and green olives. Not sure how the finished product would be, but he seemed to be very pleased with himself.

So, as you can see, we have a lot of fun at school. I hope you all have a fun weekend too. Next week we have a performance to go to by the Strike percussion group. Exciting!