Congratulations to: Harry, Charlie, Jack, Evie, Ayden, Henry, Rose, Miles, Isaac and Kruze for earning their Silver Ardy award. Just as a reminder, this means the students have received 250 smiley faces for completing work or doing the right thing. The students receive their award in parade in front of the whole school and photographs can be seen on the Gympie Special School Facebook page.

On the 9^th of May Early Years held a Mother’s Day celebration event and it was a huge success! Parents, carers and students enjoyed the activities including: bead bracelet making, decorating flowers with coloured paper, painting their hand for the petals of a beautiful flower, decorating biscuits and eating a delicious morning tea. We hope to see you all for Sports Day on Thursday 22^nd June.

This week all three Early Years classes got together for the National Simultaneous Storytime event, we listened to the Speedy Sloth book. The story linked in well with our upcoming sports day and Dale teaching the students how to take part in running races.

Today we held a party in the Early Years sector to say goodbye to Charlie, who is moving to a new area. The children enjoyed the cupcakes, popcorn and chips as well as the joint playtime.

Early Years 1 have continued to work on learning school routines and expectations. All students now know the routine to go out to play. They all get their hats on independently or help each other to do so and they go out and sit on the bench and wait for their teacher. It is great to see their independence growing each day.

Our class is full of happy little learners. We have been practicing writing our first names in our name writing book and on the interactive whiteboard to get the full arm movements to prepare them for writing. Harry is getting very good at his letter formation and Jack is so proud when he writes his letter J correctly. They have all enjoyed reading our rhyming texts each week and some of the students will act out the characters in the story which is lovely to see. Oliver really enjoyed the story “The Very Cranky Bear” and regularly took the book to read during independent reading time. All our student LOVE nursery rhyme time and they all have their favourites. Charlie’s favourite is ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ and will choose it over and over if given the chance! Evie loves our action songs and will follow the actions with enthusiasm and precision.

Reports will be sent home at the end of the term and you can see how wonderful your child is doing at school.

EY 2

In our room we’ve been practising sitting as a group and taking turns. Our interactive television provides so many opportunities for choice making and waiting for your turn while providing very engaging learning material. In science we’ve been deciding which picture depicts day or night and in maths we’ve been counting things such as teddies, dinosaurs and snakes to practise one-to-one correspondence.

Our books of the week have been lots of fun. This week we’re reading “Moo Baa La La La.” All the children in EY2 love animals and love books about them. Using the PODD, they most often choose the animal page when asked if they have something to say! During letters and sounds sessions we have our favourite activities which include playing with the wooden alphabet blocks and puzzles and some special alphabet clips on the TV. We’re practising our sounds and listening for them in words.

We’ve had a very happy time!

EY 3

I am very proud of all the students in my class and the learning they engage in every day. We are learning to read and write from left to right and where to go when we have finished the first line of words. We practice this when read the book of the week, when we cut and stick our sentences and when we write.

Everyone enthusiastically bangs out the syllables in words on the new drums bought for this activity and then have a very noisy free drum at the end of the learning session. We also step for each word and look for the space to know when a word is finished.

We have fun writing in shaving foam to work on our letter formation and pre-writing skills. This coincides with the letter of the week and the letters in their own name.

In Maths the students have been telling be what is happening now, what happened before and what will happen next. They do this using speech, symbols from the visual timetable, PODD and Proloquo2Go communication devices.