All Move - Mencap project

A group of 10 students from Curnow School have teamed up with a group of 10 students from St. Ives school to take part in Mencap's All Move project. This project looks at bringing together mainstream and SEN pupils to develop friendships, dispel preconceptions and develop inclusivity through physical activity.

The pupils are taking part in a range of activities from Wheelchair basketball, table cricket, Boccia and dance. We are using local clubs and coaches such as the Cornwall Cougars basketball team and Cornwall cricket to deliver the sessions.

The sessions have been amazing with both groups of students developing real friendships, helping each other, learning new skills and getting fit!

We will be running the sessions every other week over the rest of the academic year with a celebration water sports activity at the end of the summer term.

Lower School Science Day

_{On Tuesday 21}^st _{May, we had a ‘Science Day’ at Lower School and we mixed up into groups with our friends from other classes.}

_{We were lucky to be visited by ‘Mark’s Ark’ who helped to give us a ‘real life’ experience to our Summer Term topic, ‘living things’. We absolutely loved exploring and holding the animals and learning about their habitats and how they move. One pupil said “that was the BEST thing ever!”.}

_{We also learnt about ‘states of matter’, focusing on solids and liquids, by making fruit ice lollies. We had fun pouring and splashing the liquids and comparing the difference between that and the solids. We also explored what happened when we warmed up flavoured ice in our hands.}

_{Sennen Class put on light and electricity sessions in their room and the children enjoyed exploring and activating lights in the dark, identifying how to turn them on and off and activating electric items using switches e.g. hair dryers.}

_{Finally, we had a forces session in the playground and the pupils loved playing pulling and pushing games and explored how to make vehicles and equipment move faster and slower!}

_{We can’t wait for our next Science day!}

Story massage session

On Friday 17^th May we were very lucky to be visited by Simone Jackson; a massage therapist from Bath. She ran four sessions during the day each one slightly different tailored to the needs of the children.

“Story Massage offers a gentle way of sharing positive touch with children with PMLD. So often touch is purely functional and it is lovely to see the children having fun and engaging." 

- Simone Jackson, Massage Therapist in a Special School

Massage in schools has been shown to benefit the children in many ways including relaxation the opportunity to learn and experience saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to touch, improved concentration and a feeling of being individually perceived and acknowledged.       

Information about massage in schools and story massage can be found : www.massageinschools.com and www.storymassage.co.uk 

Working with Falmouth University product design students.

Over the past year Sennen class and some members of Crofty class have been working with product design students from Falmouth University. Our pupils have been assisting the university students with their designs letting them know what they liked and didn’t like, what was robust enough and what wasn’t.

The students showed off their final design products in an exhibition in Penryn. Some of our pupils visited and saw the final products. It was fantastic to see the designs come to life and also to see how much influence our pupils had had on them.

Maybe we will see one of these products in the shops in the future.

Jenny (Sennen class)

'Shrek' sensory story.

Sennen class invited their parents to join them in the swamp for their 'Shrek' sensory story. Everyone had great fun scrunching leaves and smelling the stinky swamp, getting wet travelling across the sea, finding golden tickets in their chocolate bars, hiding from the fire breathing dragon and finding princess Fiona. A good way to end a busy week.

Laughter workshops at Curnow Lower School

On Monday 14^th January Sennen class and a few gigglers from Sowenna class took part in the second of four laughter workshops led by Katie White from ‘The best medicine’. This project has very kindly been funded by Joanna Grace; an international special educational needs and disabilities consultant and founder of The Sensory Project (look her up on Facebook!!).

The warm up exercises produced a few grins, by the middle of the session we had great eye contact, focus, smiles and raucous laughter; thanks Finlay!

The activities encouraged pair work and lots of interaction and exploration. Zev and Phoebe explored the ‘worms’ that the hedgehog in the story was going to eat. Their smiles and laughter while exploring could be heard and seen by everyone who then joined in.

The session will be built on and by the end of the four sessions we hope to have found ways to make each other laugh to improve our wellbeing and general happiness.

Enjoy looking at our photos, I hope they make you smile!!!

Sensory story time at Curnow Lower school

We were very lucky this week to have been visited by Sophie from ‘Bag Books’.

‘Bag Books is a UK wide charity who publishes multi-sensory stories. The stories are told using individual page cards and objects-inviting materials or items where participants can feel, hear or smell and with visual stimuli in shiny bold, bright colours’.

We were able to include some children from Illogan school.  It was a unique opportunity for them to be able to experience a Book Bag story from a visiting story teller, and for our children there was in increase in focus and engagement due to the support they received from their friends.

In small groups we experienced and explored two stories: ‘The Christmas story’ and ‘A visit to the fairground’. Everyone listened, focussed and had great fun taking part in the stories.

It was great to see children watching each other as well as taking their own turn. The props were stimulating, fun and engaged everyone from our early years children right through to children in key stage 2 and our Illogan friends.

Here are a few photos of the fun we had: