Rainforest Camp
Welcome to the Rainforest Camp class page!
Our nurture group supports children to meet the social and intellectual demands of school life, improving their self-confidence and self-esteem, through a carefully planned curriculum.
What do we do?
Every day is different in the Rainforest!
We enjoy engaging in a nurture activity in the Rainforest Camp. We recognise learning and social and emotional needs, and we give the necessary help to remove the barriers to learning. There is great emphasis on language development and communication. Nothing is taken for granted and everything is explained, supported by role modelling, demonstration and the use of gesture as appropriate. The positive relationship between Miss Green and Miss Johnson, always nurturing and supportive, provides a role model for all of our children supporting their relationships with each other.
The Six Principles of Nurture
- Children's learning is understood developmentally.
- The nurture room offers a safe, calm base.
- The importance of nurture for the development of wellbeing.
- Language is a vital means of communication.
- All behaviour is communication.
- The importance of transition in children's lives.
Each nurture session follows a carefully planned activity to ensure that our children can learn to the best of their ability. Sessions can include arts and crafts, PATHs, science-based activities, food, physical activities like yoga and Social and Emotional Learning activities.
PATHS
PATHS is a key part of our school curriculum, and it's no different in the Rainforest!
PATHS stands for Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies.
It empowers all children to develop the fundamental social and emotional learning skills, which will enable them to make positive choices throughout life. It facilitates the development of self-control, emotional awareness and interpersonal problem-solving skills.
Check out our PATHS corner; filled with lovely stories, emoji-feeling stress balls, feelings games, mats and cards, our compliments book plus much more!
Remember, encourage your child to use the 'Three steps for calming down' and the 'Control signal poster' if they become angry or feel uncomfortable at home too. Always encourage them to follow the three Fair Play Rules also - consistency is key!
Compliments of the day
We have introduced the concept of compliments and how we feel when we receive them. We also practiced what we should do/say when we receive them.
Most of the time when we get a compliment, it makes us feel happy, proud and important. These are all comfortable feelings. But sometimes getting a compliment can make us feel shy or embarrassed or even angry. Those are uncomfortable feelings. Most of the time, though, compliments help people to feel good.
Throughout the week, we will pick a pupil to each give 'Compliments of the day' to. The pupil chosen to receive them will also be encouraged to give themselves a compliment too - though this may feel a little uncomfortable sometimes, we take our time and think about things we do in school or home, what we have, the way we look or the way we are.
Children will bring these compliments home to share with you too. Please read through these and maybe share a compliment or two yourself!
World Mental Health Day
Every year, we celebrate World Mental Health Day on 10th October.
We shared the book 'In my heart', which explores a full range of emotions describing how they feel physically, inside. We shared how our hearts were feeling and we made bracelets for others, to help them to smile.
Last year, the theme, set by the World Foundation of Mental Health, was ‘Mental health is a universal human right’. We celebrated all the wonderful things about us and recognised ourselves as a unique individual. We are marvellous!
We shared a poem called ‘The crayon box that talked’ and spoke about what it meant. How wonderful is our recital of the poem...
Scan our QR code to hear us!
As part of our Black History Month learning, we 'celebrated our sisters' and learnt about Lubaina Himid (who is a wonderful artist!). With inspiration from Lubaina, we created our own art using objects we could find outside and putting them together in a frame.
We continued to be super busy in the Rainforest! We have made bird feeders, took part in a spooky stomp dance, made spooky pizzadillas, exercised with the reptiles, made a fabulous mess with cornflour slime, filled up some kindness buckets for our friends and made some wonderful Christmas cards!
We were thrilled to welcome one of our Governors, Jimmy, to the Rainforest - we used our listening and knife skills to make some kitty cat rice cakes, before sharing the wonderful story 'Cats in Chaos'.
Safer Internet Day
Rainforest read a story, called 'Digiduck's big decision' about being a good, responsible friend on the internet, where help arrives just in time for DigiDuck when faced with a difficult decision!
We've been busy making smoothies, silly slime putty and fruit skewers, as well as exploring Chinese New Year, diversity, friendships and taking part in lots of different PE sessions.
Rainforest talked about feeling happy and what makes them happy. We also thought about how we can make others happy and how that would feel too. We thought about things that would make us happy and created some posters.
We LOVE Reading!
We loved World Book Day! We shared our favourite stories with each other and then we designed a new front cover for a book we really enjoyed.
We created book cover collages all about ourselves. We shared our book covers with each other and we identified similarities and differences. We know we are all wonderfully unique and diverse.
Don't forget to check out our Twitter page, every day, to see the fun things that we have been getting up to!
Checking-in with our feelings
We have a whole-school check-in system to see how the children are feeling on a daily basis. We each stick our picture on to the colour monster of whom we can closely relate to (red- angry, yellow - happy etc.). Miss Green then checks in with us if we are feeling an uncomfortable feeling to see if we can feel better through talking about it.
We're WILD about our learning...
We have enjoyed the story, The Colour Monster Doctor...
We linked our PAThS learning to it and we thought about what strategies would help us to calm down. We created collaged-colour monsters for our display.
Welcome
We really enjoyed drawing self portraits, using pastels to blend the colours. Miss Green was absolutely blown away by our amazing efforts!
We explored compliments and the feelings connected to giving and receiving them. We made compliment clouds to celebrate how wonderful and unique we all are!
National Poetry Day
We shared 'An emotional menagerie' which explores feelings, from A to Z, through poetry.
World Kindness Day
On World Kindness Day, we shared the story, Kindness grows, finding out what happens when kindness begins to blossom. It showed us how choices we make can bring us together We gave compliments to show kindness.
We have worked in teams to complete an alien lego challenge, taken part in PE and yoga, made jam sandwiches, built our own boats and tested them (floating or sinking; making predictions, observing and showing our results), created animals using our hands and paint and completed some self-affirmation lion art. We celebrate awareness days (like Stress Awareness Day, World Kindness Day, Remembrance Day, Anti-Bullying Week, Children in Need Day and St Andrew's Day) and generally have lots of fun with our SEL!
We have enjoyed stories, like The Hungry Caterpillar, and completed some STEM building activities linked to it, continued to practise our spreading and cutting skills with some yummy jam on toast, made squishy emoji toys as part of World Smile Day, explored the jungle and the animals that live there through PE and made some delicious pitta pizzas!
We celebrated Space Week; enjoying an animation story about the girl who went to space, creating marbled planets (using shaving foam and food colouring) which looked out of this world and made some space sun catchers!
We learnt bout 5 different sharks (Hammerhead, Bull, Great White, Tiger and Guitar shark) and took part in a dance lesson.
Check out our shark dance!
Here's our beautiful Remembrance Day poem...
Scan to hear our beautiful Remembrance Day poem from last year...
Scan to hear our beautiful Remembrance Day poem from this year...
We learnt a Christmas dance together as part of the PATHS Kindness Advent Calendar.
Happy National Compliment Day
As a PATHS Model School, compliments are part of our every day routine - we all love to be Pupil of the Day!
Rainforest made some wonderful compliment cards for their family or friends and we expressed how much we love the rainforest!
We have made some silly slime putty, explored patience through scratch art, reinforcing our Fair Play rules (PATHS), created some milk art after our science experiment, read lots of stories, explored fossils and made sandwiches.
