Diwali

The season of Winter festivals has begun and this week in art and craft enrichment we are exploring Diwali .
There are some excellent free resources for students with learning disabilities which can be downloaded from the Widgit website.

They can be found under

Festivals of Light collection

and includes resources for

Diwali,
Hanukkah,
Saint Lucia
Gunpowder Plot.

Also see


Rangoli colouring pages and other resources from Activity Village

Teaching News

Simon Haughton has a blog entry about Diwali resources for primary teaching

My blog entry on free resources for Gunpowder plot and Halloween from Makaton

Animation

I've watched a few animated Plasticine films and wanted to have a go with my group.
The only problem was that our fine motor skills were not up to scratch for making intricate models.
Plasticine is very hard to start with but if you hold it in a warm hand it soon becomes soft and pliable.
Softening the plasticine became an important job proudly owned by members of the group.
We were all very pleased with our plasticine film and you can watch the film below

Diversity Training

Some time ago I wrote about the difficulties of handling issues around sexuality Gay and Lesbian students with a Learning difficulty
A Day in Hand is organising a one day training course .
Founder David Watkins says " It’s a great course for anyone working with children or young people with SEN from complex needs to MLD and who wants to tackled homophobia or celebrate LGBT life."
The course will take place in London on November 25th 2010
The Diversity Training also got a mention in The Guardian on 25th October: Making Homophobia History

Supporting a charity

Community Action Entry 1 is an Edexcel unit in the Foundation Learning Skills for Independence and Work Entry 2 qualification

One of the suggested activities is :

'thought-shower the names of any charities learners can think of, which may include medical, animal, environmental, developing world etc.'

I have created a sqworl which is a series of picture links to different charities.
There are You Tube videos from

PDSA

Africa Street Child

Rethink

Films on charity websites :

Help the heroes
Action Aid

and some web site links:

Charity Choice a place to look up charities
Canine partners

Free signs from Makaton for Halloween and Nov 5th

from Imagine symbols

The Makaton Charity
is offering 2 free PDF downloads of

Halloween signs
and
Firework Night signs

on their website.

Money

Teaching News has a good listof resources :
Learning about Money to use for teaching money management.

I also have a few of my own to suggest which would work with students with a learning disability:

My previous blog entries on Money

Northern Ireland Curriculum Money Matters

Tar Heel Reader Being responsible at the shops (simple short story about buying onions rather than cakes)