Whilst there were a few contenders, the highlight of our month has to be our karate crew who absolutely nailed their end of term karate grading. We now have yellow stripe belts and full red belts in our midst. They have all worked so hard and had so much fun along the way – we couldn’t be prouder!
Also concluding this month were our current SPACE to Connect classes. Run by SPACE in partnership with a specialist speech and language therapist these classes focused on supporting the children and young people participating to practice their social communication and friendship skills. Run over the course of 8 weeks with just 8 participants in each group we have absolutely loved seeing everyone flourish. They have also made some really important friendships as a result.
Archie, who was in our Primary aged SPACE to Connect cohort, told us how much he had enjoyed “meeting new friends that are like me.” And the Secondary aged group have swapped numbers to stay in touch in a whatsapp group. Lewis said “I’m really going to miss it. It was such fun. I loved the games and all the funny conversations we had!”
We will be running SPACE to Connect again in the Autumn term.
We were thrilled to be joined by Charley Crowe, lead teacher of Speech, Language, Communication and Autism for ISL at our monthly Check In and Chat. Charley talked through lots of ideas and strategies for planning successful school transitions. Her talk mostly focused on the move from Primary to Secondary, however much of the information she shared is relevant to starting school and changing year groups too. Do check it out! We have been sharing lots and lot of tips and advice on transitions over on our Facebook Page and Private Group as well.
Now we are in June the wildflowers are in full bloom and made a gloriously vibrant backdrop to another amazing time at The Patch. The rain help off and everyone got into the jubilee weekend spirit making leaf necklaces and crowns before handling some very grown up tools and learning how to safely chop kindling wood for the fire to toast their marshmallows.
We love seeing the artistry and creativity of our SPACErs and this month our young artists created sunflowers whilst our teenage and adults class did floral vases. We just love seeing all the individual touches. A different sort of art was also enjoyed in Welwyn Garden City this month with another fabulous morning of graffiti!
Our gross motor skills also got a workout this month.
There was acrobatics and sensory input galore at our monthly Ariel gymnastics and relaxation sessions at Studio Fly.
Our exclusive softplay session at DJ’s Jungle in St Albans was great fun. Our softplayers climbed, span, crawled and slid whilst their parents enjoyed a drink, a chat, and yes, some participation too!
And the following day, over at Cloud 9 in Hemel lots of families joined us for some inflatable fun! As this coincided with Father’s Day it was especially great to see so many dads enjoying their special day (and their free Father’s Day drink!). Obstacles courses, giant slides, penalty shoot outs, gladiator style wrestling… no wonder there were lots of hot, tired and happy faces at the end.
Our June workshops were all sell outs as usual. We ran a total of 12 online workshops in June with topics including Therapeutic Thinking, Understanding Specific Literacy Difficulties, applying for EHCPs and a wonderful talk on Tourette’s and Autism. We also loved being able to run our first in-person workshop since the pandemic at our Welwyn Group where we learned all about SENsory Signs, Signals and Solutions.
We had lego clubs, animal encounters, our driving experiences and so much more.
Finally, we have been busy selling raffle tickets for the historic Ware Duck Race which is a lovely family fun day out, raises valuable funds for SPACE and gives you a chance to win some fantastic prizes for those lucky ducks that cross the finish line first! Do come and take part in the fun on Saturday 9th July. The race begins at 2:30 from Ware Lock. We hope to see you there!
SPACE activities are always very popular. To receive details of upcoming activities as soon as they are available to book, please join our community on Facebook and follow us on Eventbrite .
