High School of Glasgow

Pupils in After School Care enjoyed making and eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.

 

 

Friendship

In a flurry of glue, coloured paper and concentration, almost everyone took part in decorating After School Care’s new Friendship Tree. This was a lovely example of children of different ages working together and helping each other, and they made something to be proud of. Thank you to all who have admired our Tree. Throughout the year it will be spotted somewhere in ASC, taking part in different ‘themes’. Our long-term theme is Friendship, shown by hand-made paper leaves which all have individual hand-written and drawn messages.

Another example of friendship took place during our second Buddy Scheme, which ran for new pupils until the September Weekend. The Buddy Scheme embraces the ethos of the school, by providing a relaxed, comfortable and happy introduction to a new environment, and is represented by orange smiley face badges and posters as a reminder. Each day the young children staying for the afternoon session were gathered together for a story in After School Care where they could see the older boys and girls come in from school. Those who chose on any day to have a Buddy were then helped by an older friend from a rota of around 20 enthusiastic Buddy volunteers. Thank you to those Buddies for their natural kindness and for helping the young ones form new friendships and routines in ASC.

We have been keeping busy with varied activities in ASC. We made spiders to decorate what became our Halloween Tree. We made individual special poppies for our After School Care Remembrance Wall, and we have had many fun Pudsey events to raise money once again for Children in Need. Thank you to all children, parents and staff for raising this year’s fabulous total of £325.77

Games both outside and inside continue to be popular, and are a great way to enjoy being with our friends. When the weather is good enough (dryish), there is free play outside and organised games in the playground. Inside there is a wide choice of games, colouring, lego, ping-pong, knitting and pom-poms, craft and baking activities. Our photos capture some of our fun so far this session. Keep watching this Blog for more details and pictures!

During the summer term we have been having great fun in After School Care. We love being out of doors when the weather is nice, and we have fun inside too.

We have been working on our After School Care garden, which is small, but very promising. This is when we find out who likes being muddy in a good cause!

We have been busy in Craft each week, and our wall frieze with wonderful underwater creatures showcases our talents, although often our creations are taken home (or eaten if it is a baking/cooking week).

Some of the girls and boys have joined our Knitting Club with great enthusiasm. Such is the interest in this new innovation that there is a waiting list to join. Some supervision is needed to pick up dropped stitches as the new knitters become more skilled, but there will be chances after the summer for more people to join in with this popular activity.

We have recently been planning play and craft activities for the year ahead with plenty of help from all ages so that we can order the best games and supplies to keep everyone busy and happy next year. 

We are organising the Buddy scheme again so that new and young children have help from older volunteer buddies as they settle into After School Care.

Since the Christmas holidays we have been busy in After School Care. With lots of boys and girls spending time here, we are always looking for ways to make this a fun and productive time, doing our best to provide an environment to enjoy being with each other.

The January storms damaged the hut storing our outdoor play equipment.  The hut was beyond repair, but staff and children worked hard to salvage the valuable contents. We all worked together to transfer toys inside the school, washing and drying them outside first. Everyone helped willingly but those who worked really hard were awarded Ships’ Points to report to their class teacher next day. We now have a lovely new hut for storage of balls, bats, racquets, skipping ropes, hoops, hockey sticks, basketball hoops, and cricket and badminton sets, and more. We have choices including football every second week, and completely non-football choices the other weeks. Hockey and racquet sports are very popular with all ages, and we enjoy spotting future talent. Time to play outside is very valuable to us, and we always use the opportunity when the weather is kind enough.

Indoors, we have many activities to choose from. Everyone has a chance to do each week’s craft, which has been planned in the previous session with children attending ASC. We enjoy boxed games, construction toys, Playmobil, drawing and funny masks, or reading and listening to stories in our quiet room. On rainy days we play a choice of ping-pong, table-football, Playstation and Wii. These photos show some of our activities.

In After School Care we are always busy with a great choice of activities, whether indoors or out (weather permitting).  We have taken photos that show some of our fun.

In craft we made a wonderful patchwork wallhanging  called ‘Our After School Care Family’ by each making a self-portrait on cotton squares.  These were joined with ribbons to remind us of the fun we have together in After School Care.  This term has also included candle decoration for Diwali, creating pictures using Hama beads, making felt hand-puppets and fridge-magnet people, biscuit decoration, making brightly designed Halloween witches hats, painting, sand art and making masks and friendship bracelets.  ASC staff have plenty more planned!

To raise funds for Children in Need and have some fun in ASC we had numerous activities based on Pudsey (and Blush). Many children made Pudsey paintings, decorated Pudsey biscuits, made Pudsey or Blush masks and had a lovely picture of Pudsey painted on their hands. Parents kindly contributed to our spotty donation bucket for Children in Need. The funds were further boosted by the sale of Mrs Simpson’s tablet (a new batch was needed every night that week!) and Mrs Black’s shortbread Pudseys.

Thank you to all After School Care children, parents and staff who together raised the fabulous and generous sum of £351.55 for us to give to this great charity, Children in Need.