A ROARING TIME AT LONGLEAT

Carers, staff, foster children and birth children from the north area all piled in to their vehicles and headed off for the day.

We met at the gates at 10.30, looking forward to a day of watching animal behaviours. Some may say why go all the way to Longleat for that, there’s plenty of that going on at Head Office!!!! Although raining our spirits were not dampened.

What to do first? Obviously a trip round the safari park. As usual the lions were ‘lazy’, the tigers ‘timid’, the wolves ‘wolfish’, the llamas ‘languid’ and the monkeys ‘mischievous’; jumping on cars and dismantling essential items from the bodywork. Not the best place to open windows in order to get a good picture, one would think. However Stacey B was in her ‘Annie Leibovitz’ mood, not sure whether the instruction to “say cheese” was understood by the rhinos though!! All safely got through, though a head count had to be taken on exiting to ensure that we hadn’t picked up any new placements!

The train round the park was enjoyed by the younger element, though the older generation felt obliged to tell us all that they had always wanted to be ‘train driver’. Then on to Pets Corner. This gave everyone a chance to get really close to the animals. Anthony N proudly showing off his skills at handling spiders. The parrot show was brilliant with lots of antics providing plenty of laughs.

Sadly the day didn’t last long enough and at 4.00 we all set off for home, tired but happy.

Overall it was a really fantastic day and all agreed that we should do it again. Perhaps next time staff, carers and children (fostered and birth) from the south area could join in.

Boris the Brazilian Tapir

Summer Holiday Activity Weeks

Well the summer (????!!!!!) is over and by now (almost) all the children will have returned to school, and the holidays will be a thing of the past…but not forgotten by those weary soldiers who are still recovering!!!

The activity weeks were offered as a respite service for all carers from the Plymouth and North Devon offices, because we knew we would be able to support transport for children in these areas, however, we were really pleased that thanks to members of staff being willing to travel up to three hours to and from an activity day, we were also able to include two sets of carers from our Brinkworth Office with the odd days respite too.

A total of 18 children joined us during the two weeks, providing respite for 11 sets of carers.

We enjoyed a number of activities throughout the weeks. The rain unfortunately put pay to our planned visits to the park and one of our beach days, but everything else ran smoothly and to plan.

The first week’s highlights for me were the visit to Sherrie and David’s farm. We had a tractor ride and the younger children loved feeding the calves. During the week the teenage girls had a Body Shop party and the lads enjoyed a trip to the cinema. We were also treated to a fantastic cooking experience from M and D, an art workshop with a local artist and a Dr Who Day.

I really enjoyed seeing the doom and gloom faces on the children who were told we were going to choose a book each at the local bookshop, raise a smile, when they spent time browsing the bookshelves and each finding books they really wanted. One young man said he hated books but was delighted to find some ‘Top Gear’ books he liked. One of our teenagers also came out with a maths GCSE book! ‘Star Wars’ and good old girly novels were also favourites, and the unknown artistic talents of one young man who bought a fantastic dragon art book, were unleashed.

The highlight of the week was undoubtedly the trip to the Milky Way. Bumper cars, the roller coaster and the death slide were the favourites of the day. Our thanks go to teenage hero of the hour who supported(!) C, to go down the death slide. Well done C from the one who dismally failed to pluck up the courage last year!

Thankfully we had a break between the two activity weeks. We had really felt our ages and I heard a number of others as well as myself admit that they’d had a long lie in over the weekend to recover!!!!

The second week we had a little better weather. We had a superb day out at Skern Lodge, an activity centre in Appledore. This had to be my least anticipated activity planned…. I was dreading it! I would never have believed I could have such a fabulous day and the children were fantastic and courageous, supporting each other and the staff to go on activities many of us, if not dreaded, were anxious about. We were very proud of one of the lads, who was very apprehensive and hates heights and then gained the courage to go on the crate stacking and zip wire activities. The children and staff crawled up and down tunnels all afternoon then relaxed doing archery to complete a great day!

We also went to the Calvert Trust where some of the children had horse and carriage races and went swimming.

Thankfully we did not have to cancel the beach day the second week and most of us had a great time in the water, in different states of dress – some fully clothed, some in bathing costumes and then the ‘professionals’ in their wet suits complete with body boards and even a surf board. The pride of the teenager who had not been in the sea since he was a toddler was felt by all…..we had trouble getting him out of the water he loved it so much!

Other activities during the week included a visit from a skunk, a snake, millipede and giant cockroaches from Exmoor Zoo, a couple of the girls had their nails done, teenage lads went to the cinema and go-karting and we were also lucky enough to be invited back to the farm for a barbeque and treasure hunt, which proved that some of us were a little more geographically challenged than others!

All of the children who came to the activity weeks will receive a certificate for their achievements

Website Review

www.homeworkelephant.co.uk

This helpful website claims to provide all the resources you will ever need to complete homework assignments. Since its launch, the site has expanded considerably and now boasts over 5000 resources.

By acting as a web-portal the site links you directly to various other sites that carry the information you are looking for. This is an invaluable tool for secondary school children of all ages and the site carries information right up to A Level. You can even check the National Curriculum to make sure you're on the right track.

The site covers a wide list of subjects and those topics that are relevant to Key Stages 1, 2 and 3 from the National Curriculum. Some such as History are sub-divided by geographical area and periods making it easy to locate specific information.

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The 'Hints' Section provides a list of hints and tips for learning and for doing homework. Most are quite obvious but useful to reiterate them for reluctant children!!