This February half term I was lucky enough to be invited to go out to Brunei and work with the team at Hornbill School. The school caters for both Nepali children of Gurkha soldiers and children of serving British military and civilian MOD personnel. It has over 480 children from 3 – 11 years of age. Usually the school has around 85-90% of children with English as an additional language (EAL), with high mobility as a result of unit moves and redeployment. So not without it’s challenges! Having said that they were judged ‘Outstanding’ at their last inspection. I was working with the Senior Management Team and the Early Years Department doing a mixture of observation, action planning, data analysis, … Read More
Dough Gym Week – Creating a Dough Gym
Now that you have assessed your children in relation to their gross and fine motor dexterity, you can set up your Dough Gym. What is Dough Gym? Dough Gym is a gym for children where you work out with dough – Simple! Dough Gym is a specific daily intervention – If it is going to have impact it has to be regular and consistent. Dough Gym is directly linked to assessment and attainment. Dough Gym is exclusive – You need to make the children who need this intervention feel special and chosen for all of the right reasons, not just because they are failing. I usually work with a maximum of 8 children, not a whole group. It is not … Read More
Dough Gym Week – Fine Motor Physical Development
Once the pivots have worked their way down to the wrist, the journey doesn’t stop there, although for lots of children it becomes far trickier. This is where children often get stuck. The end of the ‘pivot’ journey will be when we get that mark making implement to the very last, smallest set of pivots, right at the end of the fingers. If we can hold our mark making tool there then we will have the fullest, most dexterous range of movement that our bodies can provide. Penguin Pre School The hand is quite a complex piece of machinery and is made up of lots of different joints and muscle groups that interconnect and work together to provide maximum dexterity. … Read More
A Week of Dough Gym…
I have had loads of requests for more information about Dough Gym recently so, rather than do one GIGANTIC post, I am going to do a Dough Gym post every day this week. By next weekend you will all be experts! I first started doing Dough Gym as a Reception teacher way back in the Early 1990’s. In those days it was the policy of the school that I was working in, to start each day by getting children who couldn’t write their names to copy it through tracing paper. It didn’t take me long to realise that there was a core group of children that were really struggling to hold their pencil, never mind recognise and write their name. … Read More