This saying could have two meanings. 1. Someone is not good at dealing with stressful situations 2. its hot in the kitchen! For our young people we help them with both. Our conversational education takes the stress out of learning and one of the favourite and great life skills we work on is cooking skills, and this week with the weather being as beautiful as it has, the kitchen is definitely a hot place!

We start this week looking at all the cooking we have done and a hot Thai curry on a hot day was one young person’s good idea! Lots of other creations both cooked indoors and out from Schnitzels with creamy mash and honey roasted carrots, Mac N Cheese with Garlic break to brownies, pancakes and Oreo cheesecake!

Even our staff managed to get in the kitchen to make a cuppa this week!

A trip to Abbey Gardens to enjoy being outside and where we found a replica in Lego.

The gardens are framed by the abbey wall that runs from the 13th century Abbot’s Bridge via the imposing Abbey Gate to St Edmundsbury Cathedral.

Created in 1831 by Nathaniel Hodson, the Abbey Gardens was originally a botanic garden laid out in the same style as the Royal Botanic Gardens in Brussels. In 1936 the concentric circles were replaced by the sixty-four island beds which, together with illuminations, formed part of the Coronation celebrations for George VI in 1937.

A hot sunny day would not be complete without a trip to the seaside…..

Felixstowe this week. Four miles of sand/shingle beaches, from Felixstowe Ferry to Landguard. 

….And of course an icecream

When the sun is shining we can do our maths and English indoors or outdoors:

• Maths – working out the scores from Mini Golf, Crazy Golf and Foot Golf
• English – Drawing lowercase and uppercase letters in the sand
• Maths – work for GCSE and preparing for exams!
• English- Practicing letters for their name on a board
• Maths – Practicing times tables and addition with board games

Over in Newmarket 1 lots of work continues on the MX5 project. Here we are re-building the suspension.

And the front has had a link of paint – got to keep up the appearances with all those new signs!

Newmarket 2 has been super busy with wall building bricklaying carpentry bench making, chopping boards and resin sanding for oak clock, together with some bike maintenance. What a busy workshop!

Let’s step outside the workshop for a while and have some fun on grass…. a friendly game of football with an awesome team photo at the end.

Some crazy golf and time by the water fishing…

A different type of workout now in the gym, even our tutors like to flex their muscles!

From first visits to our unit, cooking steak & chips on a camp fire, to making a treasure maps and hiding treasure on the boat to ensure it was as tricky as possible to find! – all the fun of learning outdoors.

Lowestoft continues to get its face lift. Why call in builders and decorators in, when we have young people ready and willing to learn about these great skills that can lead on to careers for them. From hanging doors, painting & decorating, laying flooring and wall papering for kitchen and studio – building units and painting a geometric wall for the beauty area.

Some Arts & Crafts – here we are drawing a Tardis and practicing different methods to decorate a painting and making a Zombie’s head out of clay!

Here we have Minecraft being played – but what is really important is the cooperative play between two young people.

If a student / teacher relationship can survive flat pack furniture…it can survive anything!

Clip & Climb and Gravity Rocks Challenges…succeeded

Climbing plays a key role in early childhood motor skills development. Helping to hone spatial and directional awareness, and also boosts physical skills such as balance, hand and foot coordination, and agility. Challenging, risky (but safe) play helps children to learn about themselves and to work out what their own individual limits are. Children learn skills to manage risk through play and these skills can be used in other life-long situations.

This young man wanted to record what he had been doing at Pushforward, so we bought him his own folder to allow him to track his progress.

When you go out for a walk and make a new furry friend!

“In fact, a recent study that used university students (who are notoriously stressed) as subjects found that petting cats and dogs for 10 minutes decreased the amount of cortisol (a stress hormone) in their saliva. These findings are consistent with the notion that interacting with cats and dogs decreases stress.” https://www.vet.cornell.edu/pet-your-cat-reduce-stress

Visiting a Bunker in Rougham

Remains of World War II American base at Rougham East of Bury St Edmunds Mess hut … Inside an empty german bunker of the Second World War

Working on a proposal

Computers are in children’s lives every day, so learning how to use them, learning how they can help you into adult hood, not just for gaming but for projects and work can contribute to children’s intellectual development, and bridge the gap between concrete and abstract thinking. As children explore cause and effect, create patterns, solve problems, and discover solutions.

But at the end of the week, when the work is done, the learning achieved, the goals smashed and its sunny – sometimes we’ve just had enough and its time for a rest….

Our Ethos

No one can begin to affect the world around them until they are CONFIDENT , COMFORTABLE, happy in their own skin and have found their SPARK! We take the time to understand and develop programmes from where the learner is in the world not where we think they should be.