October 11th-17th Highlights

Posted: 18th October 2021

As we go into our final week before the October half-term, we must first reflect on SELFA’s incredible week that has just passed. We begin with SELFA Starters who’s focus was all about science. The group is now working towards their CREST Award which involves completing a range of scientific experiments; the first one being the sink or float challenge. The group were tasked with predicting which items would sink and which would float and the group were amazing with their predictions and got so many right!

Over at one of the other younger groups, we have Smile Project who got the wonderful opportunity to Zoom call some of our friends at Ashfield Care Home. We got to chat about how days went and we even got to sing some of our favourite nursery rhymes together which was so much fun!

We also had an old group return last week as Families Together Mindful made a return. The group spent the sessions getting to know the other members in the group and then went on to a creative activity where they made a collage of themselves so that they could show everyone else more about their hobbies and interests. 

As you may have seen from our social media posts last week, our Thrive group were fortunate enough to be treated to a trip to the local allotment with volunteer Joel who was so kind to show the children all of the wonderful things that we can do with an allotment. The children can so much fun and we bet they can’t wait to visit again. 

We now move on to our older primary school group as SELFA active took part in some mindfulness exploration before learning a new skill which was frisbee! The children worked super hard to ensure that they understood the technique that was required to succeed in the skill. In the end the children were able to throw and catch wonderfully well and now they can safely safe they have learnt a brand new skill!

The welcome Amal event is coming up soon and Champs have been preparing hard to ensure that they are ready for when it comes around. Last week to prepare, they created journey sticks and banners. This means that SELFA and Skipton will be ready for when the event passes through.

We now move on to our final primary school group as the year 6’s in Inspire joined forces with youth group SELFA Wellness as they were all treated to a dance session after Skipton Youth Dance visited SELFA. Both groups showed off their incredible dance moves and teamwork skills as they encouraged and cheered each other on until they all succeeded. 

Music was also the name of the game in SELFA Youth who continued their strong work on their ukulele project. Last week, the group was introduced to Uptown Funk as the song of the week. The group has made a great start and will continue to work on this song this week too. We are so proud of the progress that this group has made so far this term. 

Engage enjoyed a great session as they had a special visit from our old healthy food coordinator Nichola Holmes. Nichola prepared tacos and made it Taco Tuesday for the group. After the group ate, they were treated to a game of bowling which created a star of the week in Matthew who scored two strikes with. His first to shots at bowling. WOW!

Our final youth group was Bentham Youth who were able to spend the session enjoying some hard earned chilling out time as they reflected upon their residential last week. Whilst they were doing this they were given the chance to made friendship bracelets which turned out great. Our other Bentham group was the primary group who continued to work on their CREST Award by making a storm in a cup. This was such a fun activity – even if it was a bit messy!

The CREST Award was also present in SELFA Sensational as they also took part in a sink or float activity. The group picked their favourite toys and then decided if it was going to float or not. One of our other Saturday sessions was SELFA Shine who went to Outside the Box cafe in Ilkley which is a cafe that employs people with learning difficulties. We all chose from the menu and learnt about how we can be waiters too. 

Our Star of the Week Matthew