September 13th – 19th Highlights

Posted: 20th September 2021

Our term time provisions are back! After a wonderful summer of fun, some of SELFA’s after school clubs restarted last week and they were all amazing. There were some new faces in our groups therefore a lot of the sessions were spent getting to know each other and deciding on what kind of fun activities the children and young people want to do between now and the next half term. The children that have been coming to SELFA for a while were so welcoming to the new people in the groups and it already seems as though there will be a lot of new friendships built this term! 

Up first, we have SELFA Youth who have this term, decided to pick up ukuleles after finishing their incredibly successful Forest Schools project. This was a new skill to them all but they were naturals! After receiving some training, the group soon knew exactly what they were doing and by the end of their first session, they were playing ‘Stay With Me’ by Sam Smith. The ukulele project has become popular with the group and we can’t wait to see how skilled they get as the project goes on! SELFA Youth also broke up their learning with a healthy snack as they made fruit kebabs which solidified our choice for the group’s star of the week, Harry. Harry welcomed the new members of the group with open arms and shared his feelings with everyone well. Harry was also brilliant at making fruit cocktails and we were delighted to see him get so stuck into the session!

SELFA are always trying to make our snacks as healthy as possible which means that fruit kebabs have been able to grow in popularity across the groups and this is especially apparent at Girls Rock. The group spent some time last week crafting fruit kebabs whilst they discussed the different activities that they wanted to take part in this term which included fundraising. The girls have decided that they want to host a fundraiser in order to raise money for SELFA and give back for all of the times that our children’s charity has helped them. 

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Last Tuesday, we launched our Duke of Edinburgh Award at SELFA’s Youth Council which has got a lot of our young people excited about taking part in some volunteering, learning a new skill and going on the expedition. This is the first time that SELFA has decided to host its own Duke of Edinburgh Award which is why we are so happy to see so many young people up for it. Youth Council was a session of three parts last week and following the Duke of Edinburgh talk, we all celebrated the news that we had received a huge funding award from The National Lottery and our Youth Council were delighted about it. The third and final part of this session was a big game of bench ball. This game was a great way for the group to make new friends and a bit of healthy competition is always good at the end of the day.

Bench ball was also the highlight of our Engage group who welcomed some fresh faces and what better way to break the ice, than to play bench ball with your new friends. This was just one of the thrilling activities that the group got to enjoy. The second part to their session was more of a calming one as they enjoyed a creative activity in which they were able to explore their mental health and think about the ways that they can improve it. 

Up next we have our weekend SEND sessions and we have recently revamped our old Saturday Club sessions to make them even better and more focussed for the children and young people. Saturday Club has now been split into four separate groups and each group will now run fortnightly. Last weekend was all about SELFA Shine and SELFA Sensational. Up first, we had SELFA Sensational which is a sensory focused group and they were able to get out and enjoy the outdoors as they explored the wildlife and played on SELFA’s new outdoor play equipment! SELFA Shine then followed and this group is all about community. The group is working towards a cafe fundraiser for SELFA where they will serve mince pies to our local community. Their first session started off by learning about what we love about cafes before going on to make our own chocolate crispy buns. This group had a magical time, letting their imagination run wild as they pretended that they were in an actual cafe. 

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Our final groups came to SELFA on Sunday as they closed off an incredible first week back of term time provisions. The penultimate group was iMuse Music Therapy who had an impressive session to kick off the term as the children all had a go at playing music using different instruments. Last but not least, we have Explorers who got creative by making clay hedgehogs with their friends. The children designed the hedgehogs all by themselves and they looked great! The children then went onto roast some marshmallows, learn how to safely start fires and build dens. Our second star of the week came from this session as Liv made the best nature den ever. Liv was super creative and the SELFA staff were all so impressed by her.

What a start it has been to our term time sessions and we cannot wait to welcome back even more groups next week. Stay tuned for more!

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Our stars of the week, Harry and Liv (In order)