Ok, kids, it's beanbag time.

I might have mentioned how completely awesome Tokoroth's nursery have been given that they are a private nursery (albeit a Montessori).

In addition to the assessments taking place within the NHS framework, coordinated by Tokoroth's health visitor, it appears we have a second stream of activity taking place being run by the local SEN co-ordinator.

Visiting this week the SEN lady kindly dropped off a questionnaire for the nursery to complete, all FIFTY FOUR pages of it. A number of questions are posed in this document such as:

Can roll plasticine into a sausage?
Stands on tip-toe when playing?
Able to throw a bean-bag into a bucket?

The nursery are required to answer 'Never', 'Sometimes' or 'Always' and add comments on 54 pages at approx. 16 questions per page.  So how do you answer questions like the above if you've never seen him roll a sausage or throw a bean bag?

Do you a) leave those questions blank b) guess based on similar activities or c) something else?

The nursery chose the third option. How did they go about answering the questions? They enagaged Tokoroth's whole class in a series of activities to answer the questions. If they didn't know the answer to the question, they found out!

Can roll plasticine into a sausage? "Ok, kids, we are all going to make sausages!"

While 20 kids got playful with the play-doh Tokoroth was carefully observed and the question answered.

Able to throw a bean-bag into a bucket? "Ok, kids grab a bucket and a bean bag...."

Stands on tip-toe while playing? "Ok, kids, it's Stretch and Grow time..."

If there was a question they couldn't answer they invented a classroom activity so they could observe Tokoroth and record an answer.

A-mazing.