Class 4 kicked off the holiday season in style at the start of December with a grand day out.
First they were invited to visit our partners; Judith, Pam, Shirley and Godfrey at John Lewis, where they were invited to choose some lovely Christmas gifts.
After that, they all enjoyed a picnic lunch on the Ratho Seagull Trust Barge and a visit from Santa!
We would like to thank our partners; John Lewis and the Seagull Trust for these wonderful opportunities and wish them all the very best at Christmas time.
We are going to be on the STV news today. Small clip at the end of the 1pm bulletin. A longer one will be at the end of the 6pm news. Tell everybody about it! Thanks
We have had a very successful trial of the Innowalks over the last 4 weeks. 20 pupils had the opportunity to experience this amazing piece of equipment and every one of them showed great pleasure in being able to walk. The distance individual pupils covered ranged from 300 meters to 7,700 meters, which will all count towards their Daily Mile.
The Innowalk has given pupils the opportunity to exercise on their own. STV came to our school to do a feature on the Innowalks at Oaklands! This started our fundraising appeal towards our dream of owning two Innowalks (a small one and a large one). If we succeed, we will be the first school in Scotland to have them!
We need your help to make this dream come true by raising £70,000. Please share this with as many people as you can. Many thanks!
A MASSIVE – WELL DONE TO Sophie D. and Dylan M. who both achieved their yellow belt in Karate this week. They achieved their junior yellow belt in karate, based on a syllabus issued by The Scottish Karate Federation.
These 2 remarkable young people started karate by taking part in whole school taster sessions. They were showing a keen interest in karate and were picked to join our Karate group, who train on a weekly basis. They started by just trying some pad work, but soon moved onto basic “kihon” karate movement. This involved moving forward, punching and blocking.
We would like to Thank Andy Elliot 5th Dan for all his hard work with our Karate group. Watch out for our next lot of karate experts in January
We were delighted to welcome Gill and her cockapoo Molly-Mae to Oaklands last week. Molly is a therapet – an animal specially trained and chosen due to her calm and gentle temperament .
The children (and staff!) loved having her in class and we’re looking forward to seeing her back in school this week.
On Friday 3rd November pupils, parents, staff and friends of Oaklands took part in Oaklands launch of their Daily Mile. We were very lucky to be able to welcome Maria Lyle Paralympian along. Maria spent the morning answering our questions, sharing her experiences and medals with us. Maria is a 17yr old parasports athlete from Dunbar, competing mainly in T35 sprint events. At 14 she set the world record in 200m sprint, a record she has since broken on several occasions.
The oaklands Mile is an adaption of the Daily Mile Campaign that schools around the world are actively participating in. It is all about personal achievement, improving health and well being, having fun and and extending our opportunities to get out and about more during our daily school routine. After a warm up with Maria and our friends from Scran Academy, everyone set out to complete their first few 100metres.
100 metres can be a rather ambitious distance for most of us, but in Oaklands we like a challenge! As always everyone beat our expectations and within 15 minutes had collectively clocked up a staggering 80 laps……10,000 steps…… and a huge distance of 5 miles. It was an incredible morning, we are immensely proud of everyone who participated and are looking forward to seeing you out and about clocking up your miles.
Oaklands School has been lucky enough to be given an Innowalk Pro for a 4 week trial! The Innowalk Pro is a motorised training device which allows the user to change their postural position by safely and comfortably transitioning from sitting to standing to moving. Using the Innowalk gives users the chance to experience assisted, guided and repetitive movement in an upright or semi upright position as well as a leg pattern which is similar to normal gait.
Several pupils have had the chance to experience this amazing equipment earlier this week with very positive results. During the next 4 weeks, we will try to give as many pupils the opportunity to try the Innowalk. We will also be gathering some data relating to range of movement, circulation, digestion alertness and general well-being.
We are hoping that the data can be used to support our request for funding if Oaklands decides to start raising the funds to buy our own Innowalk. They cost around £34,000 each ( and dare I say it: we would like two: a small one and a large one!)
The Innowalk will be on display during tomorrow’s parents consultations. More information can be found on the website:
At the beginning of October, our lead physio, Anke, flew to Russia to deliver MOVE seminars and training in Moscow and Yekaterinburg. Anke is trying to spread MOVE around the world and did a fantastic job representing Oaklands and the MOVE project.
Oaklands School 