THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD

A couple of mornings a week I help out at Jess’s SEN nursery.  I really enjoy seeing the children in the different groups and helping with the activities.  

Recently the nursery had some very special visitors.  They were children from a nearby primary school.  The school children were divided into groups and each group had an adult from their school with them, they were then invited to join the various classes in nursery.  The boys and girls who joined the group I was in arrived just in time to join in with circle time which is the first real activity of the day when we say hello to everyone and also sing a few songs. 

The children sat amongst the nursery children and our teacher asked them to introduce themselves one by one.  Introductions over it was now the turn of the children in our group to introduce themselves in their own special way using song, large photos of each child and a large piece of material which is put over each child’s head in turn. Perhaps I should explain that one.  We have a song that starts off by singing the child’s name (child’s head is then covered) and then asks ‘where are you’ during that part of the song  the child pulls the material off their head (with help if necessary) and we can then sing ‘here I am, here I am, how do you do’.  The children love this, even the more timid ones love to have their head covered and some will get very excited when they see the ‘special blanket’ coming nearer to them in the circle.  The primary children must have thought this was rather odd at first but they were soon joining in enthusiastically.  Next came the nursery rhymes.  Each child in turn is shown two objects which have been taken out of a big box.  Each item represents a nursery rhyme for eg the silver star is for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  Once the child has indicated which one they want to sing about then the song it represents is sung.  Again our visitors joined in with the singing without needing any prompting.

At snack time we all sat around the big table.  By now the school children had got to know the names of the children in our group and were happy to sit amongst them around the table.  Some of our children have to have their snack prepared in a certain way, some cannot feed themselves and others are artificially fed so our visitors learnt that not everyone eats the same way as they do. 

During snack time I was talking to one of the teachers from the school.  She said they had done this before and the children loved it.  The children go back to school for lunch then have to write up about their experiences that morning.  I was told that the things the children wrote last time were lovely to read.

After snack the school children left us for a while whilst our children had their group physio session.  Once that was over they were back again to join us in our next activity.  PANCAKES!  Yes it was Shrove Tuesday and we had pancakes to try with various toppings.  The children in our group who could not eat the pancakes were given the chance to taste a small bit of each topping if it was safe for them to do so.  Some of the toppings were sweet like chocolate sauce and syrup and others were a bit sour like lemon and sugar and marmalade. Of course our visitors were invited to try the pancakes too!

The pancake tasting was done with two children at a time and whilst that was going on the classroom was turned into a playground with toys to ride on, things to crawl in and out of and lots of other things to explore and play with.  This is where I thought the school children came into their own.  By now they knew our children’s names and were happily playing and interacting with them.  This was not a group of able bodied children playing with a group of disabled children, this was just a group of children playing together and having fun.  They asked questions, they were given answers and hopefully they took back to their own school a message that just because some children are different they are still fun to be with.

Later that day I went back to collect Jess.  Her teacher told me that she had had a lovely morning playing with two of the children from the Primary School.  Jess loves one of the toys at nursery that wobbles from side to side when you sit in it and can also spin around.  Two children had been playing with Jess and spinning her round in this toy, Jess was laughing her head off the whole time and loving every minute and the school children were enjoying making her laugh. 

There are campaigns to make disability awareness part of the school curriculum and I do agree with this up to a point, but what those Primary School children experienced they could never have got from a book or an educational film. They were having good old fashioned fun playing together with other children and that is the best learning tool of all.



Children are not born with preconceived ideas and prejudice, this is something they learn from us.

If I could see the world
Thru the eyes of a child
What a wonderful world this would be
There'd be no trouble and no strife
Just a big happy life
With a bluebird in every tree

Part of song written by Sammy Masters, Richard Pope and Tex Satterwhite
(As released by Patsy Cline 9/9/58)