bongo beats

 

As the start of a new school term looms, we have to say goodbye to ‘summer’ and recap on all the fantastic activities and opportunities that came our way over the holidays.

We have had some great fun over the last six weeks with the fantastic families that make up Huddersfield Down Syndrome Support Group.

One of our local SureStart centres hosted a series of weekly sessions aimed at children with SEN and their siblings. These were superbly organised and the staff were excellent. Our ‘Little Stars’ had the opportunity to use the lovely indoor & outdoor facilities including a fabulous sensory room and also take part in craft and singing sessions!

 

 

 

Another weekly session aimed exclusively at children with SEN took place at ‘The Zone’ – a leisure facility in Huddersfield. Children had exclusive use of the ‘Kids Zone’, Yorkshire’s biggest indoor play structure!

This Summer also saw the return of  SEN holiday clubs at Eureka! Children’s museum in Halifax. These sessions were brilliantly planned and great fun. Each week had a different theme and after the club had finished your family were welcome to continue to tour the museum for as long as you wished! Eureka! are planning Saturday clubs specifically for children with Down Syndrome to start next March! We will of course keep you posted….

 

 

 

Huddersfield Down Syndrome Support Group also organised some fun activities for our members.

Our younger HDSSG’ers enjoyed several sessions at Hollybank Trust’s amazing Hydrotherapy pool. The private sessions in beautifully warm water along with the muted lighting and music make it a very relaxing experience!

 

 

 

 

We booked two sessions with the lovely Tracey and Bongo the dog, aka Bongo Beats, to come along and share their music magic with our little ones. We bopped along to music, sang songs, played instruments, pretended to be sleeping bunnies, played with parachutes and pom poms and hula hoops and bubbles! Great fun!

 

We left Huddersfield on a grey Sunday morning to head to the seaside! We took 14 members and their families to Blackpool and the Sea Life Centre courtesy of Merlin’s Magic Wand. The weather wasn’t much better when we arrived at our destination but after touring the wonderful attraction and seeing some amazing sea creatures we stepped out into glorious sunshine! Perfect for our families to enjoy the rest of the day exploring the sights or playing on the beach!

 

Our last day out of the summer was spent with the brilliant guys at Safe Anchor Trust cruising the Huddersfield waterways. Once again we were blessed with good weather as we set sail from Shepley Bridge Marina in Mirfield. Our families had opportunities to work the locks and steer the boats, even the smallest sailors chipped in! After mooring to enjoy a picnic on the towpath it was time to head back to the marina after another exciting day out!

 

 

HDSSG would like to thank all the people we have met in the places we have visited over the last few weeks. We would also like to thank our families for continuing to support our group, we hope you have had a lovely summer and look forward to our next opportunities to get together.