Eleven young people from the year seven and eight Kic.in2.study groups along with several study centre staff attended the pantomime at Northampton Derngate on 2^nd January.  Jimmy Osmond may not be everyone’s idea of a pop star but we all booed and shouted and enjoyed the fun as the prince found Cinderella,  the ugly sisters entertained, and poor old Buttons didn’t do very well at all!  Our favourite character was the Baron and his friendly gorilla! 

Several of the group attended the Supporter to Reporter training programme over half term and they enjoyed a match day experience in November.  They worked alongside media professionals, visited a radio station and developed skills in planning, interviewing, recording, editing and meeting deadlines.  They developed their own web pages where they can publish podcasts and blogs which they will continue to use over the coming year. 

On 15th December  several of our students attended the presentation/celebration night at the Cobblers.  They were awarded certificates by Northampton Town players  and received goodie bags from Jean.

They’ve had a great nine weeks during which they’ve made origami sports shirts, toured the stadium and taken part in an orienteering activity, interviewed players, identified the locations of all the premiership football clubs and taken on the Diamonds Club Challenge.  They’ve also done some player maths, built a remote controlled lego buggy and carried out internet research to plan an away game weekend.

When asked to evaluate the programme three gave a score of 10/10 and two gave 9/10.  The most popular activity by far was Robolab

Once again our thanks to Bennett and Stephen for their work in making sure everyone had a good time.

 We have a number of new staff – Helena has joined the  Projects team and will be working with Val on Kic.in2.study and other projects.  Sara is working with Rob at the Diamonds Study Centre and Jaimie is working with Jean at the Cobblers Study Centre.

There they experienced a number of scenarios aimed at teaching them how to keep themselves safe - they learned about fire safety, water safety, road safety, the dangers of building sites and railways, farms and dark alleys.  They looked at dangerous situations in the home and watched a video about internet safety.  They also practised making a 999 call and how to put an unconscious person into the recovery position.

Everyone demonstrated either bravery or determination and everyone could be proud of themselves.  Some people impressed with the support and encouragement they offered to others.  Thanks go to Kurt, Tom and Stephen from Grendon who made it possible for us to have such a good day.

Click on the photo for a full report and a gallery of photos. Leave a comment to let us know what you think.

 We were lucky to have the opportunity to tour the stadium, visiting many areas the general public don’t usually get the chance to see.  Lots of photographs were taken and the students then used Publisher to create a comic strip incorporating photographs and text.  The stadium was the location for the orienteering activity which brought out the competitive spirit in several people.  

A presentation by the healthy food and drink team saw us sampling a range of fruit, some familiar, some fairly strange, and then we made and taste-tested several smoothie recipes.  Mmmmmm  

We followed up this activity by devising a healthy menu for the Cobblers team on a match day.

A memory workshop challenged us all to improve our memory skills through a series of activities ranging from the familiar “I went to market….”, Kim’s game, practising grouping  things together, card memory games and more complicated visualisation tricks.  Everyone saw some improvement in their ability to remember things.  On another occasion we looked at different types of intelligence and tried to work out where our strengths lay – were we number smart, people smart, body smart, word smart, myself smart, picture smart, nature smart or music smart?

One week saw us visiting Franklin Gardens to join a PfS group from the Saints Study Centre in a Circus Skills workshop led by the county jester Kevin Burke.  Research has shown that these activities give the brain a bit of a workout and aid concentration.  We also saw how it encouraged the students to persevere at an activity and keep practising until they’d mastered it.  We saw some great juggling, fantastic work with the flower sticks, superb plate spinnng and impressive stilt walking.

Bellboating was a new venture for the Kic.in2.study programme and we are very grateful to Margaret for organising our session at the Northampton Sailing Club at Pitsford reservoir.  She assured us the boat was virtually unsinkable, provided everyone with buoyancy aids, a quick lesson in the rudiments, and before we knew it the Kic.in2.study boat crew were on the water! 

This has been a fantastic group to work with and we will miss them on Wednesday evenings.  However we hope to see them on some of the holiday activities on offer, and again next year.