Winter 2024/2025

With so much still happening, what a brilliant start and end of this term. As always, thank you to all of our students and staff at Liberty Learning for all their hard work. They always go above and beyond.

Our students have all worked well as a team to provide excellent animal care. They have been working on getting the alpacas tamer and more used to being handled. This has allowed us to desensitise them to allow the use of headcollars. They have been very patient with the alpacas and have given them all the time they require.

Not only this, but they have also worked together doing pig and dog agility. From set up to getting them through the tunnel, they have been consistent. Working as a team to guide them through and teaching them all different tricks.

Floss has been amazing with the students; she has been working hard as our therapy pony. Some students have learnt how to groom her, pick out her hoofs, and walk her. Just being around Floss has helped many students with being able to communicate their feelings freely.

During the cold days, everyone still loved being outdoors and being busy. We have continued to maintain the war memorial across from us, keeping it clean and tidy. Everyone has also enjoyed sitting around the campfires in groups and learning how to cook on the fire. This has allowed them to work as part of a team and to develop their social and cooking skills.

The Christmas spirit was high during the last week of term and the students enjoyed making and decorating the Liberty Learning site. They also made reindeers crafted out of wood as well as some log-slice tree decorations. Following this, we all completed some Christmas and winter-based worksheets for fun.

We are very lucky to own some metal detectors, and our students have all taken part in learning how they work and managed to find some old coins from 1888 and 1885. They have found this very interesting, learning about the past, old-style coins, and the history about them. This has allowed them to see how much coins have changed over the years.

Liberty Learning has continued to work on their music skills. From students learning and playing guitar, keyboard and many other instruments. By combining all of their talents, they have been able to teach one another different instruments. Because of our bespoke courses, we have been able to design some expressive arts worksheets, helping alongside the music.

A special thank you from the local elderly resident that our students helped. They went over and helped tidy up his garden from all the fallen branches as a team. This has allowed him to get around safely without worrying about tripping or getting stuck. Our students thrive in helping the local community, it enables us to teach them valuable life skills.

Our post-16 students have continued to develop their social skills toward their progression pathway and enjoyed a walk to the local café. They were able to order their own drinks and sit around a table having conversations with one another. They have all worked well together and joined in with many activities and all helped during our community outreach projects.

It was a sad goodbye to all of those students who unfortunately had to leave us this term. However, we are so pleased to see them all progressing further. We have also welcomed many new students, and they are getting on really well.

We look forward to seeing what the next term brings and to welcome you all back soon.