What sort of Sen activities do you have locally?

[Tessasays]

My daughter is 4 and an half and she has autism. She was previously non-verbal untill she was 3. She can speak now but she's a gestalt language processor. So she only speaks in learn phrases from Ben and holly/ peppa pig. She calls me nanny plum instead of mum. Her developmental age is around 18 months to 2 years so finding her activities to do is quite hard. I couldn't enroll her in ballet or gymnastics, although I think she'd love it, she wouldn't understand the structure of a class, she'd want to just run around doing her own thing and I don't think it would work.

luckily in my town we've managed to find a weekly sen session at our local trampoline park and she loves that, and she's starting in a sen dance club next week, we also take her to the sen showings at the cinema because she won't sit for long periods so taking her while all the kids are also running wild is great. We don't want her to miss out on normal child hood experiences but if we can't be there to supervise these things are great!

she's on the waiting list for swimming lessons too but she's got to wait till she's 5 were we are. I'm wondering elsewhere what they offer because I think it's great that there's so much for sen children nowadays.

Lots of soft play centres do SEN sessions.

If you can find the right group, gymnastics may work. Some gymnastics clubs offer SEN sessions and some of them are child led sessions. Similarly, some trampolining clubs do SEN sessions. Some forest schools have SEN groups. In some areas, there are SEN music &/or dance sessions.

As DD gets older, you might want to look at other sports clubs such as football (often called ability counts sessions), climbing centres sometimes have SEN sessions, cricket (the sessions for older DC are called Super 1s teams but sometimes there are sessions for primary age DC too), rugby, surfing (some areas have adaptive surfing), cycling clubs (some have trikes and more specialist bikes if necessary).

It’s worth asking around locally because sometimes there are more general play/activity groups for children with additional needs. Might be worth asking your local parent carer forum what is around.

We have some of the above locally, some not so locally but just about doable, and some aren’t local, but I know they exist in some areas.

My daughter does swimming once a week. We have recently also found another swim session which is open to the public but found my daughter fits in fine as it's a disco them.

We have also made use of soft plays when they hold sen sessions but they are not so often around here

She's on the waiting list for swimming but they don't start the special needs swimming in my local pool until they're 5 which will be May. Thankyou all

Gosh that's a while away. She will love it when she goes though

Yeah, I do take her swimming myself from time to time and she loves it

Do you have Riding for the Disabled? Or many riding schools are great with SEN- horses are a really common Special Interest (although it is expensive!).

A local ASD charity runs loads of stuff on commission from the council including toddler, kids and youth groups. They also run holiday activities/clubs and residentials, and things like trips for the whole family and walks that the staff join to support. DD goes 2x a week to the disability sessions of a local swim club. Also we've found watersports very inclusive and ASD friendly.

Does your council have an up to date Local Offer page? That's a good place to start.