Why set up a website?

You may well ask me why I am setting this website up! What is my motivation? What do I hope to achieve? I have to admit that it has been far more work than I anticipated! I have had to rely heavily on my son Dan (a massive thanks, Dan! x) for the technical and creative side of making it work. I rather naively thought it would be just like uploading material to Google Drive or Dropbox. I now know that it’s so much more complicated!  It has taken a while to come together, partly because of the technical side, but also because I wanted to make sure that what I present is accessible, clear and easy to follow.

I began to think about sharing my experiences of Aslan and the material I had put together about 2 years ago. We had been going for 3 years and I was spending quite a bit of time each week preparing activities. I had scoured the internet for resources and expected to find a church doing something similar that I could download material from, but after a while I realised that there seemed a gap that maybe I could fill.  I believe it was one of those God-planted thoughts!  Most of the material, therefore, is original but where I’ve seen something on another website that would work well I’ve included it as a hyperlink or I’ve sought and been given permission to reproduce the activity. All the illustrations have come from 2 free websites:  http://www.freebibleimages.org and https://pixabay.com/ to whom I am very grateful!

I began teaching children with physical and complex medical needs 20 years ago and have just retired from that school. I was the music teacher and worked part-time, teaching class groups aged 5-19. For 12 of those years I also worked one day a week in another school which changed designation during the time I was there, from moderate learning needs to a school for children with autism.

This background has helped me in my approach and understanding of children with a range of special needs. Because I have seen the value of having specialised schools, where children receive a high level of support and have activities set which are personalised and achievable, I also see the same value in having a separate group at church – not just to babysit, but to teach them in a safe, controlled environment about how God reveals his love for all people through the stories of the Bible. If there is one overarching aim it would be for each of them to know and understand His love for them.