Reach News
Our Budding Reach Reporters get together weekly to discuss all the highlights and events that are happening in and around the Reach Centre. They interview students and staff, take and upload pictures and share their experiences with you. Please check back regularly to see what our reporters have been reporting on.
May 2018
Article 12: Calor Community Fund- another exciting fundraising opportunity!
Please vote for us at between 25th May and 29th June 2018.
We recently applied for the Calor Community Grant of £5,000 and our project for the new industrial kitchen has been approved! This would be an amazing leap towards our goal but we need your votes to get through to the panel of judges.
Voting is open between Friday 25th May and Friday 29th June. After registering to vote on the website you will find us under £5,000, Somerset projects and will be given 10 votes to support the project(s) of your choice.
Please share our news and the link as far and wide as you can, the more votes that we get, the more likely we are to get through to the next stage!
Thank you for your continued support, from all the Students & Staff at Reach Opportunity Centre.
Article 11: Reach and Community matters at Waitrose. By Becky, Catrin & Kayleigh
We sat down as a big group and had a group discussion about fundraising ideas for our new kitchen. We called it our think tank.
One of the things we came up with was to write letters to the supermarkets asking for their help with our fundraising for our new kitchen.
We are proud to announce that Waitrose in Weston-Super-Mare have chosen us to be a part of their community matters project.
We would like to thank Waitrose for the choosing the Reach Opportunity Centre to be part of their community matters project.
Please make sure you ask for a green token when you go through checkout and support Reach by putting it in our community matters project box.
Thank you!
Article 10: Breaking News!!!! Boris and Donald our new piglets have arrived!!!!!
At the Reach centre Boris and Donald arrived around 11.05 on Tuesday 1st May.
Lulu feels happy they are here.
They are lovely and cuddly.
By Becky, Kayleigh & Lulu.
April 2018
Article 10: A very lovely big Easter egg By Becky, Catrin & Kayleigh
On Wednesday 11th April. A lovely lady called Marian from the Cheddar Vale Lion club came to the Reach Opportunity Centre to donate a very big lovely Easter egg. All the students discussed as a big group that we were going to use the very big lovely Easter egg for cakes and tray bakes that we make in our cookery classes.
Dear Cheddar Vale Lions Club
Thank you so very very much for donating the very wonderful big Easter egg. We will use the Easter egg for our cakes and tray bakes in our cookery classes.
Thank you so much
Love from
Everyone
At
The Reach Opportunity Centre
Article 9: Kunekune pigs: A Guide to keeping kunekune pigs
By Becky, Catrin & Kayleigh
Donald & Boris
1. Feeding
High levels of protein
Lots of fibre
Grass
Vegetables
Apples in the autumn
Winter food is 1lb of 16% protein sow and weaner meal
Never feed pet pigs human waste food
No table scraps that have been associated with meat products
Bread from a meat sandwich must not be fed to the pigs.
2. grazing
Pigs need at least ½ acre of land to graze
3. Fencing
Wooden fence with mesh is required
4 Vaccinations
Need vaccination against erysipelas two injections plus every 6 months
They need worming 4-6 months
Article 8: Reach bowling trip By Becky & Catrin
On Tuesday 10th of April 2018 the reach students and staff went out for a great day to Hollywood bowl in Taunton.
We all had our lunch at the Hollywood bowl cafe . We all enjoyed our food and spending time with everybody from reach.
We played one game of ten pin bowling in teams , it was great fun to see everyone having fun and taking part.
Here are some questions that we asked students and staff .
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Did you enjoy going on the bowling trip?
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Did you enjoy your food at Hollywood bowl? What did you have to eat ?
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What was your favourite part of the day?
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Did you have fun? Did you enjoy being a part of a team?
Montana said
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Yes I did enjoy going bowling.
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Yes I did. I had a cheese and tomato pizza
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The bowling
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Yes i loved it and i had fun. Yes I did enjoy being a part of a team.
Rhianna Said
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Yes I did enjoy it
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Yes I did. I had a Hot dog
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The bowling
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Yes I did , yes i did enjoy being a part of a team
Kate said
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Yes I did enjoy it
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Delicious I had a cheese and tomato pizza
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Winning
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I had lots of fun. I really did . It made me very happy to see everybody joining in and enjoying themselves
A very big thank you to Jill and Pete for organising such a fab day.
Reach News- March 2018
Article 5: An update on the pigs by Catrin, Jenny & Lulu.
The students at reach have been working really hard to get the pig area ready for the new arrivals.
Students have made new plans for the pig area. Catrin "I did the think tank for the pig area, we all thought of ideas about how the pig area could look, we drew this onto a plan then took a vote on the best plan and talked to staff. Here is the final plan->
We have cleaned the area to make it fresh for the new piglets. We used a pitchfork to pick up the wet straw. We put the wet straw into the wheelbarrow and took it to the compost.
By Lulu
The students have written a to do list to make sure all the jobs will be complete. These are:
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Separate dry and wet straw.
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Wet straw on compost.
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Dry straw – put in to bags.
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Clear and tidy the area.
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Move the pig house and clean it.
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Measure out water hole and concrete scratching pad.
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Clear out area for water hole and concrete scratching pad. By Jenny
Article 4: Shopping at Reach- a video. By Connor, Jenny & Kayleigh.
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Check the menu for the week and the number of students and staff.
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Check the cupboards for ingredients and mark off what we need and check the toliletries and drinks.
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Create the shopping list.
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Go through the checklist and get the bags and Reach purse.
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Off we go....
All Videos
Reach News- February 2018
Article 3: The New Kitchen by Laura Brown
February 27, 2018
We are hoping to install a new kitchen at the reach centre. This means that we will have more room to cook.
Also we will be able to cook and offer more options to our customers on the tuck shop.
The students and staff are feeling very excited about the new kitchen. Jenny is excited about cooking more of her favourite foods. Catrin and Tom are looking “forward to doing more cooking and serving more hot food”. Jack is “feeling confident about washing up in the new kitchen” and Becks and Jon are excited about “experimenting with new, different foods”.
Congratulations to Catrin!!
February 20, 2018
We are very proud to announce that Catrin has now started her new, paid position at Wookey Hole Restaurant!
Catrin has worked really hard at Reach to increase her confidence and improve a number of transferable skills needed in the workplace. She has prepared for and attended a number of interviews over the past number of weeks and all the hard work has paid off.
Everyone at Reach is incredibly proud of this amazing achievement, a huge well done Catrin!
The Reach students have been working really hard researching information about our new piglets
As a group we found out about how much food piglets need, and what types of food they can and cannot have.
Piglets
8 weeks -4 months
0.5kg pig pellets per day
4-9 months
0.75kg pig pellets per day
Never give kune kune pig’s food scraps.
Piglets like vegetables in the summer, they also like to eat grass in the summer. They like to have fruit in the autumn.
Jenny found out that adults will eat 1-1 .5kg pig pellets per day. The more grass, vegetables, hay or other feed given the less pellets are needed.
Rhianna found out that adult pigs can maintain good condition
on grass throughout the spring and summer.
Research shows the best time to get piglets is in April. So this is when we will meet our new arrivals
We are all very excited! This is what the students have said:
Becky said that "she is so looking forward to taking the new piglets for walks. I am so very excited about getting the new piglets. I cannot wait to see them interacting with us students".
Tom said: "They are adorable and cute". He’s looking forward to stroking them.
Laura said she is "very happy about getting the new piglets".
She’s looking forward to feeding them, cleaning them out and walking them.
February Article 2: Coming soon....
New piglets! By Becky, Catrin & Rhianna
February Article 1: Fundraising. By Becky, Catrin, Connor & Lulu.
The Reach Centre is aiming to raise £10,000.00 for a new kitchen
Jon, Jack, Connor, Tom, Oliver and Shane have been very busy making bird feeders to help raise money for our new kitchen.
We kick started the fundraising at the end of 2017 by holding a Christmas fair. All the students worked really hard on their craft. The day was very successful, and we raised £800.00
Our next fundraising event will be a 100 square prize board. Beautiful Beanbags will be donating some large beanbags as prizes. We hope to run this in a number of different places. We aim to raise £200.00 from these events.
I you/ your workplace would like to get involved please click below.
Please come back soon to see our upcoming events and keep updated with our progress and total.
Thank you.
Fundraising
Over the upcoming months the Reach Centre students and staff will be holding a variety of events to raise funds for a new ‘Industrial Kitchen’. This will be installed in a separate building in the grounds of the reach centre
The aim of an industrial kitchen will be to support various skill developments and enable students to achieve their personal targets. We want this to be another enriching experience and support students to have opportunities that match what we would expect for ourselves. This will also allow the student to increase and develop the Reach tuck shop and sandwich round and gain valuable transferable work related skills.
Students will also gain a greater understanding of other softer skills such as social and self-confidence.
Our goal is to raise £10,000.00
Please come back and keep updated with the progress that the students are making.
Christmas Fair Dec - 2017
We would like to thank you all for donating items for our 2017 Christmas Fair.
We all worked very hard and had lots of fun making arts and crafts to sell on the stalls.
We were all very proud of what we achieved.
Our Chrisstmas fair was very successful and we raised a whopping £800.00 which we have put towards our new commercial kitchen.
thank you all for coming along and showing your support.
Please take a look at out picures to see how we made some of the crafts that we sold on our stalls.
Thank you from all the students at the Rech Opportunity Centre. Your support really does make a difference.
Macmillan Coffee Morning Sep - 2017
Thank you al for coming along to our Macmillan coffee morning.
We Really enjoyed making lots of delicious cakes to sell on the stalls.
It was wonderful to see so many parents and neighbours from the local community come along and support such a good cause.
The day was full of fun laughter and plenty of tea and cakes. We are really pleased to say that, with your help, we raised a massive £500.00 for Macmillan Cancer Support.
Please take a look through our photo gallery to see what a great day we had.
EVERONE AT THE REACH OPPORTUNITY CENTRE IS PROUD TO SUPPORT
MACMILLAN CANCER SUPPORT.