This 6-week Tour visited 8 special schools for 90-minute sessions each week, working with 20 children who had severe learning difficulties and children who had profound and multiple difficulties in each school. (A total of 960 child-sessions.)

Each week the children were introduced to a different character who lived and worked in "Newtown". They were able to do this by becoming co-workers with Del the Delivery Man who had to deliver parcels to different people each week.

The children met Sid the Supervisor, Reg the Roadsweeper, Farmer Palmer, Detective Sergeant Bacon, Doctor Proctor and Barry the Baker in different weeks. Each character described their job and had a song to sing about their work. Using this format, we were able to work on many different curricular activities including number and letter recognition, sorting skills (by colour, by shape, by size, by weight, by texture, etc.). PHSE and communication skills were also addressed in enjoyable and accessible ways.

Now that more children with PMLD are included in these sessions, our Play Leaders used many symbols and makaton, included more sensory touching of materials and props and gave the sessions a more repetitive structure so that the more disabled children were better able to participate fully in the sessions.

Each of the 8 schools was left with a tape of all the music used during the Tour for recall and recap sessions.

This was an excellent Tour, ideally paced for the children we were working with, and teachers believed it offered many positve benefits for their pupils.

"Scope for simple, imaginative drama, a nice framework over a long period of time that the children understood, good visual materials."

CLASS TEACHER, KINGSWESTON SPECIAL SCHOOL

"The students's enthusiasm and pleasure were very evident, and some who are usually rather quiet and passive became keen vocal contributors."

CLASS TEACHER, NEW FOSSEWAY SPECIAL SCHOOL

Del needs a hand to hold for his injection.

"This was the first time I have worked with Children's World, and I was very impressed by the actors who were keen to make their work as accessible as possible to the students. It was clear that they enjoyed working with our students, and this helped the sessions to be a success. With many thanks, I look forward to working with you again."

CLASS TEACHER, FOSSEWAY SPECIAL SCHOOL

Here are more pics of the tour: