Harvest-time fun at Westmeston!

Week beginning 19th September 2016 No rain this week! We spent most of the time outside exploring and free playing in the sunshine. Our focus was on Harvest and we enjoyed looking at and tasting fruit and vegetables. Our learning was enhanced by the book, Handa’s Surprise which we read for most of the week. We had the children looking for the animals around the grounds, guessing the fruit and then tasting it. When we had finished the fruit was used to print with. We found a very interesting caterpillar which we examined with magnifying glasses before putting it carefully back where we found it. We later identified it as a Pale Tussock moth caterpillar and it feeds on a wide variety of deciduous trees. It was probably walking around looking for somewhere to pupate before turning into an adult moth. We enjoyed making African necklaces like Handa may have worn and the children wore them with pride. We have been making the most of the wild harvest all around us and have been eating blackberries. We have also been collecting lots of conkers and pine cones. We have been sorting them by size and counting them. They are so beautiful, brown and shiny. The children drilled holes in the conkers with palm drills to thread them onto wire so that we could make a garland. The children had to listen carefully to instructions to make sure they used the tools safely. The leaves are starting to fall around us so we have been collecting them as well. We have been spinning them with paint to try a different way of decorating. We collected and identified sycamore and maple leaves for this activity. Inspired by Handa’s Surprise, once again, we have made our own African style printed fabric using the fruit and we wove the treasures that we found such as leaves, feathers and conkers into our fabric tying it up to make a necklace. We made our own individual plaited bread rolls on Friday. We carefully followed instructions and measured out the ingredients we needed. We then plaited the dough that we had made. We sprinkled lovely seeds onto our rolls and some of us stuck rosemary into our rolls as well. It made the hall smell gorgeous! We enjoyed talking about our show and tell items and read some lovely stories that the children brought in. What a busy week, we can’t wait for it all to begin again next week!