Week beginning 13th November - Westmeston

This week we have we have been exploring in the woods and leaves, jumping in puddles and thinking about Christmas! We have started to practise the Christmas CD ready for the concert. It is so much fun, we can’t wait. They are available to buy at £10 each at both settings.

We have made hedgehogs out of bread. We did lots of mixing, folding, kneading, rolling,

pinching and shaping. We talked about how the yeast makes the bread grow. We finished off by snipping the back of the hedgehog with scissors to make the spikes. We tried hard to remember the ingredients afterwards and the main thing that we could remember was honey!

We enjoyed listening to the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We played a memory game which required us to remember what went into her basket. It was good fun and we all did really well! We made little books with Mrs Hilton so that we make our own stories. The older children made wanted posters for the wolf! They were brilliant!

We got very creative with Miss Vincent when we cut, painted and stuck stickers on paper to make pictures

practising our fine motor skills and story telling techniques. It was very colourful and slightly messy! It is so lovely to get crafty outside.

We did a very interesting experiment to see if brown

and green leaves contain something called chlorophyll. We broke up two leaves, one brown and one green and put them in test tubes. Green in one, brown in the other. We then added surgical spirit which was very stinky. We took the experiment further the next day by popping some blotting paper into the tubes. The liquid travelled up the paper leaving the colours spread out along it showing the chorophyll.

On Friday we looked at chlorophyll again when we bashed leaves with mallets onto fabric . It worked a treat and we made some lovely patterns. We did some lovely turn taking as well as sharing the different mallets and passing them around.

We have spent a lot of time in the woods. We found a

lovely slope to slide down. We made masks with leaves and learned a little about the Green Man. On the way back we all looked for the Green Man in the trees and the bushes. We have also been exploring, swinging, climbing, singing and then just sitting as we see and feel the leaves fluttering down around us. We have found many treasures underneath the leaves such as tree roots and millions of tiny snail shells. Our best discovery

was a very strange fungus called 'Dead Man's Fingers'!

We are getting so good at putting on our wet weathers all by ourselves and very quickly too. It means that we have more time to play outside!

On Thursday we made yummy cookies with Mrs Hilton for Children in Need and we raised £18 which will go towards helping children who aren't as lucky as us. Thank you!

On Friday we looked at many leaves of all colours and textures and we made a colour wheel to see just how many different colours there were! Some of use made pictures that we stuck onto paper and some of us laminated our pictures. The leaves are beautiful.

By chance, we discovered that if we shone torches through the leaves we could overlap them to make different colours. We also found that we could see our blood in our bodies if we shone the torch through our fingers. The torches were really useful for highlingting the screws in the laminater when it broke and we had to take it apart again.

We made popcorn for our snack on Friday and are always amazed how the little tiny kernels of corn grow so big and get so loud. It took two attempts to get it right but sometimes things don't always work out as you planned. What is important is that you keep trying!

We ended the week by having a look at Miss Edwards' car. We looked at the engine, the lights and learned about the clutch, gears and wheels! We were very good at reading the registration plate.

Conker Sheep had a fabuous time at Cooper's house. I wonder who he went home with this week?

It has been colder this week and so we have had to remember to put our cardigans and jumpers back on before we go outside. We are trying really hard to be tidy with our belongings as well. Thank you for supporting us.

Please don't forget that at Westmeston we are arranging keyworker consultations with parents by fitting them into session times over the next few weeks.

Have a great weekend!