Week Beginning 23rd April - Westmeston

Well, that was summer! Back to pretty chilly conditions this week with a return to wet weathers

and woolly hats! However, all of the wonderful heat and sunshine last week has speeded up the growing process and the countryside looks so green! The wildflowers and lush green plants are really shooting up. Cooper tried really hard to spot the baby conker tree that we discovered last week but the other plants have grown so high we couldn't see it. We know that trees don't grow very fast and we had a discussion about how a conker tree came to be growing in that place when there were none nearby.

We were very excited during the week to see a robin's nest in the porch. We watch it fly in and out carrying bits and pieces in its beak.

We were fascinated to see how our seeds are growing in their plastic pouches. We have been

observing how they are changing as they grow.

We carefully watered our seeds and learned that we mustn't give them too much. As Isabella said, if we give them too much water "They would need a wee". Mrs Vincent then read a lovely story called Jasper's Seed.

The sunflowers that we planted last week haven't grown at all. Maybe it makes a difference where the seeds are kept and these seeds were kept outside.

We talked a lot about feelings this week. It just happened to be our focus as well. Mrs Hilton

played a game where we had to show our feelings. Over the week we have talked about kind hands and kind words. We have been extending friendship groups and thinking about how our actions can affect the rest of

the group. We have role played and acted out scenarios which have been fun but serious. We used small world play to help us express our feelings. We iced biscuits and arranged chocolate drops into different facial expressions.

In the woods we blindfolded Miss Edwards and led her to a tree. She felt how rough it was and tried to remember features. She was then led away and had to go back to try and find her tree without the blindfold. She found it! Some of us were keen to have a go ourselves and we learned a lot about trusting our friends to keep us safe!

We have been creative with water, paint brushes and squeezy bottles. We can strengthen our fingers and hands as we squeeze and use large motor movements as we swirl! We have also been mark making and digging in the mud. It is such a lovely feeling to be able to just sit in the mud and play. We also found so many worms!

We used peelers to scrape the thin bark off elder sticks. We used a tent peg again like last week to make a hole on one end. On the fire we made charcoal by putting willow sticks into a tin and then putting that onto the fire. We tried to find a piece to fit into the hole in our elder stick to make a pencil but it was so brittle it kept snapping. We did enjoy using the charcoal to draw with and it made lovely smudgy pictures.

Finally it would appear that Conker Sheep is having so much fun on his latest adventure that he is not wanting to come back to Westmeston. Please come back soon Conker Sheep! We miss you!