Week commencing 9th September - Westmeston

The week started with rain and ended with glorious sunshine, however, we've been out and about whatever the weather, taking in all the signs of Autumn that we are starting to see.

Monday's gardening club did a great job of clearing our garden area behind the hall. The raspberry bush had become very overgrown and needed cutting back ready to grow again in the Spring.

Despite the rain, they had fun using gardening tools to get the job done. Well done boys!

The electronic Beebots have been popular this week. After we had checked they were all working and helped to change some batteries, we learnt how to give the Beebots instructions to make them move forwards, backwards and turn. We instructed the Beebots to move along a pretend High Street visiting different shops. It took some careful and logical thinking to give the correct commands.

The start of term is always a good time to make a new batch of playdough and it's a job we love to help with. We mixed all of the ingredients together and added food colouring to make two different colours.

"It looks sticky and yucky."

"It looks like cake mixture."

It is great fun to knead the dough and play with it when it is still warm.

On Friday, some of us had a go at making a more unusual type of modelling dough made from bread. We started by removing the crusts then crumbling the bread into small pieces. This was great for our fine motor skills and getting our fingers moving.

Runny glue was then mixed into the crumbs. It was a bit sticky at first, but as we kneaded it, we noticed it became much softer and easier to work with. We used rolling pins and cutters to make some interesting shapes. We didn't waste the crusts; we took them outside and scattered them for the birds and animals to enjoy.

We have been eating well this week. We had a special birthday treat on Tuesday - the birthday boy's chocolate Rice Krispie cakes got the thumbs up all round.

During the week we also tried a new fruit - lychee. We enjoyed peeling the fruit and guessing what it might look like inside, but not many of us enjoyed the taste. It's good to try new things though.

Our Letter of the Week has been 'A'. Mrs Tubb showed us how to form the letter in playdough. During circle time, we tried to think of as many animals beginning with 'a' as we could. We had some great suggestions - ant, antelope, ape and anaconda! Can you think of any more?

Did you know it's only 101 days until Christmas?! Well, we've been getting ready very early at Acorns by starting on our special Christmas cards which we are sending to be printed. We used finger painting, brushes and templates to create a Christmas shape. We are very excited to see the finished results - we are sure the messy hands will be worth it!

The sun has been shining for most of the week and we've been up to all sorts in the Westmeston grounds. We've searched for bugs and were delighted to see slugs, worms, woodlice, spiders, centipedes and devil coach horses. There are some new log stumps in our fire circle area and we were interested to see that no bugs were living under the new stumps, but lots had made homes under the old stumps. We spoke about why this might be and Mrs Tubb suggested that we look under the new logs in a few weeks' time.

The tree stumps are also fun for climbing and leaping on. It is a challenge to get around the whole circle without falling off!

Our Friday walk took us up onto the Downs where we were all surprised by how warm it was! The sky was perfectly clear and, whilst having our drink and biscuit, we looked up to see what we could spot. We saw lots of aeroplanes and lots of birds, including a buzzard which was hovering, looking for prey.