Week commencing 24th February - Westmeston

This week our focus has been on technology and we have had fun exploring some examples both old and new.

We took it in turns to have a go on the laptop to create pictures. Some of us needed help with knowing how to move the mouse - we couldn't use our fingers on the screen like we can with some of our technology at home.

It was fun to play with some real telephones as well. We had lots of interesting phone conversations about the weather and holidays. Pressing the numbers on the phones was good for our number recognition as well.

One of our newer pieces of technology was a lightbox. We used it in a variety of ways. Drawing on it with felt tip made our pictures really bright and colourful.

Outside we collected interesting leaves and buds to place on the lightbox. It was wonderful to see them so clearly. We thought the leaf skeletons looked particularly spectacular.

The Westmeston garden was particularly soggy this week as the rained continued to fall, but we still had lots of fun. On Tuesday we made our own campfire with a cooking stove. We collected long sticks to make a tripod and tied it together with string, Then we collected smaller sticks to make a pretend campfire and cooked up some delicious mud kitchen treats!

We were then very keen to add to our camp with a shelter which had a cooking area, bedroom and even a tree that we used for hanging our helmets on.

After all that hard work outside, we were pleased to have some pancakes to look forward to. We chose toppings of jam, sugar or honey plus fresh strawberries and lemon. Yummy!

This week we have been reading the book 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and so we planted some beans of our own. We wonder if any of them will grow as tall as Jack's beanstalk! It was a good opportunity to practise writing our names on labels as well.

When the weather is wet and cold, we really love to use or ride-on toys to keep us active and warm. We decided that the road signs that we like to cycle around would also made excellent warning signs for particularly muddy spots in the garden.

The weather on Friday was very wet indeed but we brightened our day by thinking about the spring flowers that we have growing at Westemeston.

We used the flowers as inspiration for some lovey artwork using tissue paper. We stuck tissue paper pieces to create some colourful pictures.

We also made some tissue paper flowers and ended up with a very beautiful collection.

We braved the wind and rain outside and went on a spring flower hunt. We managed to find daffodils, crocuses, primroses, snowdrops and celandine - most of them on one bank! Our garden is so beautiful, even in the rain.

We certainly weren't short of puddles to jump in - after such heavy rain, there were puddles where we had never seen them before.

Inside, we had a lot of fun playing parachute games. We played cat and mouse and also had to work as a team to fling lots of balls off the parachute. We managed to make a tent for us all to sit under and take it in turns at being the tent pole!