Week commencing March 2nd - Westmeston

We had great fun dressing up for Fancy Dress week. We were pirates, princesses, knights, parrots and many more characters besides. Thursday was World Book Day and we loved seeing the costumes some of the children had come in. We had Gaston the ladybird from Ben and Holly, an alien from Aliens in Underpants and Noi from Grandma Bird. It was fantastic to share these books and enjoy them as a group. Thank you to the grown-ups who helped to sort out costumes.

Our focus this week has been expressive arts and we have used a variety of materials and methods to create pieces of artwork and junk models. Some cut up kitchen roll tubes made excellent bugs and we experimented with shining torches through them. The junk modelling boxes also made an excellent tower for our Duplo cars and people to live in.

On Tuesday we had a go at making slime using cornflour, water and green food colouring. When we mixed it all together, it made a wonderful concoction that ran through our fingers, but was hard when we tapped it. The slime was great to play with, but next time we make it, we're going to add less water to make it more gloopy.

On Wednesday we created treasure maps using runny glue and rainbow rice. It was fun to see the rice stick to the trails of glue on our page to make a colourful picture.

Thursday's creative activity was using different kitchen utensils to make patterns with paint. We found put that some utensils made better patterns than others - the potato masher was particularly good.

Our letter of the week was 'T' and we found lots of words and names which start with that sound. We had fun playing the Silly Soup game and mixing up lots of items beginning with 'T'. We sang the song as we stirred:

"We're making lots of silly soup,

We're making soup that's silly,

We're going to put it in the fridge,

To make it nice a chilly."

Throughout the week we have been thinking about the foods we eat and which foods would make healthy, delicious meals. We spoke about the importance of eating a good range of foods to make sure we get the nutrients we need to grow strong and healthy. We also thought about 'sometimes foods' which are delicious as a treat but wouldn't be healthy to eat all of the time. We filled paper plates with pictures of foods that we would like to eat and tried to pick a good mixture of 'everyday' and 'sometimes' foods, although some of us needed reminding what 'sometimes' meant!

What a range of weather we have had this week! Some days were warm and sunny and some days it just poured with rain. We made the most of the sunshine with lots of outdoor play. Our campfire play area has been popular again and this week we used it to make silly soup for the bugs. We even sang the song whilst making it.

Thursday was a very wet day - the rain just kept on falling! These colourful umbrellas, which were kindly brought in, certainly brightened up our day though!

Luckily on Friday the sun shone and we had a wonderful day playing in puddles left from Thursday's rain. In the morning we made kites and decorated them with stickers and ribbon. Unfortunately it seemed to be the only still day we have had in months with hardly any wind, so we weren't able to fly them too well. However, some children had the fantastic idea of holding their kites whilst on scooters or bikes to help them fly.

Our trip down to the woods was wonderfully sunny but we were surprised by the size of the puddle that had formed in our normal play area. It nearly reached the top of Mrs Tubb's welly boots! There was also a little stream that had formed due to all the rain. This became the focus of our play as we realised the water running in the stream was whitish in colour. Some of the children were able to explain that this was due to the chalky stone in the ground. Well, it was quickly referred to as the 'milk' stream and we worked together to make the stream as milky as we could.

With the weather being so pleasant and the days getting longer, we were able to play in the garden until almost home time.

Although we have had some warmer days, the ground is still very wet at Westmeston, so please do keep sending in lots of named spare clothes, particularly socks for wet welly feet!