Week commencing 21st September - Westmeston

This week our focus has been listening and communication. We have shared many stories and played listening games such as Simon Says. We have also reminded ourselves of the five aspects we need during carpet time - good listening, good looking, good speaking (when it's our turn), good thinking and good concentrating. I wonder if the children can remember and show you the action for good concentrating?

Our Forest School session this week took place in the woods. Paulina had set up a wonderful site for us to explore and play. There was a climbing rope which the children enjoyed using for balancing and bouncing.

Lots of the children chose to investigate the pipes and water activity. After some test runs, the children worked out that the pipes had to run from high to low for the water to flow. This led to some excellent problem solving and team work to create a working water channel that flowed and collected in a bucket.

Paulina helped the children to make their own medallions from wooden discs which they could decorate with their own design.

After the success of last week's mud pies, we all enjoyed having another go at making some more. The children worked as a team to collect earth and water and then were able to fill pots and bowls with wet mud and turn the pies out like sandcastles. The most popular part of the process was decorating them! Don't they look fantastic? They even had a sprinkling of grated chalk which looked exactly like icing sugar!

It seemed as if we enjoyed the last of the summer sun this week and by Wednesday there was a definite chill in the air and rain in the sky. Signs of autumn are all around us and our favourite sign is..... conkers! We have collected lots during the week which we intend to use in some craft projects soon. The children had to be careful of the spiky shells, but inside they found wonderful shiny conkers of all different shapes and sizes.

With the weather being much wetter than previous weeks, we have had a bit more play time in the big hall. This was some children's first experience of playing indoors at Acorns Westmeston and they all did very well saying goodbye to their grown ups at the door.

Of course we have still spent most of our time enjoying the outdoors and been on some lovely walks with lots of smiles.

There was a birthday to be celebrated on Friday, so we made party hats and enjoyed some delicious cake. The birthday boy brought in a giant bubbles kit for us to play with which was great fun. Some flew really high, whilst others popped all over us! We also had fun with the parachute with the wind adding an extra element of excitement to the games!

As the weather starts to turn colder, please don't forget to pack lots of named warm clothes and wet weather kit in children's bags. We're looking forward to some more autumnal fun next week.