Week Commencing 11th October 2021

This week at Westmeston we have been blessed with dry autumn weather, so we managed to have lots of fun in the garden.

Sand Play - Playing in the sand is great for fine motor development, building hand eye coordination and strengthening muscles. Having the sand in a contained space allows for children to build turn taking and sharing skills as well as communication and language. It helps children with the early understanding of capacity and volume as they pour and fill buckets and containers.

Bike Riding - Great for building confidence, developing a sense of control, spatial awareness balance and stability.

Finn trying out a different helmet - Will that keep you safe?

"No I need my helmet"

Music and Movement - Movement is vital for physical development, muscle strength, blood circulation and overall health. Music helps to engage the brain, improve memory and builds cognitive development. Action songs are brilliant for developing coordination, body awareness, balance as well as building listening and attention skills. Group learning builds social skills, confidence and supports communication and language development. Children can be creative and imaginative when they dance and most of all they have fun.

Bug Hunting - Children build on their identification skills and start to learn about the world around them. It is a brilliant way to build vocabulary and to start conversations about habitats, food chains and life cycles. The children learn about nature and develop care and concern for creatures.

Following on from our harvest rainbows last week, some children helped Mrs Spencer to paint a big rainbow with fluffy clouds for our display.

A very popular activity this week has been planting bulbs which the children really enjoyed. They all put a bulb in and carefully filled it with soil all the way to the top of the pot. We wonder what type of flower they will grow to be.

The children have been busy building family houses and pretending to be mummy’s, daddy’s and babies. The children showed great imagination and story narratives to their play.

“This is mummy, daddy and baby. These are the mama’s and this is the brother, down here is the river they are jumping in”

It was lovely to see some of the children’s family and pet pictures from home, if you haven’t brought any in then please do, as we want to add them to our house pictures that the children made.

Friday was a lovely day for a walk in the woods; the children were tasked with finding a special tree and investigating it.

We started by identifying the tree by looking carefully at the leaves and comparing them to a book. Then the children drew their tree and attempted a bark rubbing before hunting for mini beasts.

The children loved making their own pizzas for lunch on Friday, they kept checking the dough to see it get bigger and bigger and then choose their own toppings. Yummy!