Week commencing 22nd February - Westmeston

It certainly felt like spring was in the air at Westmeston this week. All around our garden, spring flowers are blooming - daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops and primroses. We challenged the children to see how many different coloured flowers they could find and it was decided upon five; white, yellow, pink, purple and orange berries.

Having read Jack and the Beanstalk as our book of the week, the children planted their own broad bean seeds. We spoke about the elements a seed needs to grow: nutrients from the soil, water and sunlight. We hope your plants grow well at home, although maybe not as tall as Jack's beanstalk!

Once the seeds had been planted, some children continued to play with the soil making mud castles and pretending to be tractors.

Our focus this week was on technology. The children enjoyed our role play office area with phones, laptops and writing materials. They also had great fun investigating the Bee Bots which are simple programmable robots. The children learnt how to input instructions for the Bee Bots to follow and even made them race across the hall. Mrs Voller showed the children how we could put a pencil on the back of a Bee Bot to make it draw shapes.

We got creative making sensory bottles. The children used a mixture of materials to make colourful, sparkly solutions which are very calming to look at as you move them around.

The hexagonal building blocks were a popular activity with the children making all sorts of creative models, including long trains and glasses!

The weather was very mild this week and we made the most of it in the garden playing, investigating and den building.

Our Friday walk was glorious in the sunshine. We went up the mountain and the children had great fun climbing up and rolling down the hills and playing in the trees.

The children were fascinated by a large bumble bee they found sitting on a dandelion flower and watched it collecting pollen for a long time. We were so pleased with the way the children watched with such care and consideration for nature.

Let's hope for even more sunny weather next week when our focus will be expressive art and design. Remember that next week is Fancy Dress Week - we would love to see the children come in fancy dress during the week. Thursday is Word Book Day, so children might like to dress up as their favourite book character.