The Wonderful Westwood Wedding

Summer 1 Adventure

The Wonderful Westwood Wedding!

This half term is all about acceptance, kindness and love. We will be learning about how different countries and cultures celebrate weddings and we will be challenged with organising our very own Wedding, we will all have a role to play including cake making, flower arrangements, song writing and dress designing. We will be learning about families and relationships and talking about who is important to us. During the half term we will be visiting the church and understanding that the church is an important place to Christian families. We will also spend time respecting other religions and looking at weddings in other cultures.

Not forgetting performing our very own ‘Wonderful Westwood Wedding’ in the final week and you are all invited, keep an eye out for your invitation.

Farm Week

This week we are having a stand alone week to look at farming and Spring Time. The children have received a letter from Farmer James at Cannon Hall Farm and they have to find out about Farm animals, where they live and what they're young are called.

The children had a fantastic time at the farm today, learning about farm animals and their babies as well as Spring changes. The children were very interested in seeing all of the animals including goats and kids, sheep and lambs, horses and foals, cows and calves, Donkey and foals, alpaca and cria. 

This week the children were very excited to hear a telephone message from one of the farmers at Canon Hall Farm. He needed our help to make sure the crows didn't eat the seeds. We decided the best way to keep the crows away was by making a scarecrow. The children chose to make a male and a female scarecrow. We then read 'The Scarecrows Wedding'.

This week we thought about what the scarecrows in our story needed for their wedding. We then thought about what we would need for our wedding. The children had some really good ideas such as a dress, rings, flowers, songs, smart clothes and cake. 

Today, we had a very important visitor in Reception. A lost bride was looking for her husband and while she was looking she came across the lists we had written for what is needed at a wedding. She realised that she had a few things missing and also couldn’t remember her way to her wedding location. The children told her that some weddings happen in a Church so that must be where she is getting married. We hope she finds her way!

Today, we looked at different wedding celebrations from around the world. We looked at the similarities and differences that happen in other countries. We learnt that in China, they give red envelopes with money as gifts and in Africa they give honey to make sure, 'their marriage is sweet.' Some children wanted to try on traditional African clothing as if they were going to a wedding.

This week we visited St Marys Church for our first wedding rehearsal. It was such a lovely sunny day we decided to walk through the woods too and look at the signs that Summer is on its way. We noticed more leaves on the tree branch and beautiful blue bells everywhere.

This week we have looked at a story called 'The Wedding Week' we read how different weddings around the world are celebrated. We looked at 5 similarities and differences.

The gifts.

The special clothes.

The food.

The dancing.

The decorations.

This week we have received a message from the Baker to say she is too busy to make us a wedding cake. She wants us to taste test some cakes she has sent and tell her what our favourite is. She is then going to send us her special secret ingredients so we can make our own cake. 

We looked at wedding cakes from Hindu weddings, chinese weddings, Muslim weddings and Christian weddings. We talked about similarities and differences and used what we already know about different countries traditions and culture to find out more. We noticed that all the cakes have decoration and lots of them use flowers as their decorations.

After all of their cake research and choosing their favourite flavours the children set to work making the Westwood Wedding cake. They used photographs of traditional cakes for inspiration. The children rolled the icing and created decorations as well as lots and lots of glitter and sprinkles. 

The children went into the school grounds to find petals for our confetti throw at the wedding. The children had to think very carefully about which part of the plant was a petal but in the end we made the most wonderful confetti.

It really was the perfect day for a wedding and the children looked fantastic in all of their gorgeous outfits! We had such a wonderful day and all of the children's hard work paid off. It was amazing to see all of their family there in their beautiful wedding outfits too. Well done to everyone and huge thank you to St Marys Church at Middleton.