The Bulletin – Edition 10
Further to my sign post in last week’s Bulletin to the news and letters sent from colleagues here regarding our arrangements for the build up to Christmas, I wish to highlight now more news of the L.I.O.N. Award, that will come to you from Mr Barber early next week. The acronym L.I.O.N. in the Award’s name stands for Leadership, Independence and Opportunities to Nurture. It is, we hope, by working against the background of these fundamental dimensions of the programme that the boys’ characters and their sense of themselves overall will have the best opportunity to flourish. I am especially thrilled to see that the ’12 Days of Giving’ initiative will be the final task of the L.I.O.N. Award for the boys in Years 3 – 5 this term. There are all sorts of generously spirited endeavours that your boys are asked to consider and complete, over 12 days. This initiative is also operating across the Hampton Trust with large numbers of boys at Hampton School due to take part in a similar scheme over the next fortnight or so. We very much hope the boys in the Prep will benefit from thinking of others at this time of year and then doing something practical and kind to show how much they care. That definitely feels like the very embodiment of the Christmas spirit to me.
Prep
Year 6 Boys
This week was, in all probability, the week that involved the greatest challenge for the largest number of boys in Year 6 so far this term. Most boys were involved in sitting some pre-entry assessments on Thursday for schools where they are aiming to attend from September next year. The boys are to be congratulated for their empathetic and warm-hearted support of each other, for their sustained energy as they tackled the different aspects of the assessment with great gusto and determination and above all, for the very calm and measured way in which they all went about their business on the day. There was no fuss, and no drama, they simply got on with the job at hand and we are so proud of their efforts.
News from Mr Salt, Head of Games
The football season at Hampton Prep drew to a close today with the last in school fixtures for Years 3 and 4. Over the season, the boys have played as passionately and competitively as ever. One of the real highlights for us all has been watching the teams pull together, praising and encouraging each other. It has really lifted the performances of some of the boys and created an excellent team spirit.
Assemblies
It was a very happy coincidence indeed, especially for the Year 6 boys this week, that our assembly theme changed from ‘adversity’ to ‘ambition’ on Thursday morning!
Mr Bendelow, naturally a huge Maths fan, also explained to the boys how much he loves reading really good books, especially the sort of books where the story can twist and turn depending on the choices you make as a reader as to which chapter to jump to next. He reminded us that making thoughtful choices is an excellent approach when it comes to trying to eliminate disasters from happening, or indeed adversity of any other kind.
Pre-Prep
A word from Mrs Murphy
I can hardly believe this is the penultimate bulletin of the term, where has the time gone? From next week onwards, we are gearing up for Christmas here in Pre-Prep, with the intention of making the countdown to the holidays as full of festive cheer, magic and sparkle as possible. It is very important to us that the children experience as many of the traditional activities in school but, naturally, with the requisite social-distancing in place. Christmas is always such a joyous time in school, not only for the children but the adults too!
Kindergarten
We have enjoyed reading ‘The Gingerbread Man’ this week in Kindergarten. We have read lots of different versions of this traditional tale, noticing how the beginning of the story varies, sometimes it’s the little old man who bakes the Gingerbread, whilst other times it’s the little old woman. We also spotted that the animal characters vary from book to book. We thought all of the story endings were the same - the sly old fox ‘snaps’ the gingerbread man all up. However, we read one story where the crow swooped down and stole the gingerbread man from the fox but dropped him and the gingerbread man managed to escape!
Reception
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! This week Reception have been thinking about Christmas trees. We were excited to see a photo of the famous Trafalgar Square Christmas tree on the back of a lorry. The tree is donated to London each year by the people of Norway to thank the people of Britain for their help during World War 2. We are looking forward to seeing the tree lit on Thursday 3rd December! We read the story of The Little Christmas Tree by Andrea Skevington and the children wrote about their favourite part of the story.
Year 1
Year 1 enjoyed reading the story Harvey Slumenfenburger’s Christmas Present this week, by John Burningham. We used this as a stimulus to imagine and write descriptive sentences about unusual places we might like to live, and presents we would like to receive on Christmas day. We have added adjectives to our writing to make our sentences as exciting as possible. We then had great fun acting out dialogue from the story and using expression to bring the characters to life.
Year 2
Year 2 have had good fun this week reading African Folktales involving the cheeky spider, Anansi. Today, the children came up with their own stories involving Anansi and his trickster ways. Ask your child to tell you about theirs – they were all so brilliant!
In science, Year 2 learnt all about recycling including what can be recycled and what the recycling process looks like in factories. We talked about the 3 R’s – reduce, recycle, reuse, and I was blown away to hear that so many of the children reuse unwanted items and turn them into fabulous creations. Do send in pictures of these as we’d love to see them!