The Bulletin – Edition 31
Our assembly theme this half term is ‘the Cultures of Britain’. It was excellent to hear from 6B and 3H this week, as they presented what the theme means to them. The boys in 3H shared some of the dialects and accents of the British Isles with us this morning, and put quite a few of us on the spot as they expected us to “translate” idioms and phrases in dialects and languages from regions and countries across the United Kingdom, including Cumbria and London.
Democracy is a feature of modern British life of course, and here at the Prep I believe we need to prepare boys for that by holding elections for positions of responsibility in Year 6. On Monday everyone at the Prep, myself included, will vote for two Joint Heads of House for each of the four Houses. We will all additionally be casting votes for Head Boy and Deputy Head Boy. Plenty of boys in Year 5 have put themselves forward as candidates for these roles, and have given wonderful speeches to their Houses in meetings this week. We have also had every boy in Year 5, no matter which House he is in, stand up in front of everyone else so that we all know who we can vote for as Head Boy or Deputy Head Boy.
Prep
Peer-to-Peer Mentoring:
It is fair to say that the boys in Year 6 are very lucky fellows indeed, due to the very successful Leavers’ Programme they continue to enjoy. Most events for the boys took place on site this week, including a very ‘hands on’ bush craft experience day, on the field at the Prep. On Tuesday we were lucky enough to have some excellent boys currently in the Sixth Form at Hampton School who are part of the ‘Equality, Diversity & Inclusion’ group there, come to the Prep to talk to the Year 6 boys about life beyond Year 6, but more specifically about how to navigate friendships and how to maintain respectful relationships overall as they head into their teenage years.
News from Mr Salt, Head of Games:
The House Cricket competition on Monday was a day of two halves, with Years 3 and 4 competing in mixed teams in the morning and the Year 5 and 6s in the afternoon. By midday, York House were on the rocks, having won only two games and Lancaster House were out in front, tied on points with Windsor, but well out in front on runs scored. Come the afternoon, there looked to be a comeback on the cards! York won every one of their games and were tied on points with Lancaster. However, the enormous run count from Lancaster secured the victory for them. A big congratulations to them on another House Sports Competition victory.
Pre-Prep
A word from Mrs Murphy
Goodness me, this is the penultimate bulletin of the academic year 2021-2022…where on earth has the time gone? As the end of year draws ever closer, we remain as busy as ever! This week has seen Kindergarten enjoying a visit from Safari Pete, who, as you will read in Mrs Hand’s write up, brought along all sorts of creatures to school and what’s more very kindly took a crocodile to visit all the other classrooms too!
Kindergarten
It has been a roaring week in Kindergarten as we have been learning all about wild animals. There are millions of different animals in the world and we didn’t know which categories of animals we wanted to find out about so we began our week by all completing a pictogram of our favourites - and guess what our favourite three were parrots, pandas and crocodiles!
Reception
Reception have enjoyed their second week learning about farms. We enjoyed looking at photos of our trip to Bocketts Farm last Friday. We talked about the animals animatedly and remembered all the fantastic details including names of animals we had met and how they felt when we stroked them. It was lovely to hear how much the children enjoyed the trip and their favourite part of the day. George and Efe especially loved making friends with the Alpaca. Arthur and Teddy loved learning about the horses and ponies! We then used our reflections to help us with our independent creative writing about our day at the farm.
Year 1
In English Year 1 have been writing postcards to invite our soft toys at home to our “Cuddly Toys’ Picnic” next week here at school. We focused on how to write our address with the correct layout and then we enjoyed a trip to the post box to send these back to our homes. The children have been really excited to report back to us on the arrival of their postcards! We are looking forward to welcoming the toys into school next Wednesday for our special picnic.
Year 2
Year 2 have continued looking at life in rainforests, concentrating on the Amazon rainforest where they discovered it is home to more than 400 tribal people and indigenous groups. The Yanomami are considered the largest isolated indigenous group in South America with a population of approximately 35,000 but there are other tribes including the Tupi, the Kayapo and the Awá. We are enjoying this topic greatly – do ask your child about this week’s lessons!