Prep School Newsletter Friday 28 February 2025

Reception

It has been a great start to the new half term. In Literacy, our story has been Little Red Riding Hood and the children have had fun listening to different versions of the story, retelling it and singing the Fairy-tale tea party song. They have created ‘Wanted’ posters for the Big Bad Wolf and thought about and matched describing words for each of the characters in the story. As part of our topic work the children have created their own fairy-tale castle and used drawing ink to add colour.

Year 1

This week in Year 1, we’ve loved making the most of the drier weather by spending time outdoors in Forest School! The children took on the challenge of matching as many shades of green as possible to a paint chart—an impressive 14 different shades were spotted!

As always, the children had the freedom to choose their activities, whether it was taking part in the challenge, hunting for bugs, cooking up creations in the mud kitchen, or building dens.

In the classroom, we’ve been counting in tens and exploring how tens and ones combine to make different totals. We’ve also been working on adding adjectives to our sentences and have really enjoyed diving into our new book, Lost and Found.

Year 2

This week, Year 2 embarked on an exciting new topic—Kenya! The children 'flew' to Kenya, explored its location on a map, and created stunning African-inspired patterns in their art lesson.

In English, they tackled the challenge of identifying whether phrases were statements, commands, exclamations, or questions, successfully sorting them once they discovered that bossy commands can sometimes end with an exclamation mark! They also explored homophones, discussing how each word fits into different sentences.

Year 3

This week, Year 3 visited Maidstone Museum to learn more about the Egyptians. We were transported back 3,000 years to discover all about tombs, Gods and mummification. We were able to hold real artefacts from the Egyptian times. It was amazing to think we were holding something that was made thousands of years ago.

We had a lovely messy time mummifying oranges! First we had to scoop out the orange ‘brains’, pour salt into the space, then stuff with newspaper. Lastly we had to wrap the orange tightly with bandages and draw our death masks on. We really enjoyed ourselves and have found it easier to remember the process Egyptian’s used to mummify their dead.

Year 4

Year 4 have landed back in school with their energy, refreshed by half term! This week the children have continued with our fabulous poetry book, looking at personification in poems and practising writing our own examples. In maths we have been studying the perimeter of rectilinear shapes (you can ask us what that means!), while in science we started our new topic about sound. We were extremely excited to open the football season at KC and amazed to find out about what our names would have been if we were born to a Roman family!

Year 5

During this week's humanities lesson, Year Five became words detectives. In small groups they paired challenging words of Greek origin with their definition. They were incredibly glad to have a set of clues to aid them in their task. Rich conversation filled the classroom for the whole lesson and the children were especially interested in the prefixes, zoo-, photo-, phono- and chromato-. The children were amazed that many everyday words like 'telephone' and 'television', and scientific terms like 'biology' and 'psychology', have their roots in the Greek language.

Date for your diary: Wednesday 26 March from 4:15pm - Year 5 Residential Trip - Information Evening for Parents. Please join us for this exciting meeting where we will share more information about our annual Year 5 Residential Trip.

Year Five have continued exploring the theme of fire in Outdoor Learning and in their last lesson used cotton wool, Vaseline and a special tool called a flint and steel to create fire lighters. For some, it took a great deal of determination to get the spark but all succeeded.

Year 6

Welcome back! We kicked off the term with an intriguing start to English, diving into ‘The Unforgotten Coat’ by Frank Cotterell Boyce; interest was sparked by finding a mysterious coat with Polaroids in the classroom. The class enjoyed crafting dialogue for a heated student-teacher argument based on a scene from the book. In science, we had fun learning about digestion by mashing bananas (chewing) and squeezing them through tights (intestine), illustrating nutrient absorption and the formation of faeces. Exciting times ahead this term!

Date for your diary: Thursday 20 March 4.15pm - Year 6 Residential Trip - Information Evening for Parents. Please join us for this exciting meeting where we will share more information about our annual Year 6 Residential Trip.

Sport News

Sixteen Prep schools arrived at Kent College this week to play in the IAPS regional netball finals. Kent College played brilliantly, winning 2 of their 3 matches in the first half. Their excellent play got them through to the Cup play offs, and they narrowly missed going through to the semi finals. Fantastic teamwork and brilliant agility and skill were demonstrated as the girls swapped their positions in each match.

Well played Year 6! You are a credit to your school. Miss Webb

Musical journey

Sophia in Year 6 embarked on a very exciting musical tour to Normandy this week along with the Senior School choir and orchestra. The tour included members from Years 7 to Upper Sixth. The trip offered an incredible opportunity to perform in a beautiful châteaux and stately homes alongside other schools. In addition to the concerts, there will be plenty of fun activities and sightseeing to enjoy. If your child would like to learn a new instrument, please sign up for the musical journey by following this link.