It's been another busy week for Prep, inside and outside! We announced our new leaders for the Spring Term, played some successful first fixtures, welcomed a member of Parliament to school and travelled all the way to School Gambia with Mr and Mrs DiMarco. With wetter weather on the way, please ensure children have wellies in school so they can play on the grass. We seem to have a store of old ones which need to be claimed by next Friday before we have a much needed old welly cull!
Congratulations to our Spring Term leaders for 2024. Special congratulations to Arianna our Head Girl and to Sophia our Deputy Head Girl. Good luck to this team of wonderful young people and we look forward to hearing about all you have planned. Watch this space!
Leadership Roles Spring Term 2024
- Arts Captain - Ella
- STEM Captains - Sadbhb and Immi
- Humanities Captains - Shona and Ally
- Librarian Captains - Hattie W and Izzy
- Charity Prefects - Jessica and Emilia
- Wellbeing Captains - Josie and Anaaya
- CELTS - Jendayi (Captain) and Eva (Vice)
- DANES - Hattie S (Captain) and Isobel (Vice)
- SAXONS - Iris (Captain) and Bea (Vice)
School Gambia
We were honoured this week to welcome Karen and Tony DiMarco to the Prep School to tell us more about the School Gambia. Built by the local community using local materials, the school has grown up from a plot of empty land. It now houses nursery, lower and upper basic school (children from 3 to 16 years old), all running off a renewable energy supply. Over the last 20 years or so, Karen and Tony have launched various fundraising initiatives to support the children of the community and ensure that every child receives the education they deserve. Follow the link the read more about their wonderful efforts.
How long should a school week be?
This was the debating topic for Mr Greg Clark, MP for Tunbridge Wells on Friday morning. He posed the questions to Year 5 and 6 in the Senior School Library, asking them to think of the advantages and disadvantages of having a shorter school week. We are delighted to report that the children are very happy with the 5 day school week and we might even have a few politicians in the making! Mr Clark shared how the British Parliamentary System works and the role it plays in the decision making process of daily life in the UK. A fantastic end to the week.
Prep School Notices
The Spring Term clubs and activities have now been sorted and all allocations have been made. Can we kindly ask parents to email the Prep School of any cancellations to Clubs.
What happened in school this week?
Forest Explorers
We concentrated on the number 3 this week – and we discovered that many of us are 3! We made triangles in the forest and an enormous triangle in the Prep Hall. We took turns to be Little Red Riding Hood and painted some lovely characters for our once upon a time board.
Reception
In Reception we thought some more about resolutions and tried to answer the question 'If you could do ANYTHING, what would it be?' They read Kenn Nesbitt's poem 'Hooray Hooray It's New Years Day!' and shared ideas about the fantastic things they would like to do inspired by the poem.
Year 1
Our new Art unit is looking at Landscapes and Citiscapes. We have started with the works of Claude Monet. Our first lesson involved us studying lots of pictures he painted of his garden and we looked at how he created his “blurry” style of painting . We experimented with using our fingers to make dabbing motions, as well as blending colours together to add depth.
Year 2
In Science this week, Year 2 created a mini-greenhouse to help them investigate plant growth. They planted one bean inside the mini-greenhouse and the other outside it. Over the next few weeks they will observe the changes.
Year 3
Year 3 have been investigating the different foods animal eat. They know the diets of animals differ depending on where they live and what kind of animal they are.
Juno “Carnivores are animals that eat meat. Some examples of carnivores are otters, spiders and lions.”
Harriet “Herbivores are animals that eat plants. Some examples of herbivores are horses, squirrels and sheep.”
Hallie “Omnivores are animals that eat meat and plants. Some examples of omnivores are dogs, hedgehogs and foxes.”
Year 4
Year 4 have been exploring pattern in the 11 and 12 time tables. The use of Dienes blocks helped to make the exercise visual and led to lots of excellent answers. They found that in the 11 times tables, if you write any of the multiples of 11 in the opposite direction, they are also multiples of 11! Eg. 14x11=154 so 451 is also a multiple of 11 and 52x11=572 so 275 is also a multiple of 11. In the 12 x tables they found that the pattern in the ones column is always, 2, 4,6, 8, 0 which keeps repeating and also that a shortcut for multiplying anything by 12 is to multiply it by 10 and then by 2.
Year 5
In our first full week back, Greek Mythology has enthralled Year 5. They read and analysed the fabulous creation myth, 'Persephone and the Pomegranate Seeds'. This emotional story explained how the ancient Greeks believed seasons were created and introduced many more gods to the class. Individually and in pairs the children identified many excellent sentence openers and vivid verbs in the text, commenting on how many verbs had actually been used. We also discussed how artefacts are evidence of thoughts and events from the past and took inspiration to create our own Greek plate designs. The patterns and images were all thoughtfully and carefully added to the painted wash. Let's hope Zeus ( Kind of the gods) doesn't get angry and try to smash our precious plates.
Year 6
Year 6 have had a week filled with all things blood related! We turned facts into questions about blood in English, getting our partner to answer our challenging questions! Here are a few examples;
- What blood type do mosquitos prefer? O Blood type
- When was the first ever heart transplant - 1966, 1967, 1968 or 1969? It was in 1967.
- Your blood contains gold. True or False? - True (0.2ml)
Sports News
We have had a fantastic week of netball matches this week. Our Year 6 A team played brilliantly and won against the Mead School 16-8 in a thrilling match in the sports hall. Year 4 and 5 played some brilliant netball against Sevenoaks Prep and the Mead. Year 3 were incredibly excited about their first netball matches and played against Sevenoaks Prep. There was some great passing, moving, defending and shooting on show. Well done everyone, the PE Department are really proud of you.