Rehearsals for the Key Stage 2 performance of 'The Amazing Advent Calendar' on Tuesday 12 December are well underway with the pupils immersing themselves in the wonderful world of Christmas. In addition to the festive preparations, assemblies have been a source of inspiration and learning for our pupils this week and you can read more about this below.
'Showtime Saturday' on February 3 2024 will see KC Prep showcasing all that is great in the creative subjects of drama, dance and music at Kent College. We hope you can make it!
Next week is another busy week- please look at the count down to Christmas calendar in the Diary section below for more details. Enjoy the weekend!
Chaplin Katie is stirring up things....
Chaplin Katie stirred it up during assembly this morning! While making a Christmas Pudding with the House Captains, she reminded us of the joy, hope, peace and love that we should mix into our lives at this time of Advent.
We also asked Chaplin Katie to judge the Gingerbread House Competition. It was a very tricky decision.....winners will be announced in Wellbeing Assembly next Wednesday.
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We welcomed Dr Dartnell this week to a special assembly on Tuesday. Dr Dartnell is a Paediatric Orthopaedic surgeon and mother to Amelie and Maia. As part of a medical team of 12, including 8 other surgeons, she embarked on a journey to Tanzania, to deliver essential medical supplies and to perform life changing surgeries on children. She also dedicated time to train local medical staff to perform the same operations in the future. We think you are AWESOME Dr Dartnell. Your story was inspiring and reminded us how grateful we should feel to live the privileged lives we do.
In Wednesday's assembly, Isobel and Jessica presented a cheque to the Nursing team of the Paediatric Oncology Unit at the Pembury Hospital this week on behalf of KC Prep. The funds were raised in October on Wear it Gold Day. We were very proud to be able to to help support this brilliant team
What happened in School this week?
Forest Explorers
We have had a great week, enjoying lots of different Christmas crafts. We particularly enjoyed decorating our gingerbread men for the Kent College Competition. Mrs Hall came to look at our gingerbread men and she was amazed at how lovely they were; we had to make sure she didn’t take off any sweets to eat!
Reception
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Reception this week! Our Christmas tree arrived and the children had fun decorating the tree and the classroom. Our Santa’s Workshop saw the children working very hard to wrap presents for Santa. Each of the children has also written their own version of the Christmas story. They tried very hard to remember all the sounds we have learnt this term, capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.
We had a very exciting PE lesson and got to practice our Netball skills.
Year 1
Year 1 have been enjoying their French lessons this term and have been learning lots of French words to do with Christmas. They have made little Nativity books and this week they enjoyed learning some Christmas songs and have made a lovely bookmark wishing people "Joyeux Noel". They have also been watching out for our class elf who has been getting up to mischief in the classroom; most recently he has made a zip wire across the room and "helped" build our beautiful gingerbread house...
Year 2
Year 2 embarked on a school trip to the Amelia Scott Museum in Tunbridge Wells, where they delved into the inspiring history of the community. The museum's exhibit showcased the lives of influential individuals, from pioneering artists to community leaders, all leaving a lasting impression. The Amelia Scott Museum proved to be an invaluable extension of the classroom, making history come alive and fostering a sense of pride in our pupils for the extraordinary individuals of the past, and allowing them to reflect on the inspirational people in their own lives.
Year 3
Year 3 had some Christmassy forest fun creating their very own art sculptures. Working together, they created three beautiful Christmas trees using any natural materials they could find in the forest. They were wonderfully creative using berries and conkers to make lights and different coloured leaves to make stars.
Year 4
Year 4 have been very creative this week. First of all, they used a tearing technique to produce Christmas Tree collages and then they explored the technique of personification to describe 'Winter'.
Year 5
Fractions and friction have filled this fun week.
Year 5 devised a fantastic way to test the friction 'provided' by a variety of surfaces, making excellent use of force meters. They measured the Newtons used to make an object move, ensuring the test was fair. In addition they considered the accuracy of their results and so repeated each pull at least three times. The results mostly match their predictions and it was the smooth table top that created least friction and the outside surfaces that were more difficult to pull the tray along.
Learning how to convert fractions has dominated maths learning. We have realised that the subject of fractions is so loaded with special vocabulary (improper, mixed, numerator and denominator) that a dictionary could be handy in a maths lesson!
Y5 played a game in Global Citizenship to help them think more about why climate change is impacting some people more than others — why who you are and where you are in the world matters. Playing a variety of roles - from South American farmers dealing with unpredictable rainfall patterns, to children living in the Caribbean coping with rising sea levels, to lawyers living in Oxford, children decided whether they should step forward in response to statements about how or whether climate change impacted them. The spread of their final positions gave a clear picture of inequality. Good thinking Year 5!
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Year 6
We have turned our attention to the upcoming Christmas production and are busily rehearsing in the theatre. However, we are still managing to fit our lessons in and we have been occupied this week by continuing to look at microbes in science, where we set up an experiment to test the ideal growing conditions for mold. We have made our predictions and are eagerly awaiting the big reveal next week!
In Year 6’s weekly problem solving in Maths, they learnt a bit of origami and made these lovely flowers. They were asked to colour in one petal (triangle) and that’s where the maths started. What fraction of the starting square was the triangle? Year 6 used the folds they had made and their knowledge of fractions to calculate what fraction the small triangle was. Looking at the photos – do you think you can work it out?
In computing we created Christmas cards using an app we have access to, whilst in swimming we continued to work on perfecting our strokes and our timings. We were extremely excited to go shopping on Thursday and want to say a massive thank you to the KCPPA for organising a fabulous experience!
On Wednesday some of the Year 6 students were lucky enough to attend Mrs Fuller’s HALO lecture on Supervolcanoes. It was an absolutely fascinating talk and here are three of the comments that were made:
“I didn’t know that Supervolcanoes could affect so many people so far across the globe!”
“I didn’t know that there is a Supervolcano in Italy!
“I didn’t know that Supervolcanoes were a thing before today!”
STEM Club
The last STEM session for this term saw the intrepid engineers of Years 5 and 6 finish working on the hydraulic arms that they had been building. It has taken several sessions, a great deal of resilience and a careful eye for detail to finish the models and we are very proud of them all. We were also able to watch Iris demonstrate how you can use the centre of gravity to help you balance an object. A big thank you to Sophia and Issy for all their hard work as our STEM captains this term. Whether we have been constructing the strongest shapes, the tallest towers, building hydraulic arms or setting off rockets, they have helped through it all!
Sports News
Congratulations to our gymnasts on their outstanding achievement at the BSGA Regional Milano qualifiers! Your dedication, hard work, and exceptional skills have truly paid off, showcasing the remarkable talent within your gymnastics squad. Good luck with the Nationals in March 2024.
KCPPA
A huge thank you to KCPPA for sprinkling some festive magic with the Elfridges shopping experience for our Prep School! Thanks to your thoughtful arrangements, Prep pupils had a blast finding the perfect gifts.