Prep School Newsletter Friday 19 April 2024

Welcome back! We hope you had a wonderful Easter break. Spring has finally arrived, painting our school grounds with vibrant colours including those of the much-anticipated bluebells. It's the perfect time to embrace the outdoors, whether it's for a brisk walk during break times or enjoying outdoor learning activities, or looking for signs of Spring in our bluebell woods.

We are so excited about all the upcoming activities and events this term. From learning something new in class to trying something new in an extra curricular club to experiencing something new on a trip or visit -there's something for everyone to get involved in.

This morning Chaplain Katie helped us start the day with a KC community communion service before school. We hope to have another one in the middle of term and one at the end of the year. Everyone is welcome to attend the service in the church.

We are only a few weeks away from the very exciting Carnival of the Animals and it promises to be a wonderful event. We have extra tickets available for the 2:00pm performance and invite you to bring the entire family along. Book your tickets here for the afternoon performance. Thank you for all the beautiful entries we received for the Art Competition! Mr Dixon from the Senior School Art Department will announce the winners during our Assembly on Monday.

What happend in School this week?

Reception

It has been ‘out of this world’ in Reception this week! Following on from the story Whatever Next! last term, and reading Man on the Moon (A day in the Life of Bob) this week, we have continued learning about space. After packing a suitcase on Thursday, we got dressed in our spacesuits, counted down from ten and blasted off to the moon! Having explored the moon for a little while, we came across deep craters where we had a picnic. We have learnt that rockets need thrust to take off and did an experiment with a balloon and straw to show what happens. It has been fun learning about planets, sharing space facts and playing in our own Space Station!

Year 1

The children in Year 1 enjoyed using the Beebots to explore what commands will do! It was so much fun seeing these little devices moving about on the carpet and performing various actions.

Year 2

Spring has sprung! Year 2 enjoyed a walk up to the woods this week where they sketched the many bluebells that have appeared over the Easter holidays.

Year 3

This week Year 3 have started to learn about their new science topic on plants. They can now identify the different parts of a plant and explain each function. In pairs they played a fun game of matching the name and function. After a few games they became experts! The class have also produced some beautiful technical drawings.

Year 4

Year 4 have been roving reporters this week and have written and performed news reports for an amazing discovery they made in the vegetable garden.

News Flash from the BBC (based today at Kent College Pembury)!

Year 5

As part of a focus on statistics, Year Five have been drawing, reading and interpreting line graphs. Here you can see data being collected with cooling water, ready to be used in a graph. I wonder which axis will show temperature and which axis will show time? Lots of conversations were had about the most appropriate intervals to use, how to plot accurately and how a great graph needs to be labelled.

The outstanding shared text, 'Oranges in No Man's Land' has been started and already, after only two chapters, the children are hooked. Set in Lebanon in the 1970s, the main character Ayesha (10 years old) finds herself homeless in war torn Beirut with her Granny and younger brothers. The children posed questions about this family's future, their food supply and schooling. Pupils also have commented on the injustice of war, feeling lucky about their own relative safety.

Year 6

What an exciting – albeit busy – start to our Summer term! This week in English we have continued studying different short story genres. In particular we looked at the format of suspense stories, using ‘Nule’ by Jan Mark as a guide. We worked on decimals in maths, practising flexible partitioning and place value within 1. Electricity in science covered everything from the direction that electrons move in and what actually occurs within a cell before it becomes flat, to what causes thunder and lightning. The P.E. department have started our cricket training in earnest (which was fantastic in the sunshine) and we learned lots more in our French and German lessons. Now we are thinking about the upcoming production of ‘Carnival of the Animals’ by practicing our poems as well as working on the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ scripts and songs for the Year 6 Production. It’s going to be a very action packed term!

Year 6 presented their group research on a river of their choice. Everyone enjoyed listening to the amazing facts that were shared!

Sport News

Welcome back everyone! We are excited about the Summer Term PE lessons and Fixtures. This term instead of Gymnastics we will focus on Athletics during our single Gymnastics sessions and we kindly ask everyone to wear their PE kit." Mrs Hughes and the PE Department

Wellbeing Hub

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Have a lovely Weekend!