Good morning, Prep School children,
Welcome to Tuesday and the second day of the summer term! It is certainly not the way I have ever started a summer term before and hopefully not a way that we will ever start a summer term again!
I was in school yesterday; it was so lovely. It was great to see some of the teachers and some of our children. It was fun to play outside, eat our lunches together and start our new way of learning using Highclare Virtual, our VLE. It was good to get in my car and drive to and from work! Something I don’t often say as the M42 is not always my friend!
Thank you to everyone for your understanding yesterday with any technical issues we had and your patience in getting to grips with using the VLE. The children who were in school, really enjoyed using it – the KS2 classroom was silent all morning! We hope you had the same experience at home. We completely understand that it will take some time to get used to it (for us teachers too) but hopefully it will be a much better system going forward!
I just want to say to you all today (and to your mums and dads), we know how hard you are working at home and we know how hard it is for your parents to do their work as well as trying to ensure that your work is completed each day!
Please help them as much as you can. Listen to your teacher’s instructions, try to be more independent, try your work first before asking for your parents help, use your initiative, if you get something wrong, try again! Remember making mistakes is a good thing, it enables us to learn far more than if we get everything right all of the time. We are expecting your work to be completed and that you are in ongoing communications with your teachers – we are logging daily who we hear from and who is completing the work. If we don’t hear from you, we will be in touch! Try to stick to a routine, this will help you and also your parents.
At school, we do English and maths in a morning and more creative lessons in the afternoon. We have tried to replicate this with your distance learning too but, if for some reason, you cannot do your maths until the afternoon, this is fine! We are all having to be so flexible at the moment. If you cannot complete your work on one day for some reason – this isn’t an issue – just let your teacher know and catch up when you can. These are all of the things that we expect of you in school and these shouldn’t be different at home.
I have attached a copy of the timetable for you to look at so you know what lessons are heading your way each day! As you can see you all have a combination of English and maths, MFL, music, PE/Games/Swimming, science, 11+ (where appropriate) and topic. Your topic lessons are all linked to your other lessons in school such as history and RE, so all of the curriculum for this term is being covered this way. Mrs Stoney will continue to work closely with those of you that she sees in school. I know it looks like Yr6 have less to do on a Friday than the rest of you – they don’t – they just have a double English lesson! It is all fair!
If you have any worries whilst we are off, you can still get in touch with your teachers. They are still there for your well-being, as well as your academic progress. We don’t want you sat at home worrying about anything. Ask your parents to send your teacher (or me!) an email and we will be in touch.
I have attached a kindness calendar to the Bulletin today. I thought it would be a good thing for us to complete daily. These acts of kindness don’t have to be huge. It is one per day (I’m sure you all do far more than that!). It could be anything. I’m completing one at home too. If you do complete this, I would like to see them all once they are finished. I’ll share mine with you all too. As my mum used to say ‘A little bit of kindness goes a long way’.
Thank you to all of you that took part in Mrs Griffiths’ ‘Great Junk Egg Challenge’ over the holidays – We had a great selection of eggs sent in and the judging wasn’t easy. You let your imaginations run wild and you created some super junk eggs. The results are as follows:
Swans/Cygnets
Winner – Jessica Byrom (Swans P)
Highly commended – Aron Biro (Swans W)
Reception/Yr1 and Yr2
Winner – Emily Hoe (Yr1P)
Highly commended – James Pratt (Yr1W)
Yr3/Yr4/Yr5/Yr6
Winner – Hugh Mason Williams (Yr6W)
Highly commended – Ben Brooks (Yr4W)
I will post the pictures of the above eggs on social media today. Winners – you get 5 house points each, highly commended – 3 house points each and to all those who took part – 2 house points. I will be in touch with the above pupils this week and there is a special treat waiting for you once we get back to school! Mrs Griffiths and I will let your teachers know about the house points so don’t worry about that!
If you aren’t already following us on different social media platforms, then please do! We are very active on both Twitter (@Highclare_Prep) and Instagram (highclare_prep). This will enable you to keep up to date with everything that is happening.
So each day I promised I would be sending you a life skill task to complete and also a joke, poem, picture, fact or reflection. Here we go for Tuesday 21st April 2020:
Life skill of the day: Can you learn how to say (and the older ones amongst you) to write your address?
Day of the year themes: ‘World Creativity and Innovation Day’, ‘Bulldogs are Beautiful Day’, ‘Cup of Tea Day’, ‘Library Workers Day’ and ‘Kindergarten Day’.
Since we have been on ‘lockdown’, Mr Bennett and I have started a new tradition of having a pot of tea at 4pm each day. It’s a time where we both stop work for 20 minutes, have a cup of tea, sit in the garden and talk. Please send me your tea pictures – I’d love to see them!
Thunk of the day: Remember, Thunks are unusual questions that are designed to make you think. There are no right or wrong answers -just your answer. The only rule is that you must be able to justify and explain your answer. You cannot just say the first thing that comes into your head. Really think about the question and discuss with your family!
Question: Can you have a friend you don’t really like?
TOPS activity of the week: I’m sure many of you have heard of Captain Tom Moore, the 99-year-old British Army officer, who has raised over £25 million pounds for the NHS – a staggering achievement.
It is his 100th birthday on the 30th April, and there are many campaigns to get birthday cards/messages sent to him as a thank you for raising so much money.
Could you design/write and post a card to Captain Moore?
You can either post these in a post box or send a photo to me and I can add to social media for you.
Quote of the day: ‘The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything’.
And we cannot forget a very important countdown. . .
Sleeps til Santa: 247
Have a fantastic day, everyone,
Be good, be kind to yourself and each other,
Until tomorrow,
Lots of love
Mrs Bennett 😊
