Good morning, Prep School!
It’s Tuesday, its cold and the sun isn’t shining. . .yet! Fingers crossed that the weather forecasters are right and that the sun is due to come out later today and stay for the next few days! Hopefully, it will warm up a bit too! Mr Bennett will be telling me how cold it is and how we need the heating on. . . my response will be not in May!
A shorter bulletin as I am in school and helping to look after the children that are with us today. It will be so good to spend the day at school, with a ‘normal’ routine and to have conversations with the other teachers!
I would like to tell you today about an exciting challenge that we as a whole school (Cygnets to Year 13) are launching this week. It is the 75th anniversary of VE Day on Friday. VE Day stands for Victory in Europe Day and it marks the day towards the end of World War II when fighting against Nazi Germany, in Europe, came to an end. As you can imagine VE Day was a highly emotional day, as many people had wanted the fighting to end for many years. People celebrated the end of fighting with huge celebrations and street parties.
This year, the country is celebrating the milestone of the 75th anniversary of VE Day. Many special things are taking place in the coming days. Our May Day bank holiday has been moved to Friday 8th May (usually we have this bank holiday on the first Monday in May), speeches will be broadcast from the Prime Minister of the time, Winston Churchill, many people will be recreating the street parties of 1945 with their neighbours (with the socially distancing rules in place), there will be a 2 minute silence at 11am to honour the service and sacrifice of all of those involved in the war, there will be an address by the Queen and the country are invited to sing along in unison to Vera Lynn’s, We’ll Meet Again – a song that is synonymous with WWII. It will be a time of great celebration but it will also be a time of reflection, for all of those who fought in the war, those who lost loved ones and for those who returned from the battlefields, back to a different world they left behind.
We thought that it would be a lovely idea to mark the occasion as a school. We wanted to plan an event that would bring us together. So, I am pleased to announce the Highclare Hike. We, as a school, are going to try and walk (or run, hop, skip, jump etc) as far as we can in one weekend. We would like to walk from Birmingham to as many capital cities around 1945 Europe as we can. We will be adding up all of our collective miles to see how far we can get over the bank holiday Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This is a family event so we would ask that your whole family takes part, all the miles count! If there are 4 of you in the family and you all walk 5 miles each, that would be 20 miles towards our total. Please walk as far as you can! You can walk as many times as you like for as far as you like. We will log all of these miles on the VLE and give updates of where we have reached throughout the weekend. I will send out more details on how to log your miles etc in the next day or so.
How exciting is this? Which capital cities do you think that we will get too? How many miles do you think we will walk all together? Please feel free to share your thoughts and estimations with me! I have attached the posters for you to have a look at.
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 5th May 2020:
Life skill of the day: Can you do some ironing (with adult supervision)?
Day of the year themes: ‘Teacher Appreciation Day’, ‘International Midwives’ Day’, ‘Hoagie Day’, ‘Nail Day’, ‘Asthma Day’ and ‘Hug A Shed And Take A Selfie Day’.
So a huge shout out ‘Thank you’ to all of the teachers at Highclare, I think you are all wonderful and I appreciate everything that you do for the children and their families.
Yes, I had to look up what a hoagie was as well!
‘Hug A Shed And Take A Selfie Day’. . .mmmmmmmmm!
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: If you could take a pill that always made you happy, would you?
TOPS activity of the week: On Friday this week, we are going to be celebrating the 75th anniversary of VE Day. This week can you please complete the following tasks:
Find out and research what VE Day is
Create a poster/short film/bake/model etc to tell me something about VE Day – be imaginative!
Quote of the Day: “Just Do it!”
And we cannot forget a very important countdown. . .
Sleeps til Santa: 234
Have a super day,
Mrs Bennett 😊
