News from Pre-Prep

Dear Parents,

As pupils embrace the half term break this afternoon, we reflect on how the past six weeks have flown by. This is undoubtedly down to the incredibly busy return to school since September with a range of activities taking place both inside and outside of the classroom. This afternoon pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 welcomed parents to their classrooms to show them around and to share some of their recent work with them. Yesterday, we welcomed children’s author, Zanna Davidson, who writes mainly fiction books including the ‘Fairy Unicorns’ and ‘Billy and the Mini Monsters’ series. Children from Kindy and Reception enjoyed listening to her read one of the books from her monsters series, while Years 1 and 2 went on to design their own monster after being inspired by her stories. 

Earlier in the week elections were held in classes from Reception to Year 2 to vote for a School Council representative. Matthew, Matilda, Henry and Alex were elected by their classmates to represent the Pre-Prep at fortnightly meetings with representatives throughout the school to Year 8, led by Miss Tyrrell. The children will make decisions about a whole variety of aspects of school life and will share their thoughts with each other and Mr Towers. 

Tuesday was World Mental Health Day and at Pre-Prep Assembly this week, Mrs Crissell shared an insightful presentation to the children about emotions and recognising these different feelings. The children gave us some enthusiastic impressions of excited, sad and angry faces! We also congratulated Mia, Freddie, Sophie and Vidur this week who received Work of the Week certificates and demonstrated some proud faces in doing so!

October marks Black History Month and Years 1 and 2 enjoyed looking for posters around the school, covering figures from history, sport, science and politics. These included Barack Obama, Mary Seacole, Jesse Owens and Nelson Mandela, and the children had to find facts about them to answer the questions on their sheets. Meanwhile, some of the youngest pupils listened to stories and enjoyed a special episode of CBeebies’ Jojo and Gran Gran which appropriately marked Black History Month.

After half term, Year 1 and Year 2 continue with Games on Fridays and it will be netball up until Christmas. All pupils will need to have trainers, their PE shirt, shorts and jumper. Swimming will resume in the summer term. Pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 will now have PE during this slot on the timetable, and be doing gymnastics.

Just a reminder that Parent Consultations will take place on Monday 30th October and Thursday 2nd November. Appointments have been released for these today. 

Mrs Dudley, our school librarian, is encouraging pupils to take part in a Readathon over half term, more details of which can be found in this week’s Bridewell Bulletin. 

Whatever your plans for the October half term, I wish you all a wonderful break and look forward to our return on Monday 30th October. 

Warm regards,
Lesley Barnett