Welcome to the Second Year Blog!
We’re now well into the new term and the Second Year is really finding its rhythm; new routines, new clubs, and new opportunities everywhere you look! Last weekend’s Open Morning was a huge success, and it was brilliant to see so many Second Years stepping up to showcase everything that makes Hampton so special.
This week’s blog is bursting with stories of energy and enthusiasm: from guiding prospective families around the School and trying out brand-new co-curricular clubs, to muddy adventures, sporty successes, buddy meet ups and even a record-breaking pet athlete! Scroll down to catch up on all the action!
Merit Milestones
The merit signings have taken off this week! Well done to everyone who is already off the mark.
Ediz Yildirim – 10
Daniel Fitzpatrick – 10
Rayan Amiri – 10
Noah Neoh-Arhbi – 10
William Janson – 10
James Cao – 10
Isaac Li – 10
Timothy Mountain – 10
Ethan Chen – 10
Lucas Farnsworth – 10
Toby Smith – 10
Ojas Prabhu – 10
Nicholas Roberts – 10
Sebastian Young – 20
Benjamin McCune – 20
Screentime Awareness Week
Next week is Screentime Awareness Week – a chance to swap scrolling for exploring! Try something new, spend time with your family, read a book, tidy your room or just enjoy some fresh air. There are more details in the poster and Bingo Checklist if you’re stuck for ideas for your off-screen adventures. Click on the images below to find out more:
Buddy Meeting
Remember your very first days as a Hamptonian? This week, our Second Years welcomed their new First Year buddies — and what better way to break the ice than with cookies and a good old chat!
Make sure you give each other a wave or a big “hello!” when you cross paths in the Hampton corridors!
Open Morning
It was a pleasant, autumn Saturday morning, and not a wisp of cloud could be seen in the blue sky on my drive to Hampton. It was an honour to be asked to help out in the Music department. I was super excited as music is one of my favourite subjects. I arrived at School at 8:30am, signed myself in, and started my walk to a jam-packed morning full of music – related activities, looking forward to the day and enjoying myself to the fullest.
Our first activity was to demonstrate how to play the djembe to the children that were touring the School. The djembe is a type of drum that you play with your hand. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed playing the drums as we created polyrhythms, many lines of music played together to make the music sound nicer. My friends and I were praised by the teachers. They said that “Our initiative was fantastic!” This reminded me of my open day at Hampton three years ago, when I was taught to play the djembe by the current seniors in Hampton, which gave me a wave of joy and happiness, hoping that the children we were teaching were feeling the same too.
Our next activity was singing. We sung the famous James Bond song, Skyfall. I beamed with pride when the wave of thunderous applause hit my ears. We repeated drum – playing and singing all the way till 12:30. After that, I wrapped up my morning, tired but happy, thinking about the excited faces of the young children, enjoying playing the drum. I hope that they were impressed by the music at Hampton and that they join Hampton in the future.
By Ojas P (2P)
Last Saturday, we had the annual Open Morning. All I have to say is wow. Every department seemed to be bursting with knowledge, while also having fun, with interactive demonstrations in almost every corridor. And who was particularly amazing? I’d have to say the people who set it all up, put it together. I’d estimate there were at least 100 of those colourful arrows, and we made at least 200 smoothies. That bike will never grow old! Also, we had an awesome performance in the Music department, strings, choirs, guitar, even the occasional African drumming performance! Over in computing, the AI containment box held up well – if that fell we might have had a small robot outbreak! Anyway, in the sciences we had spectacular displays in all three departments. I don’t have time to go over the specifics of every subject, so if I did leave you out – I’m sure you did amazing as well.
By Rory H (2B)
Co-curricular Chronicles
On Wednesday we went to History and Archives Club, which is run every two weeks in the library and in it members can look through hundreds of years of history and can find some very cool things! This week we found a sports day programme from 1944 with events both similar and different to a sports day we would have today!
We looked at the Headmaster’s scrapbook from 1943-1946, in this scrapbook we looked at the events and results from the Sports day that took place on the 24 May 1944. We found the results in a sports day programme, but we were unable to find the author. In the results we found a few very interesting things. We found someone who’s surname was Mittler, and he won six out of the seven possible events, he won events ranging from javelin to hammer. There were 33 events across five different year groups and 10 different sports including 100 yards, the half mile and long jump. Finally, we found how similar the sports day was with similar timings, mostly the same events. The only difference was the running events were in yards and miles.
By Jesse G and Alex M (2W)
On Monday, with some persuasion from a friend, I found myself going to Volleyball Club. It was a brilliant first experience, and we learnt how to save the ball, set it and spike with the help of some experienced players who were very nice teaching us. Learning how to spike was especially fun, and getting hit in the face made it very memorable. After 40 very short minutes of learning, we were sad to leave the sports hall. The experience was great, and I think I will find myself returning next Monday.
By Eddie L (2H)
It is always good to step out and enjoy the sun or go to clubs and learn about fascinating topics or even just going to the library to study. I’ve seen a lot of Hamptonians in classrooms at lunchtime and I hope more of them will come to clubs and may find a new hobby or interest, for example I’ve never been really into politics before but this year I went to MUN and found that politics and geo-politics can also be a lot of fun. Going to these new clubs with classmates I found that I had a lot in common with them and many with the same interests and made great new friendships. Hampton offers many different experiences at lunchtime, and I believe more people should try them out. Why don’t you think about starting a new instrument or finding a new interest or even just going to the library to study or reading books can greatly help your mental health and also help you have a more enjoyable experience at Hampton.
By Jerry D (2F)
Basketball Club is a fun and fun-loving event you must join. This week, we started off with some shooting skills and layups, which were quite easy yet could be tiring. After that, we went into a big game using three teams. One at one hoop, one at the opposite hoop and one in the middle. The middle team got to choose who to attack first and try to score against them. The hardest teams to play were the teams who had the taller players as they were just too hard to reach and even try to defend. It was a thrilling and exhilarating experience, and it was lively but near the end, everyone was out of breath for running around the whole court multiple times. Overall, I believe that basketball may require strategy, but the club is for anyone, sporty or not. and can really put a smile on your face while panting for breath!
By Akshaj A (2B)
On Thursday I went to Psychology Club, and it was super fun. If you didn’t know, psychology is the scientific study of the mind of a human or animal, and the word psychology comes from the Latin word psychologia. In Psychology Club this week we did an escape room, and it was all testing our minds in different ways like deciphering words that were jumbled up, reading a colour ink while the word is a different colour, testing our memory, saying our thoughts on some optical illusions and trying to understand psychological riddles. The club runs in S41 on Thursday in the second half of lunch so if you want to learn more about psychology or you don’t have a club on Thursday it is a great club to try. Over the next few weeks, we will be doing animal psychology, criminal psychology (a forensic crime scene basically a whodunnit?) and another escape room soon. Overall, it is a great club and is so worth trying out.
By Ralph L (2B)
Merry Mudlarking!
Hello everyone. I am writing today for Blog Club to spread my enthusiasm about mudlarking, a hobby that is probably unfamiliar to you all. By standard definition, a mudlark is just a person who scavenges for objects of value in the mud of a river or harbour, however, after five years of experience, I see it as so much more. Every single object you scout from above, has a long story behind it, most likely hidden forever in the shifting lapse of time. But does that limit you? In my eyes, it could mean so much more, and even if your assumption isn’t perfect, it could be a pleasurable time thinking of what happened to that object, from when it was dropped to you finding it.
Let’s take a standard clay pipe from the Victorian era, dropped just short of a current railway bridge. Could one of its prehistoric builders have dropped it while smoking, subsequently to be buried in the mud and hidden from the sun for centuries? Or was it a fisherman, who cut to the end of his pipe, (and yes, people would cut segments off their pipe until they reached near to the bulb), and just threw it in. Even though both ways differ, they can really make you ponder all the possibilities of how it ended up in your hands. Moving on, another aspect of mudlarking I thoroughly enjoy is the general joy it brings, when you spot something sticking out of the mud on the river’s edge. How old is it? What is it? Is it intact? All these questions swirl in your head, and as you bend down, these continue to take over your entire world around you. And then, you excitedly walk down to the rocks where the slightly murky waves monotonously neatly fold over one another and give it a good wash. Even more incredible is that every new day, a new mud bank could have eroded, some rocks could have shifted. And bang! A whole new layer of finds are ready to be encountered.
Finally, some of you may be wondering what some of my dearest treasures are. They would probably consist of: a Celtic silver coin (the era before Roman times), a Victorian glass cod bottle (a weird variation of bottle specifically made to hold carbonated water, with a glass marble inside), lots of Roman stuff, consisting of a counter, a domino and a baby rattler. That’s all from me, but I hope that you consider taking this up as an interest of your own.
By Monty S (2L)
ESFA Success
Our first football match of the 2025/-26 Season was against Grey Court School two weeks ago. The game started quite evenly with both teams having chances, and around 10 minutes in, I took the first shot on target which was going into the top corner and was excellently saved by Grey Courts goalkeeper. Just before half time, Hampton got a corner. The first cross was crossed in and one of our defenders almost got to it but it was kicked away for another corner. This time the cross was much better, and the ball was volleyed in by our central midfielder from the edge of the six yard box.
The second half started even better for us, Getting a corner in about three minutes of the half. It was again excellently crossed in and amazingly scored in the same place by the same player from a corner! This was truly a great coincidence and we were 2-0 up! The rest of the half was quite even and they had a couple of chances and so did we. Nearing the end of the game, I was given a through ball which I calmy passed to our winger who passed it back to me. I put my head over the ball and hit the ball into the bottom corner making it 3-0! This was a great start to the season for Hampton!
By Milo B (2G)
Rockley Adventures
Two weekends ago, I got the chance to go to the Second Year Watersports trip with the Adventure Society. After a long car ride and a stop at McDonalds, we made it to the Rockley Activity Centre which is located near the south of Dorset. Once we had quickly settled in, we went down to the beach to get ready for our first activity, wind surfing! After possibly the hardest task of the weekend, putting the wetsuits on, we made our way down to the beach where we got used to the boards and learnt how to use them, we then got on the water. Even though it was a lot of fun, we spent most of our time getting onto the boards, staying on them for ten seconds and falling into the water. Clearly, this wasn’t our greatest strength! Once we had done that, we ate a quick lunch and headed back out onto the water. This time we would be going on the ‘mega-sub’ a huge paddleboard shaped inflatable that could fit all eight people in our group! We did some diving contests, swimming, and many more fun activities. We then transferred onto kayaks in group of twos or threes per kayak where we did some super interesting games. Once we had dried off and headed back into our accommodation, we had some free time before a delicious dinner. After that, we headed back down to the beach to do some games where we had to guess the song/movie by the song we heard.
The next day started with pastries, cereal, and tea. We then got down to the beach and got onto the standup paddleboards in pairs although we were only crouched down. It was still an enjoyable experience with many different races (which my pair won). We then quickly subbed out onto the canoes for some games. We then had a five-minute break in the changing rooms and then headed back out for the final activity. Pico sailing. This was probably my favourite (even if I was freezing for half of it) I did the steering part of the boat whilst my partner controlled the speed of the boat. As we looked around and saw people capsizing everywhere. Somehow, me and my partner survived the waves and winds, but our time was over and we went to eat lunch and dry off before getting on the coach again and leaving the lovely site. Thank you so much Mr John and the Adventure Society for the amazing opportunity!
By Stefan T (2G)
Pet of the Week
Pet of the Week is back! Every week we are meeting one of Second Year’s furry (or scaly!) friends. This week’s pet of the week is Lulu. Here’s why Alec H (2B) thinks Lulu deserves to be pet of the week:
I think my five year old dog called Lulu deserves pet of the week as she is, despite her small size, a fantastic athlete and companion. Her breed is a Dachshund-Jack Russell cross (or Jackshund if you like!) and she looks almost looks like a small fox. She trains and competes with my sister who I must say is really the face behind Lulu’s great success in agility competitions, she recently brought home three first place rosettes as well as a “Judges Favourite” rosette!
Would you like to see your pet featured? Email e.holt@hamptonschool.org.uk with a picture of your pet, along with their name, age, and why you think they deserve to be featured. I can’t wait to meet them!
QUIZ OF THE WEEK
Welcome to the Quiz of the Week! Every week, we’ll post five general knowledge questions. Take a look at this week’s questions, have a go yourself or challenge people at home and see if they know the answer.
Points for the Interform Competition will be awarded to the form with the most entries over the term.
This week’s questions come to us from Oscar T (2L). Why don’t you have a go and enter your answers below:
Here are the answers to last week’s quiz:
- On which continent would you find the world’s largest desert? Antarctica
- Which planet has the most moons? Saturn
- What is the rarest and most expensive spice in the world by weight? Saffron
- What do you call it when a bowler makes three strikes in a row? Turkey
- How many hearts does an octopus have? Three
Well done to the following Second Year Hamptonians who answered everything correctly – Tom C, Smyan M, Edward G, Ashveer C, Ojas P, Juan V d S, Reyansh K, Peter R-R, Aryan T, Diego C-G, Ryan A, Yuvan M, Arthur H, Ashutosh S and Kyle O.
If you’re keen to write some general knowledge questions for the Blog, please email e.holt@hamptonschool.org.uk.
