The Bulletin Edition 5

I very much enjoyed wandering about at Monday night’s ‘Poetry Party’ in the Prep this week, which was an evening filled with inspiring if not somewhat spookily themed words, and heartfelt performances at the end of the event in the James Hall. Special thanks to Miss Allott for organising the event, as well as to the teachers who helped to support our young poets. It was an event that reminded us of the power of words to connect, entertain and inspire.

At Hampton Prep, we believe that encouraging creative endeavours such as writing poetry is essential for the development of a child’s imagination. Through the process of crafting their own poems and indeed writing really wonderful stories and other extended pieces of narrative text, the pupils here not only learn how to express themselves, but to think deeply, and explore ideas in ways that go beyond the confines of everyday experience.

Observing the world around them and being inspired by that to put pen to paper (or fingers to a keyboard!) sharpens our pupils’ ability to interpret emotions and communicate complex feelings in a meaningful way. This is not just an artistic exercise but a crucial aspect of cognitive and emotional growth, and I believe it has an impact on everything else they do here, across the entire curriculum. Making the most of one’s imagination and being an excellent critical thinker go hand in hand, in my view. There shall be plenty more of this to come as this academic year progresses.

As you will be aware from Mr Smith’s Bulletin last week, we are very excited about the potential of technology to enhance the experience of children in their learning. Although there are many positives about the online world, there is no disputing that it brings risk into our children’s lives. There has been an 80% rise in online grooming crimes over the past four years so a proactive approach to our children’s safety is essential. The staff team were very fortunate at the beginning of September to have up to date training on the current challenges for young (under 11) users of technology and to further support our children with e-safety, we would like to highlight some super resources for parents on our Tooled Up access here, including how to set parental controls for various devices. https://members.tooledupeducation.com/resource/article/protecting-children-from-inappropriate-content-online We hope that you find these useful, but do let us know if we can help further or signpost additional things for you.

It’s a busy end to week in the Sports Department with two pieces of headline news. Firstly, we’ve be willing the U11s As to victory as they have travelled to Aldenham school this morning for the ISFA Middlesex regional football tournament. The prize is a place at the national finals at St Georges Park. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for them.

Get ready, because ‘Open Homework’ is just around the corner! Keep an eye out for the letter announcing this year’s exciting theme. Each year, we dedicate an entire week to this special event, where every pupil from Kindergarten to Year 5 is given the freedom to explore a wide-open theme that sparks creativity and lateral thinking. There’s no other homework set (from Monday 15 - Friday 18 October) except for reading and learning spellings, which we ask the children to continue with during that week.

This week in Kindergarten, we've been having a blast with the beloved story The Enormous Turnip! It’s amazing how many versions of the story exist, and while the characters may change, one thing remains the same—the turnip is still enormous and super tricky to pull out of the ground! The children absolutely loved joining in with the refrain: “So they pulled, and they pulled, and they pulled!”

Another busy week in Reception starting off with a visit from the School Nurse, Nurse Liz, who taught us about the importance of careful teeth brushing and eating a healthy diet. She brought along some giant teeth and both an electric and manual tooth brush to show us how to brush our teeth correctly.

In English this week, we have been exploring the world of amazing adjectives! We’ve learned that adjectives are describing words, and they can make our writing more detailed and engaging. While enjoying our class reader, The First Case, everyone has been eager to discover which creature has stolen Squirrel’s nuts! Using our new knowledge of adjectives, we each created a woodland WANTED poster to help track down the thief.

It has been another action-packed week in Year 2! The highlight of the week was leading the Friday class assembly all about 100 wonderful years of football. The children explained how football has changed over the last 100 years, and how a more diverse range of people are now able to play the game.