Our Harvest Festival Services
Pre-Prep children and their families enjoyed a lovely harvest festival service in Cundall Church last Thursday. The church looked beautiful decorated with sunflowers, fruits and vegetables all generously donated by the parents. Thank you to Mrs Blair, Mrs Lee and Mrs Scagell for arranging them and decorating the church. The theme of the service was team work at harvest time and the children excelled themselves with some enthusiastic and tuneful singing and a version of the Little Red Hen told by all of the children. Amelia Lee and Charles Calvert both read poems in lovely clear voices and the service was rounded off with the presentation of the harvest gifts. Amelia Lee, Oliver Lee, Archie Blair and Charlie Blair then took the harvest gifts to the care home in Boroughbridge. With the proceeds of the collection from their Harvest Festival Service Pre-Prep have come up with a novel way of helping the farming community at large; through Christian Aid they are providing a farming community in Africa with ten chickens, a goat and two piglets. The chickens will provide eggs, a valuable source of nutrition and income; the goats will provide milk to drink and sell, as well as fertiliser for crops; and rearing pigs will provide an income during the low harvest season. On Friday, it was the turn of the Main and Upper School to come together to celebrate harvest time and to reflect upon how lucky we are to be so well provided for. It was heart-warming to see so many parents join us for this special service; Topcliffe Church was positively bulging at the seams. The two choirs sang beautifully and the congregation heartily. There were other accomplished poetry recitals by George Rycroft, Jemima Telfer and Matthew Greenwood, as well as an assured Bible reading by Sophie Lake. The service was made even more special this year by the Form 2 pupils who shared with the congregation their own poems about harvest. A huge well done and thank you to all our pupils and parents for making our Harvest Festival services so special.
Big Sheep Little Cow
Nursery and Reception had a lovely day out at the Big Sheep, Little Cow Farm last week. The children met lots of different and exciting animals and even got to feed the goats and the lambs! A highlight for everyone (including the teachers!) was a ride on the barrel train around the farm and seeing even more animals in the fields. The children also learnt lots about how a farm used to run and even held an old fashioned iron! Everyone had a lovely time and there were some very tired children returning after the excitement of the day!
Pre-Prep trip to Whitby
As part of our Incredible Islands topic PP2 went on a trip to Whitby to compare life on the island of Coll with the coastal town of Whitby. We looked at land use in the town and compared facilities for tourists before walking down to the beach. At the beach we learned about the cliffs and how they erode. The children enjoyed making sketches and rubbings of the rocks as well as taking photographs. We went beach combing on the beach just as Katie Morag does in the stories that we have been reading in Literacy. We found lots of treasure including a large collection of rocks which the teachers had to carry!
Pre-Prep’s Den Building Morning
On Saturday mums, dads and children armed with pallets, tubes, planks and power tools came along to build dens in the Pre-Prep playground. The den soon started taking shape under the direction of some very enthusiastic dads and before long a super structure was emerging complete with roof, door and three rooms! After bacon sandwiches to keep everyone going the den was ready for interior decoration. The children made benches using crates and planks and had lots of fun exploring their new den. A big thank you to the dads for the den building materials and their expertise. The children of Pre-Prep will definitely be looking forward to their playtimes from now one!
Pre-Prep’s sunflowers
Pre-Prep couldn’t believe their eyes when they returned after the holidays to see how much their sunflowers had shot up. The children in Gardening Club estimated their height but the flowers had grown so tall that they couldn’t reach to measure them. They decided that the lovely weather this summer must be the reason they grew so much! The children from Photography enrichment had a lot of fun photographing the sunflowers.
Going down the garden to eat worms…!
Pre-Prep pupils in Miss Abbott’s Saturday activity enjoyed a morning of all things worm-related. They made wormeries and collected worms, and also made worm cakes with chocolate cornflakes and jelly worms!
Pre-Prep’s Apple Saturday
Pre-Prep kicked off Saturday mornings withApple Saturdayas part of this term’s Saturday theme of ‘Nature’. The children found out that there are over 2,500 different types of apples. Using fruit supplied from Mrs Clarke’s garden the children tasted apples, made delicious apple crumble, printed with apples and – best of all – tried apple bobbing. There were some very wet, but very giggly children who found out that (especially with missing teeth!) apple bobbing is quite hard!
Pre-Prep is positively buzzing
Enthusiastic beekeeper Nick Brading gave a lively and buzzy talk about bees to the Pre-Prep gardeners during enrichment last week. Mr Brading will be a familiar face to staff and pupils further up the school: his twin boys James and John were Head Boys at Cundall in 2011. The Pre-Prep children learnt all about the beehive, where the Queen bee lays her eggs and how the worker bees store their honey. Mr Brading brought along different types of honey for the children to taste – wildflower honey, heather honey and rapeseed honey. The pollen was gathered by the bees from different plants and flowers. The wildflower honey was their favourite! The children were so fascinated that his talk carried on into After School Club.
Pre-Prep Camp-out
PP2 had a lot of fun last Friday when they stayed at school for the night. The evening started with a BBQ in the sunshine which was attended by Reception, PP1, PP2 and their parents. PP2 then had a camp fire by the tepees and toasted marshmallows. After that it was time for hot chocolate and pyjamas. As PP2 still had lots of energy they ventured out on a night mission down to the field. They had to collect natural materials to write a secret message on the front lawn for Mr Notman! There was little sleep, but lots of fun and PP2 left on Saturday after a big breakfast full of stories about their night.
Mr Bayne brings the Gruffalo to life
Mr Bayne surprised Pre-Prep on Friday by telling them a story. He choose the story ‘The Gruffalo’ which all the children enjoyed listening to. To add to the excitement Mr Bayne had brought with him some props made out of balloons. Some children had the opportunity to become the characters from the book and they had to act out the story with the help of Mr Bayne. Everyone in Pre-Prep would like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to Mr Bayne for entertaining them so magnificently with his story.