“School life in Pre-Prep has begun and it has been so wonderful to welcome everyone back into the building, seeing lots of happy faces and, of course, some very smart children in their uniforms.

Last week, Miss Corkran and I enjoyed the children’s first Super Stars’ Assembly of the year. It was a joy to be back together celebrating achievements; the children make our School and provide us with so much happiness. All Pre-Prep parents will be able to watch the assembly in the Parent Portal, so that you to watch and enjoy as a family.

From joining classes and observing lessons these past few weeks across all the years in Pre-Prep, one thing that always shines through is the children’s love of learning and their joy in exploring and finding things out for themselves. In Reception, I have seen camels teaching phonics, which had all the children captivated as they told the classroom camel exactly what to do and how to sound key words. I also saw our new Mathematics learning tool, Numicon, in action. Using this resource, the children are developing an important mathematical skill; how to subitise. This means they have to learn the shape and pattern of a number; for example, recognising the pattern of dots on a dice that represents five, rather than having to count them up every time. This new skill helps the children with number recognition and to develop quicker recall of numbers. The Reception team are now trail-blazing the department in the learning of this new approach, and we are looking forward to seeing how this develops under the guidance of Mrs Skelly, Head of Mathematics.

Some children from Year 2, 3 and 5 were out representing the School, some for the first time, at the Rawlinson Run last week. We understand this was a huge success for the children – please do look in the newsletter for the write up from Mr Davey. Talking of new experiences, Year 1 and Year 4 also went on their first trips off-site at the end of last week. They came back full of stories about the fun they had and we hope they enjoyed the new adventure.

Our parents have been equally busy, with our School opening to families and we have been able to join as a community much more. We have had three ‘Meet the Teacher’ events, where new classes were able to meet each other in person and learn how life will be in their new classes. In addition, we have had the most wonderful barbeque, hosted by our fabulous SVPS Parents’ Association. This was a superb event with wonderful weather that just set the scene for what was a glorious family day. The Parents’ Association has also prepared a cake sale today for Macmillan; we hope you can join us all on the top field for some yummy cakes in support of this charity.

As I type this, the most important result is yet to come. I don’t know what the result will be for our Prep vs Pre-Prep Parents’ Football match, however, the Pre-Prep are currently the holder of the trophy and I hope we manage to retain our title! Good luck to both teams, with an extra sprinkle of glitter to our Pre-Prep parents – we will be cheering you on!

Miss McCarmick, Head of Pre-Prep