News and Events

The Big Draw Festival

This year, Pre-Prep and Prep took part in a worldwide drawing festival called “The Big Draw Festival” It is a charity event that supports professional and emerging artists. The festival encourages millions of people all over the world to get creative and to make marks of meaning. The Big Draw theme for 2020 is “It’s time to go green”.

Through drawing, we encouraged pupils to make positive changes to save our planet by using outdoor green spaces to live and work alongside nature. To celebrate the festival, we decorated all the windows in our school. Here are a few examples of the girls’ work. Well done to all who took part!

Pupils take on Little Inventor Challenges

The Year 5 – 6 Science and Tech Club took part in a series of Little Inventor activities. Using recycled materials the pupils completed lots of tasks, using their creativity and science thinking hats! You can see some of the challenges here.

Elena and Caitlin invented a ‘Horse that does your chores’, complete with a sweeping tail. Erin created a friendly faced robot.

Tasked with creating a toy suitable for a small child, Emilia came up with a toy with lots of buttons and things to press, turn and twist Marphary made a colourful box on wheels. Annabel and Eva worked together to create a lift to help Annabel’s dog get upstairs, they came up with a chair lift with a pulley system

International Women’s Day

Celebrating International Women’s Day with the Prefect’s Challenge, to celebrate this year’s theme; Choose to Challenge. The prefects set a series of challenges for which the girls accrue points which will be combined for clan totals.

“A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day. We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world. From challenge comes change, so let’s all choose to challenge.” International Women’s Day, 2021

We were overwhelmed with the number of entries and eagerness from pupils who completely threw themselves into competing, with many pupils learning new skills or showcasing existing talents.

Skipping into Summer!

Every Prep pupil received an Abbot’s Hill skipping rope.

Pupils spent time in the sunshine practicing and perfecting their skipping, we were so impressed by some of their skills and can’t wait to see how they get on at home!

It was an exciting afternoon as Year 8 Photography Club joined them to capture some action shots.

Prep takes part in ‘England does the Daily Mile’

The Daily Mile hosted their first national event day in schools and across social media, aiming to get 1 million children moving across the country.

“In light of the events in the past year, children’s mental health, and its relation to physical activity, is more important than ever.”, The Daily Mile

What better way was there to raise awareness for better mental health than a few laps of our grounds with the sun shining! Well done everyone to all in the Prep School who took part.

Year 2 Woodland School Twilight event

Pupils spent an afternoon outside in the grounds and the woodland classroom building camps. Using natural materials they created flowery head dresses and lavender scent bags. Once the grounds were empty they began racing kites on the school field and had their very own BBQ! Finally, they had bubble play with a fantastic bubble machine and lots of different creative bubble tools. They made massive bubbles, which they tried to chase and pop!

Year 5 Science & Art Day at Abbot’s Hill

Each April, we take our Year 5 girls on an adventure in the Senior School, with opportunities to engage with different subjects, meet senior teachers and quiz the current Year 7 on their Senior School experiences.

Starting the day in Science pupils took part in a forensics workshop investigating a missing lab coat using finger printing and chromatography to solve the mystery.

“I really enjoyed finding fingerprints because you can see your finger pattern. I learnt that only 30% of people have my fingerprint in the world. Also I never knew what different fibres looked like!” said Saskia.

In the afternoon the pupils headed over to the Stable Block to create their own versions of seascapes. Using masking fluid and then flooding the space with ink to create some ocean inspired masterpieces.

As well as the chance to explore the facilities in the Senior School, Year 5 had a Question & Answer session with current Year 7 pupils who made the transition last year from Prep.

This year it was an Olympic theme with pupils taking part in an opening and closing ceremony! Pupils had a chance to try lots of new activities including cheerleading, orienteering, obstacle courses and trampolining.

On Monday, the children were put in mixed teams within the Pre-Prep and Prep. They created their team name, flag and motto. These were then presented in the outdoor opening ceremony, attended by the whole of the Prep School.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the teams participated in sports rotations, which included crab football, trampolining, badminton, cheerleading, obstacle courses and many more.

On Thursday, the teams planned, practised and performed their closing ceremony piece. There was such a huge range of performances, with some brilliant displays of teamwork and a lot of creativity involved!

As Year 6 headed off on a long overdue trip to Hudnall Park the rest of the Pre-Prep and Prep School participated in Drama workshops, Woodland School adventures, Orienteering challenges and the most talked about event, the inflatable giant slide and obstacle course that was right outside Mrs Gorman’s office!

Trips

Year 5 travelled to the Silverstone Interactive Museum at the Silverstone Racing Circuit

The pupils took part in a STEM workshop that involved identifying parts of a race car and motor bikes and then finding out why they made the vehicles go faster, such as wings. The pupils asked some fantastic questions and we were very impressed by the educated guesses as to what some parts were.

In the museum pupils learnt about the history of the Silverstone circuit and how the land was used before racing. The pupils particularly liked that corners on the track were named after what had previously been on the site, from a farm and village to an Abbey! A highlight of the trip was the history behind Silverstone as one of the straights on the track was named after the Wellington bombers that used to be stationed at RAF Silverstone during WWII.

The ground floor was motor racing history and technology and included many interactive activities showing for example how brakes worked and how to change a wheel on a racing car. There were displays of how racing cars and clothing had changed over the decades including Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes race suit. There was also some famous racing cars such as the Red 5 Williams Renault of Nigel Mansell. At the end of the museum visit, Year 5 went on a virtual ‘ride’ around the circuit in an immersive cinema, racing with many of the legends over the years on motor bikes and in racing cars – an amazing experience!

Outside they watched the cars going around the track testing for an upcoming GT3 race. Abbot’s Hill were even lucky enough to see racing legends Damon Hill and Jensen Button out on the track!