We were blessed again this year with beautiful weather on Athletics Day. Seeing the children (and a few adults) giving their all to each event is always rewarding. The support offered to the tail-enders by their class mates is quite something and often brings out a charge for the finish line long after the race is won. This lifts everyone’s spirits. There is often more in the tank than our minds tell us and to feel those reserves being drawn on is enlivening. I was reminded of the lines from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “If”
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
Our preschool is growing steadily and now has 22 families enrolled. The children get up to all sorts of interesting activities from gymnastics to carpentry and seedlings to science – they have been setting off rockets, testing the density of liquids and exploring surface tension with floating paper clips. There is a wonderful idea at the heart of what they do which is that of an emergent curriculum – ideas for investigation coming from the children. Last week one of the children asked about book marks, which led to making them and then an investigation into different writing materials . The teacher ended up making a quill pen from a feather.
Peter Crompton
Principal
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