Just before the end of the Spring Term, our Heads of School spent an afternoon with our younger pupils at the Infant and Junior School, presenting a very special afternoon centred on the College’s community three pillars – Self, Service and Sustainability. The aim of the afternoon was not only to strengthen the connection between the two College sites, but to further embed the values of each of the pillar agencies.

Planned in its entirety by our Sixth Formers, an eventful afternoon of bug house building, team activities and party planning was on the schedule! Each of the three Heads of School, with support from their deputies and future Heads of School, helped each IJS House (Abbott, Talbot and Douglas) with their afternoon of activities.

Abbot were busy with Keira (Head of Self), working on teamwork and leadership games – from transporting tennis balls across obstacles using different resources, to good old stuck in the mud! The members of Abbot were all mixed up then split into groups (ensuring a wonderful mix of ages and friendship groups).

Keira writes of her session:

‘The first game we played involved throwing the bean bags into the hoop, everyone in the team had to throw 4 bean bags into different distances of hoops and the quickest team to do it were the winners. We then moved on to some untangling exercise so we split them into groups and within their groups they had to stand in a circle and hold someone’s hand opposite them and same again with their other hand and try and untangle themselves, this game brought out some true leaders!

Following this we did a tennis ball and pipe activity where they had to get the tennis ball into a bucket the other side of the court the winners of this were good at communicating and going slow wins the race!

Finally we played a whole school game of duck, duck, goose, and even some of the teachers got involved.’

Talbot, led by Alex (Head of Service) were planning ahead for their upcoming ‘Someone Special afternoon’, designing invitations and decorations.

Alex writes of their afternoon:

‘Nellie-Bea, Max D and I were lucky enough to spend the afternoon at the I&J school running some service related activities with the Talbot house. This year the Talbot house are embracing the Service pillar and during the afternoon all the students showed amazing leadership, team-working and artistic skills that the 3 of us were so impressed by.

During the session the pupils had to work in mixed age group teams to design invitations for the upcoming, Someone Special day that is taking place at the Infant and Junior school. All the teams came up with so many unique and creative ideas and all the invitations made were absolutely amazing. It was brilliant to see all the pupils showing some amazing qualities especially when working in the mixed age teams.

It was an absolute pleasure for the three of us to spend the afternoon with the Talbot house and all the students did an amazing job.” 

Douglas, along side Carter (Head of Sustainability) were busy rebuilding new bug hotels in Nature’s Nursery with the pallets kindly donated to the College by Edge Transport while also preparing the raised beds in readiness for the approaching planting season.

Carter provided this insight to the afternoon:

“Kitt, Sam T, myself and all the pupils in Douglas got right to work, turning over the raised beds ahead of the spring. We also set about the deconstruction of the previous bug hotels (to recycle and reuse the previous materials). Separating these materials into different categories allowed us to find out what we needed to scavenge more of!

Once the new pallets were in place, we got right to work packing them full of pinecones, twigs and much more to give the bugs a lovely new home. We even found a caterpillar starting to cocoon.

The activity ended with the harvest of some of last year’s winter crops, a tray full of fresh spring onions was harvested, ready for lunch the next day.

For some of the visiting Sixth Formers, it was the first time they had visited the Infant and Junior School since leaving for the Senior School at the end of Year 6.

A big thank you to Mrs Hickey and all the I&J staff for opening up the school for the SSS Afternoon!