Activities Programme

At the Prep School, we offer a wide range of Activities which can be pursued between 5.25pm and 6.25pm on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Saturdays, we offer a full day of enrichment for all our pupils from Year 5 upwards.

These Activities provide the children with a wealth of opportunities either to pursue their particular interests further or to have a go at something new. Through the programme, we aim to build confidence and self-belief whilst cultivating new abilities which may develop into lifelong skills and interests and which encourage them to take on new challenges – as well as of course offering plenty of opportunity for fun!  Boarders are required to choose an Activity on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays; day-pupils may sign up to as many or as few each week as they wish!

We strongly encourage our children to make choices. Our evening activities programme enhances the curriculum giving the children time to explore hobbies and interests. We try to offer as broad a programme as possible: on the sporting side, there is everything from football and tennis to tae kwon-do, nerf gun fun and rugby golf, while ever-popular options for the more creative-minded are making mosaics, extra art and design technology projects, dance and drama. Slightly more unusual choices on offer in recent terms have been astronomy and sign-language!

Children who pursue Activities also have the opportunity sometimes to compete in inter-school events, participate in plays, concerts and festivals and attend field trips, all of which help to develop their abilities and build team spirit in a fun environment.

On a Saturday, our pupils from Year 5 upwards have two sessions of ‘things to make you brainy’ in the morning – from reasoning skills to interview techniques, from history of medicine to history of art, from stocks and shares to debating, and from semaphore to theory of music. All academic enrichment is carefully guided to support and extend thinking skills, knowledge acquisition and ‘cultural capital’. In the afternoons, our children get to ‘choose their own adventure’ – there is no set curriculum; instead, members of staff choose something they are passionate about to share for a half term programme and children select from a list of wonderful adventures. Recent activities have included: sea-fishing and fossil hunting on the beautiful North Norfolk coastline, mountain biking around the local heaths and forests, robotics, ‘make-up of stage and screen’, mindfulness, drama, gardening, mural making, cookery, photography, Tolkien circle and ‘produce and perform your own pop song’.