Happy Birthday to Sister Cecilia The Prep School was pleased to mark the occasion of Sister Cecilia’s 90th birthday with a festive assembly on May Day. Year 6 performed a play based on one of Sister’s favourite Gospel stories, teachers shared many of their treasured memories of this very special lady, and a card, with messages from all prep staff and pupils, and flowers were presented.

Year after year we had heard about the pilgrimage to Lourdes and how brilliant the experience was. This made us feel quite nervous leading up to the trip as we were worried we would not have the same experience and were quite sceptical that it wouldnt be "life changing".

Our primary aim whilst in Lourdes was to give those children who have mild or severe disabilities a break from their normal routine and at the same time providing some respite for their carers. We were assigned to help with children, which could be anything from pushing wheelchairs to face painting, organising parties, dancing, singing, and even a Sports Day! Though we were nervous and apprehensive in the beginning, seeing the joy on the smiling faces of the children really lifted our spirits.

The close of the spring term was marked with the Lower Prep’s Easter Celebration and Bonnet Parade. Classes from Nursery to Year 2 entertained one another with songs, dances and stories celebrating Easter. Children and parents had put much energy and creativity into an amazing array of Easter Bonnets, raising further funds for the Good Shepherd Appeal and making it very difficult to decide the competition winners.

There was great enthusiasm throughout the Prep School on Friday 20th March as pupils assembled on the courts for the sponsored relays.

Upper Prep pupils had chosen their events in advance, with good numbers for all the choices: ball dribbling, skipping, netball shooting, basketball bouncing and cross country. As the second hand ticked round there was a palpable sense of excitement that reached a crescendo as the 30 minute event began. All children gave of their best throughout the crucial half hour, with some particularly impressive skipping and some fine netball shooting in evidence, amongst much else. There was a lovely, friendly atmosphere to the whole event, and the children deserve to be proud of the money they will have raised through this.

Year 6 went on a retreat to St Lucy's Convent on Tuesday 24 th February. We set off in the mini bus. We arrived at the Convent and Mrs Wilson showed us to the room where we would be doing most of our activities.

She told us that we would start with some warm ups, we sat in a circle and played the first game. We played fruit salad. Mrs Wilson went around the circle and told each person a name of a fruit. (Apple, peach, pear or plum.) I was an apple. Then she would call out the name of a one of the fruits -like peach- the people who had been told that fruit had to run over to another place. Then Mrs Lowman took away a chair and the game got much harder. If you couldn't find a chair then you would have to do a forfeit - t he funniest one was probably when 3 people had to lie on their backs and pretend to be a baby. (But you still got to choose which fruit went next.)

The prep school are going green. We have registered our school with the Generation Green website and are working towards earning 'leaves' for the school. Recently we held a 'green' assembly, led by Mr Walker, who showed the children a picture of the world at night. It was shocking to see how many areas were not lit up. All those places that do not have electricity at night, worse still, it really showed how much light some countries were using.

First we arrived at the convent after a short coach ride from school. When we got there we were greeted by the Sisters, who were very as they let us stay at their house for the day, and have lots of fun in there beautiful garden.

Our first activity was to silently get into order of shoe size- we completed it successfully. After that we were split into groups and given a 3rd world country to be a family in. My group's country was Kajikistan. In these groups we had to role-play the life of the people who lived in your chosen country. There were market traders who dealt with your earnings for the year out of four. Some year's one family member could receive government training, this came as a benefit as your family could then use the skills learnt to increase their production of crops.

Year 6 pupils have been busy collecting donations for the Royal British Legion’s annual poppy appeal, with the Prep School’s stock of poppies dwindling to near zero as children throughout the school chose to wear their poppies with pride. Thank you to parents for supporting this appeal so positively. Many prep school pupils took part in acts of remembrance in their towns and churches on Sunday, with the whole school marking the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day on Tuesday with two minutes silence at 11:00 am. The atmosphere in the playground was particularly moving as children in Years 1

On the 15th October the second form visited St Lucy's Convent in Medstead on retreat. The theme for the day was "trading trainers" reflecting on how hard the peoples' lives are who make our trainers.

The weather was not on our side but this did not stop many of the activities that were planned for the day going ahead although it did mean that we could not enjoy the wonderful gardens at the Convent.

We started off the day with a few games to waken us up, such as: getting into groups of a given amount of people without being left out, and ordering ourselves into height order without speaking.