Bridgewater School – Prep. Department

At the start of term, it would be fair to say that the Prep garden was looking in a very sorry state.  Wonderful for the bees and insects, with lots of beautiful flowers on the weeds, but not looking its prettiest – lockdown had not been kind to it.

The Junior Gardeners usually spend a few sessions at the start of the autumn term preparing the ground for winter, with some winter sowings but generally just keeping the soil fed and dry ready for spring.

However, last year, we achieved our Royal Horticultural Society Level 3 Garden Award, and the prize for this was a year’s worth of plants for our garden, delivered at the start of each term.  We were due to receive one in the spring, but obviously Covid put paid to those plans.  One hundred and fifty plug plants arrived on Tuesday this week, and so there was some urgency to prepare the ground and get these planted.

Which is where Oliver comes in: keen to resume his gardening activities from last year, he worked feverishly to help get all the plug plants labelled and planted out, all 160 of them.  Thanks to his efforts, the Prep garden once again looks a credit to the school.  All we have to do now is keep an eye out for slugs…

Prep II have experimented with pencil crayons and oil pastels to create their own self portraits – we think they’re fab!

We have received a few reports of issue with pupils accessing ‘homework’ tasks on ActivLearn.  The initial issue was that a pupil was unable to login to active learn when using an iPad.  Our Network Manager Mr. Thompson has identified the following problems:

1. “Early iPads (first generation iPads) are not supported, I would presume the same is true of early iphones (although iPhone support is not mentioned at all)
2. When using an iPad, the Safari web browser should be used and up to date.
3. When using Safari it is advised that ‘Cookies’ are allowed and ‘Prevent Cross Site Tracking’ is switched off, both settings are in the Safari Privacy settings.”

If you are having difficulty, please follow the guidance on the following document: ActiveLearn iPad Login Issues

Self test Link:   https://www.pearsonactivelearn.com/app/Home   Then click ‘Will ActiveLearn run on my device’

Spring may seem a long way off, but last Friday Prep III followed instructions in their Literacy lesson to plant some spring bulbs in class.  Using our bossy verbs and time connectives, we wrote out the instructions for the daffodil bulbs that we planted.

Leaving them on our warm sunny classroom window, we can’t wait to see them start to grow – might be a while yet though!

As you may already be aware, we have now entered a significant year for the school, with 2020 marking seventy years since Bridgewater was first founded and our programme of activities has already begun with a school-wide art competition celebrating this very special anniversary.

We have already received some fabulous entries and encourage all pupils to make their mark and submit a piece of artwork for inclusion in the school’s 70th Anniversary Exhibition. The winning Senior and Prep pupil will also each win a new Fusion5 104Bv2 PRO Android Tablet PC, generously donated by one of our Parent Governors.

1. Finished artworks should be handed in to class teachers by the end of this month
2. Entries will be shortlisted and finalists selected from across the school
3. Shortlisted artworks to be shared with the school community for a collective vote
4. Winners announced
5. Artwork exhibition (date and format to be confirmed).

Good luck!

With the new school year upon us, we thought it would be worth reminding our children – and parents – how to log in to the children’s Google accounts at home, especially our Prep I children who have not used it previously in school.  You might find that this brief guide helpful.

Google Classroom guidance

Please find a parents guide to TikTok – we hope to publish more of these type of guides through the year to help keep your child safe when using the internet.  Click on the image above to get a larger version.

You can find more information about internet safety on this page – click the appropriate menu above.

It has been lovely to welcome back our Prep children this morning for the start of a new school year.  As ever, they’ll be lots going on so remember to keep an eye on this blog to see what’s happening in school.  We do like your comments, so remember to use the comment box at the bottom of each blog post.

Enjoy the year!

Ava’s marigolds

One positive that came out of the lockdown this year was the care most gardens at home received – seed packets disappeared like loo rolls from supermarkets and it seemed that everyone had a go at growing and sprucing up their gardens.

Just prior to lockdown in March, the Junior Gardening Club distributed packets of seeds to all children that were in school 9you can read that story here: https://bridgewaterprep.org/2020/03/20/junior-gardeners-set-home-growing-task/)   Amongst the seed varieties on offer were marigolds – and we were delighted to see these seeds that Ava and Carly grew!

Sadly, our Prep garden is suffering from a bit of neglect during lockdown and the summer, but we’re looking forward to getting it back in shipshape condition as soon as we can.

Please find attached Mr. Altdorf’s Sports Review of the Year.

Bridgewater Prep Sports Review 2019-2020