Throughout their time in the Pre-Prep the children are active! Their physical development is seen as a fundamental part of their school life as the skills they learn transfer to every area of their learning and ensure that they have a sound understanding of the importance of living a healthy lifestyle.
From Nursery to Year 2 and beyond we love any opportunity to play sport. With our extensive grounds, pitches and golf course, access to the Sports hall as well as our own Pre-Prep Hall, our large playground (of which part doubles as two tennis courts) and the Drama Studio, we have the facilities to encourage and teach skills, develop the children’s physical abilities and learn how to play a variety of different sports both through our core curriculum and activity programme.
Early Years
Every week the children enjoy at least three physical activity lessons; in Early Years twice a week PE lessons in our hall focus on climbing, running, jumping, team games and ball skills and they love the obstacle courses that we set up to develop their gross motor skills.
Years 1 and 2
In Key Stage 1 the children have one PE lesson each week and one Games lesson. In PE lessons the teachers focus on skills that will support the playing of sports later on, so ball skills, uni-hoc, gymnastics and hand ball, with teamwork and exercise forming the focus of the curriculum. In the summer term our swimming pool is opened up and we love developing confidence in the water and learning to swim!
In Games lessons children in Years 1 and 2 enjoy learning football, netball, Tag rugby, cricket, athletics and rounders and they work towards playing matches either internally through inter-house tournaments or against other schools. The children love putting their skills to good use and enjoy the competitive element of a match. These are often used as learning opportunities as well so that they have a good understanding of good sports behaviour and how to win and lose.
Throughout the Pre-Prep every child enjoys a weekly yoga session in which breathing techniques, stretching and wellbeing activities are combined with the development of listening skills. This is to support the children’s physical development alongside their general wellbeing.
The school day is never long enough to fit everything in, so our after school activity programme also focusses on introducing the children to different sports and games. From golf to cross country, football to tennis the children can sign up for different sports on a termly basis and love spending time practising their skills and being active.
