Pre-Prep Reflections Week 30 May 2025
Dear parents,
What a lovely, sunny week it has been! I have particularly enjoyed seeing the smiles on the faces of the children in Early Years, as they donned safety helmets and knee pads before whizzing around on the balance bikes, which we have just had serviced. Another highlight has been our daily wellbeing walks as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, with the whole school stopping after lunch break for a short, relaxing walk together around our beautiful school grounds.
Visitors
On Monday afternoon, we had the pleasure of welcoming Mrs Katie Greenwood and Mrs Sarah Lavis, heads of pre-prep and juniors at The Maynard School, on their first ever visit to Exeter Pre-Prep School. On Tuesday morning, our new school nurse, Vanessa Fraser, also made her first visit to the pre-prep and talked to the children in assembly about her nursing toolkit – the most important tool being her ‘listening ears’! Today, Mrs Van came over to have lunch with the children.
IAPS meeting
On Wednesday, I spent the afternoon at St John’s School in Sidmouth for the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS) district meeting of pre-prep heads. It is always interesting to have a tour of another setting, catch up with colleagues and share good practice. We also had a workshop on boosting children’s self-esteem from Sarah Bentley, an award-winning play therapist, behaviour consultant and author. I highly recommend Sarah’s Cherish Your Child series of four short podcasts, aimed at empowering parents, which you can listen to free here.
Lost property
Where the hot weather is causing children to remove layers of clothing, some navy PE jumpers have gone missing at the end of the day. Please could I ask you to double check name labels at home and return any that don’t belong to you. We are still finding lots of unnamed items in school; please make sure everything has your child’s name or initials written on the label so that we can return it to them.
Next week
The final week before half term is set to be a busy and exciting one: we have our last open morning of the year for prospective families on Monday; Key Stage 1 science workshops and assembly with Recycle Devon on Wednesday; special Forest School sessions with the grounds team at Exeter School for Years 1 and 2 on Thursday; and Mrs Wannell’s last day on Friday before she heads off on maternity leave.
I will be at the Devon County Show with Ruffles for most of the day tomorrow (Avenue A, Stand 29) – please do come and say hello if you are passing – and enjoy Eurovision!
