Prep 6 (virtual) trip to the Isle of Wight

Prep 6 normally goes to the Isle of Wight for a week's residential trip in June, to celebrate the end of the Prep School years. This trip involves bonding activities, celebratory events and lots of Geography- and History-related activities. Because of lockdowns and Covid-19 restrictions, this visit hasn't happened for the past two years, so Mrs Welsh has organised a virtual Isle of Wight trip instead!

This year's virtual Isle of Wight visit took please during the week of 14 June. The Prep 6 pupils watched videos of various aspects of the usual trip - including the ferry journey over to the island and the chairlift ride down to Alum Bay - to experience virtually what it would have been like.

During the week, the pupils looked at the hotel they would have stayed in, researched why the zoo is called a 'rescue centre', and imagined what they might have been able to buy with their spending money.

Instead of sandcastle building on the beach, they made maps of the Isle of Wight out of natural materials found in the school grounds. Instead of sketching The Needles from the beach, the pupils painted pebbles with pictures of The Needles, after learning about how they were formed. The students also made masks of some of the animals they watched on the zoo's webcams, and each was presented with a stick of rock at the end of the week - after all, the Rock Shop is always a highlight of the Isle of Wight visit!