Here at St Hilda’s School, Harpenden we have had another fantastic year in Reception. This term we have been delving into the history of our school and learning all about both the past and the present. We discovered St Hilda’s was named after Saint Hilda who was a lady from Whitby. She was an abbess and founder of Whitby Abbey. You can still see the ruins of the abbey if you visit Whitby today. Whitby is a seaside town and we thought that Hilda must have seen plenty of seabirds which is why we have a seagull as part of our school crest. A crest is a badge that represents our school.
We had great fun searching the school for signs of the seagull and began noticing it in so many places such as on our blazers, PE kit, school bags, important pieces of paper and in so many other places around the school. We had some fun afternoons making our own versions of the school crest using paint and paper to represent the seagull. We carefully cut out some feathers and added snips to make them textured using scissors and then stuck them to our crest to add some depth. scissors.
We enjoyed looking at some old styles of uniform, and some old photos of how the classrooms used to look. We also found some photos of girls doing something called Drill. Mrs Johnstone gave us an old fashioned Drill lesson instead of a PE lesson. She pretended to be rather fierce and shouted instructions such as ‘left arm up, right leg forward’ . We had to be silent and follow the instructions immediately. Luckily she soon changed back into the Mrs Johnstone that we know well and we all decided that our PE lessons nowadays are much more fun!
We also decided to interview some of the grown ups in the school to find out some interesting facts about them. Did you know that Mrs Tull loves to run, Mrs Halliday’s favourite drink is homemade lemonade with ice and that Mr Nick’s favourite animal is a polar bear ? These were just a few of the things that we learnt!
We shared some of our paintings and discoveries about our school in an assembly that we invited our families and the rest of the school to watch. We still have some fun times ahead before the end of term with sessions in the swimming pool, sports day and a trip to Bekonscot Model village! What a wonderful year it has been.
