News
All our Belmontians have been off timetable for the week enjoying an array of activities that were designed to challenge and inspire. Our Year 3, 4 and 5 pupils have taken part in a two-day carousel of over 20 exciting activities, followed by a day trip to Mountfitchet Castle, Whipsnade Zoo and The Natural History Museum, respectively.
Throughout the week, we have got artistic in baseball and bandana designs, creative in ceramics and mini clay competitions and competitive in the lawn games and table tennis. We have had yelps of joy when they have mastered the pogo stick or performed their dance in BOP, screams of the enthusiasm (and fear!) when Safari Pete fed mice to the snake and let the pupils hold the crocodile and whoops of wonder as Leon the magician mystified us with endless card tricks.
The year 6 pupils have been working hard on their play and are set to perform on Thursday evening. It’s the first time the Year 6 children have come together for a production, and they have impressed Mrs Russu immensely with their dramatic talents and enthusiasm to get involved.
Our Year 7 pupils took part in the first of Belmont’s Mini Summer Series. All the pupils threw themselves into the activities and should be immensely proud of what they achieved in just two days. A full write up of each course can be found below.
All the staff have worked tirelessly to plan and deliver engaging activities for all the pupils to enjoy.
Year 7
Master Chef
The Masterchef cooking challenge produced a wonderful array of food from different cultures and culinary creations for the judges to enjoy. Groups researched, planned and budgeted the creations with a guide of a starter and main or main and desert. We were joined by David Pomeroy (Executive Chef, The Mill Hill School Foundation) who inspired the pupils with his advice on food preparation and presentation. The group visited the supermarket before heading over to the international school to cook fantastic meals. A wonderful experience and some delicious results left the judges and pupils in food heaven!
Dragons’ Den
On Monday and Tuesday, 15 willing volunteers stepped forward to create a brand-new travel game for families, as part of their Dragons’ Den activity. The children received some advice on marketing and advertising from our very own expert, Mrs Smith. They then did some market research and spent some time looking into the reasons why Bananagrams is the number one travel game for families! Next, it was time to get to work! The children planned their concepts, which varied from ‘Owl Buddies’ to ‘The Game of Youth’. They prepared outstanding prototypes and presentations ready for the big finale. We welcomed in the shrewd Dragons who grilled the children on many aspects of their presentations before offering them sizeable investments for their products! It was a great couple of days and the children came up with some incredible ideas!
Musical Theatre
Pupils in the musical theatre workshop had just two days to prepare and perform ‘Sing!’ to our Year 4 pupils. Working on small extracts of the musical, they were set a task of choreographing dances, learning a song and putting on the show as a small cast. All the pupils did exceptionally well and should be very proud of how much they achieved in such a short amount of time!
Tottenham Hotspur Football Camp
We welcomed back Tottenham Hotspurs for a two-day football bonanza. After a warmup and an introduction to the coaches, they began a small four-team tournament with 6 players each side. After this, the coaches designed a few drills and open skilled games to help them with not only their on the ball technique, but also their game awareness. On the last day, they moved onto bigger pitches playing 9 aside football where we saw the students use their skills in a lot more open space. The Tottenham coaches were impressed with this group and are looking forward to working with them in the next academic year
Community Care:
Activities week not only provided time for the children at Belmont to try new and exciting experiences such as magic and fashion design but also gave an opportunity for more altruistic and philanthropic experiences. Year 7 pupils were visited by 2 charities: Give Help Share and Comfort Cases.
Give Help Share is a small charity tackling food poverty. They educate children about healthy food choices. Our Belmontians had the task of researching food items they could buy on a £10 budget for a vegetarian recipe of their own creation to feed a family of 4. The students had incredible ideas and these recipes will be sent to the children and their families with their food parcels. Thank you for all the kind food donations from the year 7 cohort.
On Tuesday, pupils were exposed to the to the plight and distress that many children their age and younger face when told they must leave their homes and enter foster care. Students learnt that often these children do not have bags of their own and so pack as much of their worldly belongings into a trash bag in the 10 minutes they are often given to do so. Comfort Cases provide these children with a bag to replace the bin bag to reinstate the children’s sense of worth. They also provide these children with a rucksack of items to show these children that they are cared for. Our Belmontians carefully wrapped blankets and tied them with love and string. They packed rucksacks with pyjamas, hygiene kits, reading books, colouring books, journals and a teddy. Thoughtful messages and poems were then written to make the recipients smile.
This was a truly valuable experience for our pupils whose small actions over the course of the two days have made a huge difference to people’s lives in our community. The children left Tuesday afternoon with a sense of great satisfaction, gratitude and desire to help their community in even more ways.
Thank you to Suzie from Give Together for a truly memorable and meaningful two days.
Mosaic Making
This week the children have explored the ancient Graeco-Roman artform of mosaics. These mosaics were created using glass tesserae, which in Latin means “cube” or “die.” Each individual piece was carefully cut, shaped, glued and placed! Back breaking work! The mosaics will be a permanent legacy of their activity this week and they will look stunning in the Belmont grounds.
Sustainable Fashion
Our year 7 Fashion designers created hats, shoes, bags and outfits using discarded fashion and fabric from fashion shows, shops and film sets to create the most amazing designs. They worked individually to prepare their garments for the Fashion show on the final day, judged by the fabulous Mrs Wheelan and Mrs Hornung.
Mr Weekes’ Cricket Clinic
The pupils were put through their paces by Mr Weeks who set out a variety of activities for the children to complete over the two-day course. They worked in the nets, on close skill and on match tactics, with the two days culminating in a T20. All the pupils had a great time and enjoyed quality coaching time with our very own Mr Weekes
Mr Tongue tennis academy.
We had two fantastic days of tennis. A mixture of hitting drills, singles and doubles competitive games, some old favourite games like Wipeout and Catchy-Catchy which rounded off with a team tournament at the end of day two. Everyone who attended improved at least one aspect of their game over the course.
It’s certainly been a busy week at Belmont, but a very happy and energetic one too and we hope the children have enjoyed all the different activities and been able to share their highlights throughout the week
