Magnificent Me
18th September 2017
Before turning away from this Blog for fear of reading a tale of personal arrogance, I should point out that this is the title of the theme in the in the Nursery this week. It chimes in nicely with our whole school termly initiative which is all about earning a Respectful Rabbit. Before trying to earn a Respectful Rabbit, I needed to explain to the children what ‘respect’ and indeed being ‘respectful’ means. Easy to describe to an adult but try getting the right language to decode this concept for 7 year olds and under. I began with the sentence ‘Everyone has something special to offer to the world..’ and then discussed a range of different fields of excellence that we could all excel in including the much underestimated quality of kindness. These special talents earn the respect of others and all children even young ones can understand deserved admiration.
I then discussed how when we pay attention to the thoughts, feelings and wishes of others we are showing respect. Again the young pupils who have earned ‘Kindness Kangaroos’ and ‘Helpful Hedgehogs are quick to understand the need for this level of behaviour and they also understand through the small laminated ‘Door Mice’ awards that a respectful thing to do would be to stand gently back and let an adult go through first when required. Accordingly I have great hopes for our Respectful Rabbits!
Anyway I digress. Back to Magnificent Me-again, bear with me! Nursery like to seize the early weeks to reinforce just how important it is to celebrate the differences of our collective group of children. As I mentioned earlier, we need to remind every child that they each contribute something special to both our school community and indeed the world. To reinforce this we asked Nursery parents to come and celebrate their unique talents with us and were delighted with the courage and variety contained in their responses.
This week we began with a parent who has relatively recently taken up painting, a doctor and a musical mother. The result was a real joy. Our artist brought her work and equipment along to share with the children. As we all know children are innocently honest so their praise and interest in her new found passion was an absolute delight! Our visiting doctor also enchanted the children as she checked their ears and shared her stethoscope during her perfectly judged and illuminating talk. As for the musical mother, her contribution can be seen and heard on our Twitter page at StChrisEpsom where you will see delighted children marching and moving to a beautifully played violin. What a wonderful start to the autumn term.
Which leaves me just a tiny space to talk about ‘Magnificent Us’. Yesterday I heard that we had been shortlisted for the prestigious Independent Schools Association (ISA) national awards. Apparently we have one of the three best websites in the country! We are all thrilled with this recognition. We will find out on the 10th November if it wins first place. Watch this space.
Annie Thackray