Newsletter

Three cheers to the wonderful catering team at King's Hall for providing us all with a delicious turkey lunch on Wednesday, it certainly warmed us all up on an extremley chilly day! Thank you to Liz and all of the team!

On Monday, the Senior Choir took part in a wonderful, festive event at the Blackdown Healthy Living and Activity Centre - a charity working to support the local Blackdown community by helping to reduce the impact of rural isolation.  

Performing to a packed hall (with standing room only!), the choir performed many carols on their own and also led the assembled voices in renditions of many popular Christmas carols (complete with soaring descants).   

Not only did the choir sing beautifully, but they were impeccably well-behaved and were noted to be outstanding ambassadors not only for the school but for their generation. The audience was enthralled and enormously grateful for such a wonderful Christmas treat.  

On the Tuesday evening, the Senior Choir also had the added excitement of taking part in the King’s College Christmas Concert – a first for us!  

Not only did our young singers get to perform on their own in the wonderful College Chapel, but they also had the opportunity of singing with the senior school’s Chapel Choir. The joint sound was absolutely stunning and one of the highlights of a terrific concert. It was also wonderful to see a number of our young singers taking part in the remarkably high-quality King’s Schools Symphony Orchestra.

It is the end of the first term for this year at King's Hall and a huge amount has been happened. Year 8 did our Senior play Moana JR at the beginning of the second half of the term. It had great attendance and was pretty impressive on all fronts. A big well done to everyone who took part and made such a big effort to rehearse. It was worth it!

There have also been lots of IAPS tournaments and each year group have done well.

Year 6 went to Mill on the Brue, Year 5 went to Kilve both on residential trips and had lots of fun.

In this last week the Pre-prep have been doing their amazing nativity whilst Year 3 did their own great play too.

We had a good Carol service on Sunday and many people have brought in colourful Christmas jumpers for this past week, which brings lots of Christmas joy but I think that we are all looking forward to the Christmas holidays and hope everyone has a decent break and a lot of fun too!

Merry Christmas!

My last newsletter article of the year – how can that be? They say time flies when you are having fun and isn't that just the case. The last week of the Michaelmas Term is always my favourite, although it can seem rather manic at times. This included Christmas lunch, and a mid-week trip to McDonalds for the credit raffle winners amongst many other activities. The highlight of the Boarding social calendar is the Boarders' Feast and on Thursday night we had an amazing evening. The children were incredible hosts, some of them thoroughly enjoyed pouring wine for the staff on their tables, although they might require some wine pouring tips before next year! The catering team outdid themselves; the carvery we had was incredible, followed by the ‘ice cream factory’ where children were allowed to help themselves to toppings – let us just say they did not hold back! The after-dinner entertainment was extremely entertaining, the staff kicked off proceeding and showed the children how it was done, the judges were just ridiculously harsh and unkind in my opinion! The 4 groups of children gave it their all and it was so rewarding to see all their time rehearsing come to fruition. The staff watching and ‘judging’ were so impressed, and I was immensely proud of all the children. Thank you so much to everyone for making it happen and the continued support and help I get from my team and SO many other unsung heroes behind the scenes.  

We also said fond farewells to Ines and Thomas P who have been with us for a term. Miss Biggs is also leaving us to pursue a career in the Police – she has given so much to King’s Hall and particularly the Boarding House, we are extremely grateful for all that she has done over the years and will miss her greatly.  

There are a lot of tired children (and staff) this morning – so we wish them a very restful break. I hope you mall have a lovely Christmas with friends and family and we look forward to welcoming back fresh faced and bushy tailed children next year! 

6N have been getting into the Christmas spirit this term, whilst still trying to keep the health of the planet and the plight of others less fortunate than ourselves, at the forefront of our minds. For weeks the pupils have been researching how to make Christmas decorations out of recycled materials, salvaging the resources and crafting in their free time. The result of their efforts is a wonderful window of ‘green’ Christmas cheer in the Outer Quad.

The form has also been busy wrapping Christmas shoe boxes full of goodies for children in the Ukraine, hoping they too will be able to find some moments of cheer over this coming break.

Finally, 6N would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy, peaceful new year.  

Thanks to this incredibly kind gift of a fully-functioning model crane, made and donated by Mr Tim Woods, the children have a fabulous addition to the DT department.  We are very grateful for his remarkable skill and generosity.

The King's Loop has continued to be incredibly popular this year.  For those that are not familiar, children choose to run or jog the 2.5km course around our beautiful school grounds and I like to reward their efforts.  Each week, their times are recorded and they have a loyalty card that they can fill in.  This card provides them with their progress over the term, and once they have reached 6 Loops, they are given an HMC.  They are given a King's Loop badge for completing 12 Loops, a T-shirt for completing 24 and a hoodie for completing 50 Loops.

The King's Loop has helped our pupils develop their fitness so that they stay healthy, become a better team mate or help them train for cross country events. It is a highlight for many and it has become a part of their weekly routine. To purchase the rewards, we have relied on donations from the 1880 Club, but this year, I would like to thank our new sponsor- The Christmas Decorators.  They have kindly agreed to fund all of our prizes from September 2023-2024, which will also have our smart new King's College Prep logo on the front.  I cannot thank them enough for their generosity, as receiving the awards means so much to the children. It is a perfect time of year to visit the Christmas Decorators website (link below) and next year, I am sure you will see lots of children running around with their logo on their King's Loops prizes.