Rydal Penrhos Daily Notes – March 2

Week 2, day 9 –  9 pupils, 5 staff 

Apologies to the parent who was left waiting at the front door at 5pm today when the school must have seemed closed and deserted.

The Prep school is a big place and with so few pupils and staff, we tend to only use a small part of it. This morning the pupils were up in the food tech room, quite a trek from the front door, and this afternoon they went down to the school short hole golf training facility on the total opposite side of the grounds.

I endeavour to visit every activity to take the occasional photo for this blog and today has entailed a large amount of huffing and puffing up and down the hill.

Indeed I reached the golf, at the bottom of the hill,  just in time to be told that they were finishing and going back to the prep hall, at the top of the hill!

Add to this that I had walked completely the wrong way around the wall to the golf course where I found myself calling over an old brick wall in a  rather Shakespearean manner, and you can see that there really is no problem in me reaching 10,000 steps a day!

Upon making it back up to the prep hall I was informed that the group were doing some kind of ‘ninja trail’. What on earth is that? Yesterday’s gymnastic session had been further enhanced with extra equipment such as a medicine ball and bean bags and the room rather resembled a set from the 1980’s version of ‘Gladiators’.

It seemed that there was a child-designed course around the room involving jumping, rolls, balancing, more rolling, throwing and a final roll!

Each pupil was being timed around the course with a complicated system of points and some kind of bonuses/capping system for age, style, speed and agility; it all seemed very complicated and I’m not sure if the teachers really had a handle on the scoring system! However, this is apparently the way that Ninjas do their training!

I, of course, ended up having to undergo the entire ordeal…the scoring system was trialled to its max as I pleaded extra bonus points for age to try and offset the fact that the previous winning time was 32 seconds and I took over four minutes! Who knew that a balance beam was so tough!!

There is photographic evidence of this feat but they are censored on health and safety grounds because I should not have kept my socks on and my hair should have been tied back!

Anyway to get back to my original apology to the parent who was waiting by the front door at 5pm; we did seem to fit an awful lot into the afternoon session and at 3.50pm I said I would go back to the front office to prepare for the afternoon snack and board games session.

I saw a parent at the front door upon arrival and was astonished to find that it was already 5pm. Apparently the clock in the hall had not been moved forward an hour! Now there’s a job for tomorrow and I expect that this building holds a fair few clocks!

Mrs L Davies 

Head of Prep