Our Prep boys celebrated European Day of Languages on Tuesday 26 September by exploring Europe’s diverse cultures, languages and traditions through fun activities, special assemblies and even baking.
Starting in Tutor time, using fun activities and puzzles, boys were challenged to identify languages and link words to their countries. Assembly that day saw boys take on a languages escape room. Boys needed to complete a quiz correctly, play detectives and search for words, correctly guess idioms and complete sequences to obtain the digits to crack the code and escape!
All boys who had timetabled language lessons that day also enjoyed a bonus idioms quiz. Learning fun idioms such as the Estonian phrase ‘Make it out of wood and paint it red’ (puust ja punaseks ette tegema), which means ‘Make something obvious’.
A Bake Off competition, challenging boys to bake cakes with a European Day of Languages Theme, is the celebration’s finale, and some great entries have already been received. However, boys have until 3 October to send photos of their brilliant cakes, so there is still plenty of time to bake and decorate.
While it was wonderful to shine a light on languages on this special day, we are proud to say that languages are interwoven through the school week all year round, with boys learning more and more languages as they progress through the Prep School. With French, German, Latin and Spanish taught in lessons by Y7, as well as co-curricular clubs such as Language Club (Y5-Y6), Spanish Beginners Club (Y5-Y6) and Spanish Enrichment (Y8), boys have numerous opportunities to develop their linguistic skills.
At Spanish Beginners Club this week, boys enjoyed learning Spanish vocabulary and how to use it in context with grammar. The boys’ pronunciation was perfecto as they selected sports they liked and those they liked a little less, as well as identifying the words for a range of typical Spanish items before finishing up with the traditional Spanish song La Camisa Negra. The club offers a fun Spanish flavour on Friday lunchtimes each week.
Boys can also look forward to a flavour of Italy with a beginner’s Italian session planned for October as part of their Enrichment programme.
