In the penultimate week of term, pupils in the Lower School and Forms 3 and 4 took some valuable time off screen to participate in their Connections Projects and the interhouse Strava Challenge.
Born out of the highly successful Fab4 Challenge that Lower School pupils took part in during May half-term, the aim of the Connections Projects was, as lockdown started to ease, for pupils to reconnect with the world away from a screen. Oakhamians chose from a variety of activities tailored to their age group from four different areas: ‘Self’, ‘Family’, ‘Community’ and ‘Environment’.
Examples of tasks that pupils could select from were:
Self: painting a self-portrait; going on a walk/bike ride; making a scrapbook or poster of their last holiday; designing and completing an exercise plan including warm-up and warm down.
Family: creating a den with a sibling, which includes a bed, seating, storage and a table you can eat at, planning, shopping for and cooking a 2-course lunch for their family; building an assault course for a pet or younger sibling and then helping them use it.
Community: finding something in their local neighbourhood beginning with each letter of the alphabet and taking a picture; picking wild flowers and making bouquets to leave on the doorsteps of their neighbours; finding a job that needs doing in your local community (litter picking, lawn mowing for a neighbour, dog walking, weeding a churchyard).
Environment: making a sculpture to show their appreciation of the NHS and key workers; making bunting sending out a message to the world to raise their spirits during lockdown; devising a plan and putting anything in place to help their family reduce their carbon footprint; writing a short play or song which explores a major world issue and performing it.
Housemistress of Ancaster, Alison Petit, said: “The girls rose to the challenge admirably and the resulting photos and messages that they sent through demonstrate their amazing powers of invention and creativity.”
Concurrently, all pupils in the 14 Lower School and Middle School Houses were set the Strava Challenge; an interhouse competition that saw pupils compete to see which House could clock up the most activity minutes during that week. It was a hotly contested competition that even saw many Form 7 pupils returning to their former Houses to support the challenge.
Director of Hockey, James Bateman, who set up the competition, said: “It has been great to see so many Oakhamians getting active with 474 signed up to Strava. We completed 1,344 hours of activity across the 7 days! Hopefully it will inspire more pupils to get out and train ready for sport to return in September!”
The winners were:
Lower School: Peterborough House
Middle School Girls: Hambleton
Middle School Boys: Clipsham
Overall winners: Peterborough House
