Drama
The children explored the fascinating world of Greek mythology by bringing to life creatures from the Odyssey, under the watchful eye of Mrs Baker, Director of the Stahl Theatre at Oundle. There was some real talent on display as they unleashed their creativity. In the course of the sessions, the children explored how to use levels to build effective stage pictures. Using the story of Scylla and Caribdis from Homer’s Odyssey, they created the two terrifying sea creatures, first looking at height and depth and then thinking about how each part of the monster might move. To this moving image, the children added sound. Using the same building blocks, they then created a moving image of Odysseus and his men sailing through the Strait of Messina, having been warned by the witch Circe to ‘Hug Scylla’s crag—sail on past her—top speed! Better by far to lose six men and keep your ship than lose your entire crew.”
Music
Windlesham and Oundle pupils came together for a music making session with Miss Johnson, creating some beautiful glockenspiel melodies. They worked on jazz improvisation on glockenspiels and xylophones using pentatonic scales.
Classics
The children were taken on a whistle-stop tour of Ancient Egypt’s top sites, such as the Great Pyramid at Giza, Ramses III’s Temple Abu-Simbel and Valley of the Kings, building on their knowledge of tomb curses, ancient architecture and gods. They met Queen Hatshepsut – the most successful female Pharaoh in 3000 years – whose existence we only had confirmed this century as her name had been removed from most of her building projects. The pupils provided some thoughtful ideas about why this was the case. Finally, we grappled with some Hieroglyphs and the children made bookmarks, writing their own name within a cartouche to protect it from evil spirits just like the Ancient Egyptians! The teacher, Mrs Westran, was really impressed as to how much knowledge the pupils had.
Chemistry
Under the guidance of Mrs Dorman who organised the whole event, the children extracted copper from malachite ore, learning about the fascinating processes involved in chemistry. It was pretty exciting stuff involving smelting and chemical extraction; the children were enthralled and asked lots of pertinent questions.
English
The pupils were asked to consider why the point of view or narrative voice is significant in a story or piece of creative writing. They were given an image (from the New York Times series ‘What’s Going on in this Picture?’) of a group of student cellists performing to a herd of cows in Denmark and asked to choose what point of view they would tell their story from: the cows, humans, cello, farmer – whoever they wanted to tell their story. The pupils then wrote their story and we guessed who the narrator was at the end of the session. Mrs James, who ran the session, commented on how much she enjoyed teaching them.
Design, Engineering & Technology (DET)
The children were tasked with making their own buzz wire games, demonstrating their problem-solving skills in this hands-on, practical task. First, they had to design their wire ‘challenge’ shape and wand, then create a base for the buzzer to function. Resilience and perseverance were much in demand for this task!
Swimming
An evening fun splash session rounded off the first day, with the children letting off some steam in the Oundle School pool.
Amongst all of this was fun and games and a sleepover in Houses – the Oundle pupils and prefects loved having some younger ones to take under their wing – our pupils seemed to slot straight in. The children had so much fun and they have taken away some wonderful memories. Thank you Oundle for allowing them to visit, and we look forward to visiting again in the future.
