We had a wonderful day celebrating our love of reading, with a particular focus on Myths and Legends.

Today the myth that is Mr Pay and the legend that is Mr Spowart treated us all to an epic battle as Theseus and the Minotaur to kick off our World Book Day Assembly. In our warm-up House Competition, the children competed to create a chimera, a mythical creature formed of two or more separate animals, just like our very own school mascot, the Griffin.  

For this year’s Prep House Challenge we explored Thiago de Moraes’ Myth Atlas, a collection of gorgeously illustrated maps illustrating myths from around the world. The pupils were tasked with solving fiendish puzzles by carefully reviewing the information on each page. It was wonderful to see the children showing tenacity as they struggled with some of the trickier cryptic clues and helping their classmates as they sought clues around the building. 

Watch some highlights from the day in this short film.

In the build up to the big day, the English department launched their latest reading list and welcomed visiting storyteller John Row. In lessons, some children have been completing an investigation into the oral tradition, playing a week-long game of ‘Pass the Story’ to explore how tales change as they are retold and thinking about the role of writing in preserving stories.  In Lower School, pupils decorated the doors of their classrooms with different book themes or covers.

We have also had some brilliant cross-curricular work emerging from the art rooms, with Year 4  creating some beautiful mythical creatures using collage techniques inspired by author/illustrator Eric Carle and his book Dragons, Dragons.  We enjoyed seeing some stunning mermaids, mermen, phoenixes and griffins come to life.