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Children at Ridgefield found out a lot more about the Hindu festival of Holi this week. They were visited by Hinduism Education Services who gave the children a huge insight into this wonderful tradition, including storytelling, dressing up in traditional Indian costume, developing their understanding of Hindu worship, culture and values – including atman, reincarnation, moksha and karma.
Key Stage 2 children at Ridgefield have been taking part in a Public Speaking Competition organised between local schools this term, with the final taking place last week.
Children from Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 were free to enter in their own classes and had to give a 2 minute talk about a topic of their choice. The children from the class then voted for the best public speaker, who went through the grand finale.
First, however, all the year group winners attended a special training session at Queen Emma Primary School, at which a member of staff from Peterhouse, one of the colleges of Cambridge University, came to teach the children a little about how to be a confident public speaker. The children were also given the topics they would have to talk about at the grand finale.
Year 3 and 4 were given the topic ‘Children should decide what they should learn at school’. Meanwhile Year 5 and 6 children were asked to discuss ‘Deep sea exploration or deep space exploration?’.
Ridgefield’s finalists were Eabhi, Alfie, Maryam and Rizwana. They travelled to Peterhouse on 19th March where they delivered their speeches to the judges in Peterhouse’s amazing auditorium, in front of the other finalists and their supporters. It was a nerve wracking experience!
The overall winners were Morley Primary School, but whilst we didn’t win the trophy, the children all delivered first rate, practiced speeches which did Ridgefield proud.
We were joined earlier this term by some of the players from the Cambridge United squad who introduced the children to their charitable campaign ‘Boots2Africa’.
Formed in 2016, in just two full seasons Colchester-based Boots2Africa have amassed and dispatched over 7000 pairs of donated boots and 15000+ items of kits to Africa’s poorest children and young adults in Universities, schools, sports academies and community group at virtually zero cost.
The premise is simply. Children grow out of football boots. Boots2Africa will collect these, recondition then and ship them
out to Africa so that they get another life with a child who will really apprecaite them. Older people also get through football boots too, then these boots can be reconditioned, or even properly recycled so that it helps the environment too.
We have a Boots2Africa collection box at Ridgefield. If you have an old pair of football boots at home and you don’t know what to do with them, why not bring them in and donate them to this fantastic appeal, so that someone else will get the benefit of them in the future?