SPORTS WEEK 2025
Sports Week 2025 - Always Active
What a great week we had for Sports Week 2025!! We are thankful that the weather was fine (even if it was a little hot some days) and no external events disrupted our schedule (remember the General Election in 2024).
This year's focus was all about encouraging pupils to be 'always active' by engaging with established sports, trying out new sports or joining in with activities that made our bodies move. Over the course of the week, we were joined by a number of external providers, some of our extra-curricular club providers (Let's Go Tennis and Little Pixies) as well as staff members sharing their expertise. EYFS enjoyed a carousel of Sports Day activities on the field on Thursday and, after a two year break, our colour teams from Year 1 to 6 came together to compete for the Sports Day shield at Westminster Lodge.
During the week, children also took part in Fit Kidz workshops, balance bike and cycling sessions, a fitness and fun morning organised by St Albans School at Woollams, yoga with Mrs Childs, Capture the Flag, dodgeball and rounders.
New sporting experiences
Thanks to the loan of Mandeville's Quidditch equipment and to the organisational skills of our own Harry Potter expert, Mrs Batt Gregory, Year 6 were organised into houses for a Quidditch tournament on the field. The game has lots of similarities with tag rugby and dodgeball but with the added fun of the Golden Snitch entering play halfway through each game. At this point, the team member designated the Seeker has to try and catch the Golden Snitch to earn more points for their team and end the game. With the Golden Snitch allowed to go ANYWHERE, the adults taking on this role took advantage of their teacher status to hide inside classrooms, the hall and the library, making it even harder for the seekers to find them.
Congratulations to Slytherin, the winning house!
Mrs Gritz shared her squash skills with Year 3 on Thursday. Thanks to a number of portable squash walls and the loan of other equipment from local clubs the children got to experience 'Mini squash'. They used lighter rackets and balls and some simplified rules to learn and enjoy some basic games. They practised hand-eye coordination skills and took part in a mini fitness circuit. Then they played some rallies with a partner against the squash walls! Hopefully we have some budding future squash stars!
New exercise experiences
Two of our activities had very similar sounding names - Drumba and Zumba. Both Year 1 and Year 6 took part in Zumba workshops on Thursday, learning a fantastic routine to Lady Gaga's 'Abracadabra' whilst Years 2 to 5 incorporated drum pads and drum sticks into their workout with Bob and Sophie from Drumba on Wednesday. Both experiences definitely gave the children, and staff, a full body workout!
Challenges
It is always a pleasure to welcome back BMX Halfpipe Champion, Mike Mullen, to work with our Year 6s. Mike delivers important messages about developing a growth mindset through BMX bike riding, challenging the children to try out tricks and jumps with different levels of hot and spicy ratings. Everyone worked hard to turn any feelings of 'I can't' into 'I can't yet' which even included supporting two of our non riders to learn to ride a bike in less than an hour. In an assembly at the end of the day, Mike demonstrated a number of tricks and even jumped over Mrs Paine and her two PE teachers for the day, Zach and Noah.
Tuesday's challenge was all about skipping. Skip2bfit challenged the children to see how many skips they could complete in 2 minutes before allowing them to try again to see if they could beat their score. Two minutes is a surprisingly long time and maintaining stamina and focus in 30 degree heat also added to the challenge. It was certainly a challenge which captured the staff's enthusiasm and competitive spirit with Mrs Paine coming out on top with 252 skips in 2 minutes. She was only beaten by Zach in Y4 who managed a whopping 283 skips. In an assembly at the end of the day, the top skippers in each year group were awarded with a certificate and prize for their achievements. We hope this experience will encourage children to work on their skipping which is a fantastic form of exercise for building a strong heart and lungs.
Once again, the Yellow colour team were triumphant in The Daily Mile Colour Challenge averaging just under 6.5 laps per runner during the eight minute running challenge. This was a three quarter of a lap improvement on their team result from Spring B. As a year group, Year 5 averaged an impressive 6.6 laps per runner which provided great motivation for our Year 6s who went out on a high with a 7.3 lap average.
Unfortunately, our hot weather lunchtime arrangements reduced the number of days the Sports Ambassadors had to run their Hula Hoop Challenge however it was great to see so many children attempting to record their longest hula hoop on both the KS1 and KS2 playgrounds. It seemed to be an activity that some of our Sports Ambassadors were particularly good at with Isla in Year 4 managing to keep the hoop rotating for 17 minutes and 40 seconds. Could this be a new Prae Wood record for others to challenge?
Sports Days
Both events were well attended by Prae Wood families and we are sure the children appreciated your support as they took part in activity races and events which tested their throwing and jumping skills. We will wait until celebration assembly on Friday to share which colour team won. For now, we will just say it was very close with only 27 points separating first and third.
