Figure 1.--These boys are involved in a newspaper project. The children write and edit the articles under the supervision of one of the teachers. This was just before computers became more widely used.
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Figure 1.--These boys are involved in a newspaper project. The children write and edit the articles under the supervision of one of the teachers. This was just before computers became more widely used. |
Most schools offer a wide range of different indoor and outdoor activities, or occupations as they are called at some schools. Many activities are competitive, others are encouraged simply to improve on the individuals own standards. Common activities include, but are not limited to: astronomy, archery, backgammon, badminton, basket-making, birdwatching, bridge, boxing (now disappearing) , calligraphy, carpentry, climbing, camping skills, canoeing, chess, choir, computers, cooking, conjuring, coral singing, dance, debate, drawing, drama, dress making,, enamelling, engines, fencing, film making, fishing (especially fly fishing) , forestry, gardening, heraldry, illuminating/lettering, judo/karate, kites, lapidary work, local history, modeling, model trains, musical instruments, needlework, newspapers, orientering, origami, painting, pets, photography, pottery, puppets, origami, riding, roller skating, sailing, scouting (cubs, browins, girl guides, and Boy Scouts) , scrapbooks, sewing, shooting (air rifles and small calibre rifles) , stamp collecting, soft-toy making, and swimming. Other activities are pursued by the children in their free time, including bicycling, building dens, board games, conkers, marbles, skateboarding, war games (board games and model displays)
Carpentry was once a major activity at prep schools. It is now much less important. This reflects the much larger range of activities now availavle to children at the schools which this page reflects. Some schools still have carpentry or wood working shops as they are commonly called. Here the probem is usually finding a skilled staff member. Some of the skills are a little difficult for the younger boys at a prep school, but the olders boys are capable of quite high standard work.
Most schools have a good selection of board games for rainy day activities. This is not usually done as a club or occupations activity. Chess is especially popular not only bcause of the nature of the game, but the fact that the matches are realtively short and thus can fir easily into the school schedule including hort periods of free time that the children migh have. The exception here is chess. This varies from school to school, but at many schools chess is very popular. There are organized matches and tournaments. This included both inter- and intra-school events. Chess seems most popular with boys, but we noted that quite a few girls also played.
Gardening is an popular actvity at msany schools. It is another activity that was prbably more popular at earkier schools. Schools employ a variety of approaches. A few schools make gardening a
Approaches to model building vary. Often it is more of a free time activity with little adult supervision. Bult some schools persue it as a club activity. Here we note it was mostly boys that were interesting. Mostly they chose military air craft or sports call models. Plastic kits were commonly used. A few schools encoyrage the boys to work with baslsa wood kits requiring more skilled work. We notice some children working with lits that produced planes that could actually fly. The boys then organized test flights to see how well they had done. While only limited supervision is needed for model building, the school does need to have a room where the boys can work on their models and tore the supplies.
Prep schools use newpapers in a variety of ways. They may be used for a variety of classroom activities. Schools may have the children study various features of a newspaper. Schools also may make the production o a newspaper class or activity project. Usually this is a short term project rather than the production of any regularly published paper.
One popular activity we noted were radio controlled cars. They always seemed to be cars of various description. The cars came read made although there was some maintenance involved, especially given the hard ware they were subjected to by the boys. They seem to have been very popular in the 1980s. We are not sure when they first appeared, but by the 1980s improvements in electronics and minuarization was making possible increasingly xophisticated toys. . Different schools had various rules. Some schools did not want the children, almost always the boys, to bring them. Other schools tolerated them. Here there was no club or organized activity. Instead the boys wjo had the cars enjoyed informal races. Here we do not know a great deal about this activity. We saw a number of boys with these cars and working on them to make sure they were in good condition for the next race.
