Senior Preparatory Weekly Memo

I am proud to be sharing an overview of our Senior Preparatory achievements across our cultural disciplines: Music, Dance, Art & Design, and Drama.

Over the past year, our Senior Preparatory learners have balanced technical skill-building in the classroom with external examinations, competitive festivals, and live stage performances. Our goal remains clear: to build genuine discipline, artistic confidence, and collaborative skills across all disciplines. 

Music 

Music continues to see great participation and strong performance outcomes across both ensemble and solo work.

Our auditioned Chamber Choir, comprising some of our Grade 5 and 6 learners, gained valuable experience early in the year, performing at Cape Town City Hall during the Chorale Celebration Festival Network. 

The Senior Preparatory Choir focused heavily on sight-reading, pitch accuracy, and complex repertoire in preparation for the ATKV Applous Choir Competition. That disciplined preparation led to recognition at the Cape Town Eisteddfod, where the choir’s technical precision and artistic expression earned a Diploma and the title of Overall Category Winner, along with the Ernest Laughton medal. They also delivered strong performances at our Autumn Awakenings Choir Festival, Music Concert, the West Coast Song Festival and will perform again at our Senior Growing Minds celebration.

In instrumental music, we continue to enter Trinity College of London Music examinations in both the Classical and Rock n Pop sections.

Our Marimbas impress with their strong performances, and our individual entrants in both the Western Cape Virtual Eisteddfod and Cape Town Eisteddfod secured outstanding results. 

Dance 

Our Senior Prep dance department has focused on technical versatility across multiple genres.

With over 80 dancers participating, and many experiencing their very first performance at the Cape Town Eisteddfod, our Preparatory Dance Production, The Magical Map, proved to be a truly enriching and transformative experience for our dancers. Far more than a performance opportunity, the production became a meaningful journey of growth, where learners developed essential life skills through creativity, collaboration, and commitment, whilst building confidence and stage experience in a competitive environment.

One of the benefits was the development of teamwork. From rehearsals to staging, dancers learned how to work collectively towards a shared goal.

Their hard work was rewarded with a Diploma, and they won the Junior production performance section.

Art & Design

Across all three grades, our art curriculum empowers learners to use art as a dynamic tool for self-expression, storytelling, and driving positive change.

The Grade 4 learners explored abstract affirmation typography, Bauhaus bird forms, and still-life creations. They mastered artistic skills like font design, proportion, and complementary colours while building soft skills like fine-motor strength, self-encouragement, and conceptual reasoning.

The Grade 5 learners expanded into environmental advocacy and imagination. They crafted 3D mixed-media reptiles and collages, sharpening spatial awareness while nurturing empathy for endangered species and sharpening out-of-the-box thinking.

Grade 6 art sparks collaboration and social activism. Learners mastered two-point perspective, 3D graffiti, and stop-motion animation using digital apps. Through group project-based learning, they cultivated teamwork, digital literacy, and persuasive storytelling.

Our Design Society projects have focused on practical, 3D design thinking. Learners created embossed foil illustrations scaled precisely for sliding wooden pencil boxes, learning how to handle specialised embossing tools and working with dynamic materials. More recently, learners explored Kinusaiga—a Japanese technique requiring precise fabric cutting and pressing into polystyrene bases to construct framed textile artworks. Their last project introduces bas-relief texture art, blending 2D illustration with 3D structural paste.

 Drama 

In Drama, our curriculum classes and societies have focused on stagecraft, vocal control, and physical theatre.

The Drama Society similarly fostered active communication and teamwork, guiding learners through themed theatrical pieces. We give learners a platform to develop voice projection, timing, and direct dialogue while tackling themes of technology and communication, physical theatre and tableaux. We encourage spatial awareness, level changes, and non-verbal storytelling to express character choices.

These technical foundations were implemented in preparation for the Western Cape Virtual Eisteddfod, where our Drama entrants secured excellent achievements, including 3 Cum Laude awards, across individual monologues, duologues, and poetry entries.

The achievements of our Senior Preparatory learners reflect consistent effort, structured instruction from our staff, and strong parent support. Whether preparing for national choir judging, rehearsing for dance exams, or building 3D design prototypes, our learners are developing practical skills and a sense of pride in their work, helping them to grow into confident, creative individuals, ready to embrace their futures with open hearts and curious minds - and a little bit of extra happiness coming our way in 2027. Stay tuned to see our true colours shine bright!

Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Step into our Robotics Lab or Makerspace on any day of the week, during lessons, after school or during a school holiday, and you will see our Prep learners living those words.

This year our competition teams took on two of the biggest robotics challenges in the world.

The World Robot Olympiad theme for 2026 was Robots Meet Culture. Our teams were asked to imagine how robots could help protect, share and celebrate art and culture. On the competition mat, that meant building and coding a robot that could scan the field, read colours, carry instruments and set up a concert stage, completely on its own, with no remote control and no second chances.

Our FIRST LEGO League teams, Cosmic Coders and Nitrate, took on the BIOGLOW season, which invited them to explore the incredible biodiversity of our planet and ask how technology, creativity and research can help protect the natural world. Alongside their robot missions, they researched real problems and built machine learning demonstrations to present to judges. That is research, engineering, coding and public speaking, all from learners who are ten, eleven and twelve years old.

For the second year in a row, our Grade 6 learners have written code that has run in space. Through the Astro Pi Mission Zero, run by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the European Space Agency, Mr Delport guided a team who wrote a Python program that runs on a computer aboard the International Space Station, reading its sensors and lighting up a message for the astronauts living there. Imagine being eleven years old and knowing your code has been to space.

And that was not our only journey to space this year. Together with Ms Tarin Hodges, I had the joy of leading our Grade 6 Springbot team, who wrote the code for an experiment now on its way to the International Space Station.

Our learners also took their ideas to an international stage at Coolest Projects, a global showcase for young creators. One learner used a MaxIQ sensor to test which materials make classrooms quieter. Another studied how heavy school bags affect posture and designed a wearable alert to protect learners’ backs. Another used AI face sensing to build a game where you “eat” falling tacos. And another spent three months building Spellys Buddy, an app that helps learners hear and practise their Afrikaans spelling words. 

Under the guidance of Ms Hodges, our Grade 6 learners stepped into the shoes of real scientists at the Eskom Expo for Young Scientists. They asked their own questions, designed fair tests, collected data and defended their findings in front of judges. 

In our Makerspace, the learning has been just as bold. Our Grade 4s built balloon powered rovers inspired by NASA and tested spaghetti bridges to breaking point. Our Grade 5s launched rubber band rockets, raced sail cars and grew their own crystals. Our Grade 6s built solar ovens, egg drop lunar landers and Mars helicopters, and this quarter, with Ms Hodges, designed satellites from recycled materials to solve real environmental problems right here in South Africa.

In Robotics lessons, Grade 4s coded their robots to dance using loops, and built inventions that measure wind speed and predict rain or shine. Grade 6s turned their robots into training trackers that collect and analyse their own fitness data. These are not toys. They are real problems, solved by real young engineers.

And 2027 is going to be something special. Next year every grade in the Prep begins working with the brand new LEGO Education Computer Science and AI kits. Imagine a Grade 4 coding a robot to guard dragon gold, or cracking a secret password using conditionals. Imagine a Grade 5 building a virtual pet that knows when it is hungry. Imagine our Grade 6s programming a restaurant robot, or planning a rescue flight that drops supplies from the sky.

Most exciting of all, our learners will not only use artificial intelligence, they will teach it. They will collect their own data, train a machine to recognise a pose or a pattern, and see for themselves how AI makes decisions, and when it gets them wrong. Understanding how AI thinks is no longer a bonus. It is a basic skill, and our learners will have it.

STEM has never really been about robots or rockets. It teaches our children to think logically, work as a team, communicate their ideas and fail without fear.

To our learners: keep asking “what if?” The future is not something that will happen to you. It is something you will build.

Today is about more than photographs, trophies and results. It's about celebrating a year of growth, commitment and unforgettable sporting experiences.

Last year, I outlined four commitments for 2026: expanding fixtures and inter-school partnerships, building depth across our sporting codes, developing confident and well-rounded athletes, and, above all, keeping sport fun, inclusive and inspiring.

So, how did we do?

Let's start with participation and progress.

At Senior Prep, approximately 90% of our learners participate in structured College sport. We've continued building depth, with A–D Netball teams across U10, U11 and U12, alongside dedicated boys' and girls' Hockey teams across every age group. We're not simply building stronger first teams; we're creating more opportunities for learners to participate, develop and grow.

And the results have followed. Our U11 Rugby team enjoyed an unbeaten second quarter, while our U13 side suffered just two narrow defeats. Our U12 Netball team toured Knysna, and our U11A Netball team reached the Metro North Blue League Finals for the second consecutive year, finishing fourth. Our swimmers also finished second at our competitive galas, while Chess continued to grow.

But some of sport's greatest memories cannot be measured by results alone.

Think back to our U10 Cricket match against Elkanah, with six runs needed and just two overs remaining. Or our Derby Day against Blouberg Ridge, where our Rugby teams, having never beaten Blouberg in the league, held firm in defence and capitalised in attack to win all their games.

These are the moments that make sport special. Coaches can teach technique and tactics, and team managers can plan for every eventuality, but nobody can fully prepare a learner for the pressure of those moments. That is where character emerges, resilience is tested and lifelong memories are made.

This year also brought our community together.

Our holiday Hockey and Rugby Clinics welcomed more than 60 learners, while our inaugural Derby Day saw 178 Parklands learners compete across Rugby, Hockey, Netball and Chess. It was a wonderful celebration of competition, camaraderie and school pride, and we look forward to hosting it again in 2027.

We also made history with our U12 Cricket Tour to Hermanus - our first Cricket Tour in years, and the first since COVID.

Twelve cricketers represented Parklands across three days of competition against Curro Hermanus and Hermanus Primary. Beyond the cricket, the boys enjoyed an Adult-Learner Braai, aerial climbing at Whale of a Time and walks along the Hermanus Cliff Path, spotting whales along the way.

The tour was about far more than cricket. It was about teamwork, independence, friendship and personal growth. Seeing young athletes develop not only as cricketers but as young men is one of the greatest rewards of sport.

But none of this happens by accident.

To our Sports Department, thank you for the countless hours of planning, problem-solving and commitment that make these experiences possible.

To our coaches and team managers, thank you for developing not only athletes but young people who understand discipline, resilience, respect and teamwork.

To our parents and guardians, thank you for the early mornings, lifts, weekend fixtures and sideline encouragement. And to our sponsors, including CTM Northgate and School & Leisure, thank you for investing in our learners and our programme.

And finally, to our learners: you are the heartbeat of Parklands Prep Sport. Whether you've scored the winning try, taken the final wicket or simply found the courage to try something new, you have something to be proud of.

Never measure your sporting journey by trophies alone. Measure it by how much you've grown, how you've treated your teammates and how you've embraced every opportunity.

As we look towards 2027, our four commitments remain: Because our goal is to build more than successful teams. We want to develop young people who carry the lessons of sport into every part of their lives.

To our Grade 6 learners preparing for the Secondary Faculty, I leave you with this thought:

“Your purposes must be bigger than your pleasure, and your cause greater than your comfort.”

Be brave enough to try something new. Pursue excellence, train hard, be disciplined and embrace every opportunity. Step outside your comfort zone, support those around you and make these special years count. That is where growth happens, character is built and lifelong memories begin.

Congratulations to all our award recipients and to every learner who has worn the Parklands colours with pride.

One school. One community. One proud Parkie family.