A local prep school recently celebrated their 99th birthday with their annual Flower Festival and an outreach programme.
The girls of Auckland Park Preparatory School (Apps) showed off their amazing flower arranging skills along with their hearts of gold on 2 October as the school hosted its special birthday event.
According to the school’s headmistress Brenda Howden, the girls spent the morning arranging their displays at school under the supervision of their class teachers. The arrangements would then be put on show for the school’s learners and staff to view and admire. Howden said, “We encouraged all the learners to use garden flowers, and to rather spend time selecting an appropriate item from home to donate, or purchasing an item needed for the outreach aspect of the display.”
The school’s grades were given themes to design their displays around. The designs needed to feature whatever it is the grade was selected to donate as part of their outreach programme. With themes such as Toy Story (Grade 1), Garden Goodies-Mini Beasts (Grade 3), Wayz with Maize (Grade 4), Girls in Crowns (Grade 6) and many more, the girls created eye-catching and attention-grabbing displays. Items such as tinned food (Grade 1), stationery (Grade 2), books (Grade 5) and others that were used as the centrepiece in the displays would be collected at the end of the day and donated to charities selected by the school.
Another age-old tradition of the school was celebrated on the day as they once again had the oldest and youngest learners light the school’s birthday cake, (cupcakes this year to ensure easy and safe sharing in the times of Covid-19.) For the Grade 7s, this symbolises one of the last events they will experience at the school before going to high school.
Bella Ballenden, reflected on what reaching this moment felt like as a Grade 7 learner, “I can’t really remember how it was then because it was a long time ago but it really doesn’t feel like it. I’m sad to be in this position because we are all going to miss the school but it’s been amazing being a learner here.”
Luckily the girls still have a bit more time at the school before the end of this phase of their schooling.
Bella and the rest of the Grade 7s wished the school a happy 99th birthday and shared, “Keep your light shining, don’t ever let your spark go.”
