A Grand Morning at the Boys’ School
The largest Grandparents Day across our campuses is held at Shore Road for the Boys’ School. The build-up to this treasured occasion is always full of storytelling, with boys swapping details about the grandparents who are coming to spend the morning with them. It’s the bubbling excitement of anticipation that tells you how much grandparents mean to these boys. They know love, warm hugs and, quite openly, special treatment are coming their way.
Our boys knew an audience of such importance deserved their best performances, speeches and activities. The Boys’ School Pipe Band welcome, an assembly featuring the choirs and kapa haka, and a video excerpt of the Senior Production, SpongeBob the Musical, offered a glimpse into this year’s school life.
Principal Peter Cassie addressed the crowd of more than 600 by introducing them to his own grandchildren who, in his words, are extremely advanced for their age. He also mentioned that becoming a grandparent has seemingly thrown impartiality out the window.
He then turned to what grandparents bring. “There’s something incredibly special about the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, and I think part of that comes from our age. As grandparents, we’ve travelled a little further down the road. We know that most things work out. Some of the things we thought were terribly important turned out not to be, and some of the seemingly small things turned out to matter enormously. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give our grandchildren is helping them understand what really matters in life.”
As dispensers of sweet treats themselves, our Parents & Friends put on a morning tea worthy of the grandparents’ unofficial title. The tea, coffee, baking and savouries were exactly the energy our grandparents needed to keep up with excited grandsons as they were toured around the school.
Learning and activity stations were set up across the school, and the science labs were especially popular. Grandparents and grandsons looked over microscopes and specimen samples together and did little experiments on gravity, force and magnetism. The Macky Senior Building offered more activities in its shared spaces, and the boys took extra time in their classrooms to show off, with great pride, the projects they have been working hard on.
Grandparents bring a charm to our school that no other guest could. We acknowledge that any success our boys have has been built on the strong foundations and legacy they leave.
