This is to thank all the Rippledown staff for organising all the superb activities this year.

1. Rippledown . This is to thank all the Rippledown staff for organising all the superb activities this year.

2. We went in the house and I was in drey! I was already thinking about the fun I was going to have. Sam Monday was an exciting day. We were going to go to Rippledown!!! Thomas I woke up at 5:00 a.m., because it was the day, the big day of the trip to Rippledown Kaushik We were shown our rooms. The year 4 girls had there own beds in their room. Tanvi

3. Tides Leisure Center is a very great pool. I loved the long slides and the big waves. I nearly got bashed on the bottom of the swimming pool. Tsering I told Ella that I was going to go super fast on the slides and I did. It was brilliant! Asrin Today was great fun because we went swimming. It had a wave machine, a big red slide and a Jacuzzi. I came back tired. Matthew The roman signals were cool because we had to send messages to our opponents and they had to do what we told them. We learned about Romans a bit. Then we made tents like cavemen it was fun but the tents were small. We also learned how homes changed in time. Najib Tidying our room was fun and we really worked hard to do it because we get points for sleeping and tidying so on the last day our room got 10 out of 10 and in total points our room (Treetops) was 2nd. By Domas Verbusatis

4. Tides leisure centre Wednesday 25 March 2009 Rippledown-swimming  Dear dairy, As soon as I went down to do ‘breakfast setting up’, I knew that it was going to be another brilliant day. Today- Tides Leisure centre. We took the coach from Rippledown to Deal Castle, where we had a 10 minute walk to the leisure centre. When we arrived Miss Stevenson told us some rules we had to obey. Of course we’re so good, she didn’t really need to. After a little while Mr Gill and Mrs Prescott took us down to the changing rooms and as soon as everyone was ready the teachers reminded us about the rules AGAIN. Finally we went into the showers and then out to the swimming pool. YAHOO! I decided to play tag with the boys, which we had to timeout sometimes when the wave machine came on. Then when the big slide was open I rushed up to get into the line and I managed to come second, just behind Jonas. We spent a fantastic hour in the water. We had to be in the coach at 5 o’clock, so by 4:30 we all got changed and ready. Mrs Glasby had some juice and yummy scrummy homemade chocolate muffins for us. As usual Nele beat us all by being the first one out. When everyone had eaten their muffins we did a numbers check. In the coach we were all chatting when suddenly someone saw a rainbow. One end of the rainbow was bright and the other was a bit faded. Coming off the bus Marc and I spotted 3 little rabbits running to their home. How cute ! At Rippledown house we had time to play in the lounge while the ‘dinner setter uppers’ did their job. Rowana

5. Wednesday 25th March 2009 • Ripple Down-Leeds castle • Today we went to Leeds castle. It is the second best castle I’ve ever seen. It is a beautiful castle because of its amazing duckery and the castle itself. The oldest part dates from the 13th century. The cellars are the oldest part of the castle. We went up to the queen’s room where the decoration was amazing. In the next room there were some sculptures of Henry VIII, Mary, Elisabeth 1st and Edward VI. In the chapel there were some amazing portraits of Jesus’ childhood. All the portraits were covered with a thin layer of gold. A few minutes later we went in a corridor with swords and shields on the walls. Lady Baillie’s room had lots of bird sculptures and Chinese vases. When we came out it was quarter to four, so poor us had to run to the entrance. Luckily we arrived before the shop closed (the shop there closes at 4). • Benoit

6. We found a lot of crabs because of Dave. He told us how to check the rocks for crabs and we found nine! I didn’t really like holding the crabs because I didn’t want them to nip my fingers or I couldn’t use them! Hanaka At the beach we had to find stones that looked weird I found a stones that looked like a tooth. Rock pooling was fun. Fadi At the beach we had to find stones that looked weird I found a stones that looked like a tooth. Rock pooling was fun. Rory We had a three hour walk!! It was for rock pooling. I, Nele, Oskar, Luke, Finlay and Hanaka caught eight crabs eventually. Nele and Hanaka caught all of the crabs. Duncan

7. Rock Pooling Tuesday 24th march 2009 Rippledown-Rockpooling Dear diary, Today we went to St Margaret’s Bay. It was the best of all the three rock pooling sessions I’ve done. It was too good to even begin explaining; but I’ll do my best. First like every time we had the walk. 3 ½ miles [that’s round about 5 ¾ km] of beautiful scenery . . . in wellies. Unfortunately the weather forecast wasn’t very good so we had to make sure our feet stayed dry. We had a packed lunch about halfway there, at a road crossing in between two fields. We walked and walked but it was well worth it. As soon as we got to the pebbly beach we were all excited. We had a biscuit and did a bit of this and that, but the best was yet to come. Finally we got down to the rock pools. Mr Gill found two crabs immediately but the rest of us; no such luck. I was in a group with: Hanaka [the crab finder], Oskar [the ‘well done’ person], Luke [the determined], Duncan [the encourager] and me [the crab picker upper]. No one had any luck till Hanaka cried “a crab! A crab!” And I came running over to pick it up. We picked up the ‘holy crab’ as Oskar named it later, and took it to our tub where the entire group , as well as quite a few others were huddled around to get a closer look. It all went up from there. We’d finally discovered that the crabs hid under the big chalk stones-that sometimes even took two of us to lift. Although to find a crab it was a tendency to need at least two of us anyway -one lift the rock and the other to ‘grab the crab’. In the end our group beat the rest with 9 crabs [although one crab we gave to Rowana’s group]. We had one competitive group [Marc’s one] with four crabs but our group still the best. After a brilliant 2hours of rock pooling, we did some beach Kong fu. [That’s weird actions that mean different beach things like stacks and caves]. After a game where we had to tangle ourselves up and then untangle ourselves, we were told all about tides and what caused them and even some information about what Chris’ studied for his degree! [Also to do with coasts and stones] Once Dave arrived and had picked up the equipment in the car, we went up the stairs [all 173 of them] and on the bus. We drove back to Rippledown and that’s just about it; apart from me having fun, fun and - what was it? -Oh, more fun! Nele

8. Friday 27th March Ripple Down-Last Day Today it was our last day at Rippledown. We were all very sad to leave because we had had such a great time. Today Dave said we would build shelters and do roman signalling. To build the shelters we were only aloud to use sticks, string and cloth. It was great fun building the shelters

9. After lunch we went in the maze, Tsering found the way out really quickly with me, but to get out of the maze you had to go in a grotto which was really scary. Gabriella My favourite part of Rippledown was visiting Leeds Castle. I especially enjoyed seeing all the beautiful birds in the aviary. Miss Stevenson

10. Our Favourite part of the year: RippleDown Our Rippledown was the greatest school trip I had!! Vrushabh I liked the campfire because Egamon was really funny and the songs were fun too. My favourite song was the pirate song but on Alice the Camel song Mrs Glasby was really funny when she was shaking her body. At the end of the campfire Egamon told us a really sad story. Gabriella