The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Celebrations
10 June 2022
Our Summer ‘Jubilee Term’ is well underway and we have very much been looking forward to the main event which took place today; our Jubilee Picnic in the Quad in celebration of the Queen’s 70 years of reign.
To kick start the celebrations this term, we were delighted to welcome the Chiltern Camerata and violinist, Ruth Schulten, to The Beacon for a Jubilee Concert in aid of Ukraine. We were especially pleased to welcome two Ukrainian families who have recently arrived in Buckinghamshire. An unexpected highlight of the evening was an impromptu violin performance from Davyd, aged 14, from Odessa. He wowed the audience with his beautiful playing – a poignant moment! Thank you to all who supported this event, it was a great success and we are pleased to have raised £950 for the DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal!
In Cooking & Nutrition, our boys from Years 4 to 8 have been getting competitive in our Jubilee-themed Mastercook Competition, creating their own commonwealth-inspired cuisine. So far, we have had various ‘cook-offs’ and our Upper School boys have completed their final judged by Charlie Baxter from Pluma Restaurant in Amersham and his Sous Chef, who were both incredibly impressed with the dishes. Congratulations to the winners Daniel Z (1st), Arjan B (2nd) and Edward SP (3rd). Keep an eye out for our Lower School and Middle School final announcements.
This week, various activities have been happening behind the scenes in preparation for our Jubilee Picnic event.
Our budding chefs in Years 4 to 7 have been expertly preparing almost 600 scones in their Cooking & Nutrition lessons, ready for the big event. Our Year 8 boys ventured off to Copas Farm on a day trip to hand-pick strawberries for our boys to also make delicious strawberry jam to accompany the scones. They did a fantastic job strawberry-picking, bringing back to school 13kg of strawberries!
Our Catering staff put the excess strawberries to good use, organising a Jubilee-themed ‘Taste Buddies’ session for our Early Years boys, introducing them to various strawberry-based delights to encourage them to try different nibbles.
On Thursday, we were excited to host an Afternoon Tea for local Veterans from the Royal British Legion. They very much enjoyed being served Tea and cake by some of our Year 7 boys and were particularly complimentary about the delicious scones and jam made by our boys.
In Art, boys across the school have been busy designing their own bunting flags and portraits of the queen, the artwork is proudly displayed around the school for everyone to see.
On our Jubilee Picnic event day, our boys enjoyed a day of non-uniform in aid of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust. Thank you to all our Beacon parents who raised a total of £876 for the trust!
All boys from Nursery to Year 8 were each presented with a Jubilee coin, as a small memento from our Interim Headmaster, Simon Detre, to remember such a momentous occasion in British history and to celebrate his headship during our Jubilee Term.
The Quad was transformed into a Jubilee party venue with bunting, dressed tables and other royal decorations ready for our boys and staff to enjoy a fabulous picnic with their peers of sandwiches, crisps, fruit, scones, jam and cupcakes.
Our wonderful BPS also attended the event to host a ‘Great British Cake Sale’ raising funds for the DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. There was a huge array of lovely cakes kindly baked and donated by our wonderful Beacon Community. Our boys were spoilt for choice when deciding which cake they would like to take home with them to enjoy. A massive thank you to our Beacon families who contributed to the cake sale, there was an overwhelming number of donations of over 1,500 cakes! We are delighted to announce that an astonishing £1,280 was raised for the charity! Thank you to our Head boy team for helping with the collection of cakes this morning.
Other activities included a Jubilee-themed scavenger hunt, and games on Willsfield. The highlight of the day was our special guest, the tallest Bubbleologist in the world! Our boys absolutely loved playing with the bubbles and taking part in his special tricks! ‘Double Bubble’ was a massive hit, when a giant bubble was put over two boys together.
All of our Jubilee activities were a great success and the whole Beacon Community have loved celebrating the Queen’s outstanding service.
