Flower Power: Curiosity in bloom at QCPS

What happens when pupils are given the opportunity to step away from their usual timetable and explore one idea from every possible angle?

At Queen’s College Preparatory School, the answer was Flower Power: a whole-school Academic Enrichment Day dedicated to flowers and plants.

For one day, pupils from across QCPS exchanged their usual lessons for an ambitious programme of activities spanning STEM, maths, art, poetry, languages, coding, music, drama and movement. The aim was not simply to learn more about plants, but to encourage girls to make connections between subjects and experience familiar disciplines from a different perspective.

One theme, many ways of thinking

Flowers provided a surprisingly rich starting point for learning.

Across the day, pupils investigated pollination and growing seeds through STEM, explored plant measurement and symmetry in mathematics, experimented with coding flowers and created observational drawings. Elsewhere, girls encountered flowers through poetry, descriptive writing and a French story about the seasons, while other activities explored plants from around the world.

Art was woven throughout the programme too, from exploring flowers in still-life works to creating flower portraits inspired by Maria Rivans. Music, dance, drama and yoga offered further ways to respond to the theme, while time in the garden encouraged pupils to look more closely at the natural world immediately around them.

The breadth was intentional. Rather than treating subjects as separate areas of learning, the day gave pupils opportunities to discover the connections between them: how the patterns found in nature can become mathematics; how careful observation can inform both science and art; or how the same subject can prompt a poem, an experiment or a piece of music.

Bringing the wider world into school

Pupils also had opportunities to learn from organisations and specialists beyond their everyday lessons.

The programme included virtual workshops with the Eden Project, Wild City workshops with EcoActive and, for older pupils, activities ranging from paleobotany to an art workshop at Queen’s College, London.

The teachers behind the day

A day with this breadth is only possible because of the creativity and collaboration of the staff behind it.

Led and organised by Ms Moore, Head of Learning Enhancement, Flower Power brought together teachers from across QCPS, each interpreting the central theme through their own subject knowledge and expertise.

The result was an incredibly interesting and purposeful day: pupils could move from mathematics to art, from science to storytelling, deepening their understanding of the theme as they went.

This approach reflects something important about how we think about learning at Queen’s College Preparatory School. Children do not always develop their strongest interests by following a straight line. Sometimes a fascination begins with an unexpected question or the chance to see something they already know in an entirely new way.

Creating space for those moments helps pupils become confident in asking questions and trying something new.

Giving curiosity room to grow

By the end of Flower Power day, the girls had encountered the natural world through many different lenses. Just as importantly, they had experienced what can happen when the boundaries between subjects become a little more flexible.

That is what enrichment at QCPS is designed to do: broaden children's experiences and give them the confidence to engage with ideas in imaginative and unexpected ways.

To learn more about life and learning at Queen’s College Preparatory School, or to discover opportunities to visit us, please explore our Admissions and Open Events pages.