On Friday 18th November, schools up and down the country held fundraising events for the annual Children in Need appeal. This year, the theme was ‘Spotacular’ challenges, where students and staff could challenge themselves to do sponsored activities on the spot, such as a Dance-a-thon, Juggle-a-thon, Keepy-uppy-a-thon and many more. 

Keswick School’s student-led Charity Team decided to take their own spin on this and held an activity fair during the lunchtime as well as a non-uniform day. The total amount raised on the day was £1,172, an absolutely incredible figure which contributed to the national amount of £35,273,167, which Children in Need recently announced. 

During the lunchtime of Friday 18th, Keswick School students had a variety of activities that they could choose to take part in. The most popular was ‘Sponge the Teacher’, where three brave teachers sat on chairs on the big Sports Court whilst students got to throw wet sponges at them. The atmosphere was one of buzzing excitement as hundreds of students watched and cheered, while others took their turn in getting to sponge a teacher of their choice. 

Another popular activity was ‘Beat the Goalie’, where students took turns trying to score a goal against a Sixth Form PE student. There was also a ‘Guess How Many Sweets in the Jar’ challenge, a pillow fight activity and ‘Bear Pong’, a suggestion from the official Children in Need website which replicated the popular ‘Beer Pong’ game, but instead students won sweets by getting ping-pong balls into cups. 

When asked how he thought the day went, Ben Dixon, a Head of Charity Prefect at Keswick School replied, “It was such great fun! I felt that everyone really enjoyed themselves and it was so nice to have a whole school event where everyone could get involved, because it’s been a while since we’ve done anything like this.” For Poppy Slater, another Head of Charity Prefect, the best thing about the day was “seeing all the staff and students relax and have some fun. There’s never much going on in the Autumn term and that’s why we wanted to organise [the activity fair], so that everyone could take a break from working hard and just chill out for a lunch time.”