Raphael nicely captures the sunny autumn morning today with a couple of splendid abstract and landscape shots.

This past week we celebrated ‘Spirit’ from our school motto and each section of the school did a project to demonstrate their Community Spirit. Within the Boarding Community we aligned this with our Wellbeing Pillar 2- Promoting Diversity and Protecting Against Bullying. We believe we have a strong bond as a Boarding Community and that together with the diversity among us we bridge cultures to come together and show our community spirit. To demonstrate this we created a video.

This weekend we again had a multitude of different activities available to the Boarders. This included tennis, horse riding, badminton, table tennis, zumba, photography, boot camp, biking, woodcraft, yoga and fashion club.

While the student’s opportunity to go off-campus is limited we, therefore, promote and encourage them to get as active as they can on campus. Staying fit and healthy is important for our wellbeing as we continue to act on the lessons from the Wellbeing Pillar 1

As we continue to think about our healthy diet, let us share with you our food options for Sunday Brunch.

This is always something to look forward to and a meal that is enjoyed by all. There is a huge variety to satisfy all.

As part of our House Competitions which aim at building House and Community Spirit we had our traditional pumpkin carving competition. The boys did excellent with their creation (with ALOT of help from Mr George), but we are proud to say that we came 1st!

How does it work?

Many people are familiar with the STEM acronym (Science Technology Engineering and Maths), but fewer are familiar of the more recent STEAM acronym which also includes the Arts. With the addition of Art, typical STEM projects can be made fun and more engaging to all students while encouraging imagination and creativity which before was typically limited.

This Halloween presented the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how art plays such a fundamental role in STEAM by creating a spooky Arduino pumpkin project. Arduino is a highly versatile and open source mechatronics platform that many schools with STEAM being a fundamental part of their curriculum have adopted. It was used in this pumpkin project to control the ghostly sequence of opening and closing of the jaw and activation of the lantern and eye lights in response to inputs from the ultrasonic distance sensor installed in the nose of the pumpkin.

Using his lockdown time wisely, Gabriel got creative tinkling those ivories.

Shintaro joined the intermediate biking group today and did leman 1 proud by cycling almost 8km this morning

Léman One played Concha House twice this week and emerged victorious in both fixtures with a result of 6-2 in football and 37-25 in basketball. The end of this week concludes our first wellbeing pillar of healthy bodies and minds so it has been great to have seen so much participation and enjoyment in these games.

This Thursday we will be hosting a Movie Night for the students. Our first movie night will be The Social Dilemma.

‘Set in the dark underbelly of Silicon Valley, The Social Dilemma fuses investigative documentary with enlightening narrative drama. Expert testimony from tech whistle-blowers exposes our disturbing predicament: the services Big Tech provides-search engines, networks, instant information, etc.-are merely the candy that lures us to bite. Once we’re hooked and coming back for more, the real commodity they sell is their prowess to influence and manipulate us’ (IMDB.com)

We had another fun-filled weekend of activities on offer. This weekend included Tennis, Crossfit, Horseriding, Hip-Hop, Volleyball, Climbing, Biking, Golf and a day trip to Montreux.

The Leman boys represented well again.

We launched our Community project two weeks ago and the boys have been working incredibly hard to do their extra steps! As a reminder, we committed to walking an additional 1,000,000 steps over and above what we normally do in the day. This works out to be an additional 16km each, that we all have to walk.

This is part of us all trying to improve our exercise and recognising the benefits of doing so. It also highlights to the boys that walking 16km is the equivalent to burning 500 – 700 calories. And there are 500 calories are in a Big Mac which equals a lot of walking just to burn that off.

In addition, we promoted our community links by fundraising for ESCA to raise money for their Cancer Support initiatives in Geneva. You can help us support this great charity and give the students an extra purpose to do their steps.

As part of our Wellbeing Programme, we are covering the topics of Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise and Emotional Wellbeing. Our aim is to cover these topics within the House in our weekly meetings. However, for Emotional Regulation we had Jody our Boarding Counsellor lead us in a Workshop. This helped us to reflect on stress points and triggers in our lives and to identify what kind of response we have to this.

The boys from Léman One Boarding House share highs and lows as they scrabble amongst the tree canopy and swing back down to earth.

The weather stayed fine for our boys at golf this afternoon as Shintaro practised his chip shot. Henry got to grips with the new clubs and Zihao improved his driving shot with a putting iron.

We are very pleased to share with you the Leman community project of the first Wellbeing Pillar.

The first Wellbeing Pillar of the year is Healthy Body and Healthy minds. As part of this, the students must do an individual project and also a community one.

We have committed as a House to walking an extra 1,000,000 steps. This works out at an additional 16km each. These steps must be over and above the student’s normal daily steps.

We have also added an external community element to this by linking with a local Cancer Charity ESCA who did a similar event in which they challenged supporters to walk 55,000,000 steps the equivalent to going around the world. If you would like to donate please visit our Page on their site

This Sunday we had our annual Sports Day. This is part of our House Competition activities. We were paired against the Olympus Boarding House who put in a sterling effort. We were competing in basketball, badminton, soccer and tug of war. Unfortunately, our boys only came to victory in the Tug of War.

This Saturday morning we made good use of the lake. We are privileged that the lake is only a short walk from the school and that we can avail of the many water-based activities on offer. This weekend we had the water Donut and kayaking available. The students also enjoy walking down there over the weekend to just enjoy the beauty of the beach or paddle their toes in the water.

Tennis continues to prove to be one of our most popular Weekend Activities. Tennis Coach Martin always has full courts for each of his Saturday morning sessions. The activity is open to all abilities with Martin coaching those in need and pairing up those who want a good game against each other. The Leman boys represent well on the tennis court each weekend.

You will have heard us talking a lot about R.I.S.E and our students learning to embody the values of it. Here is a lovely video to discuss our thoughts on this.

This week we had a wonderful offering from Hawaii. It was a very refreshing Hawaiian Salad with choice of meat or fish to accompany. This is traditionally called a Poke Bowl and it really awakens the taste buds with a range of different flavours.

Don’t forget you can follow the meals offered in the Boarding Dining Hall with our Dining at CDL Blog

The wellbeing programme is underway – over the coming weeks our students will be work towards an individual and a community project that will represent Pillar 1 = Healthy body and minds.