Across the school, children are busily preparing to participate in World Math Day which will take place on Tuesday 1st March, during our Math Week.   Our aim is that all the children from Kindergarten to Year 6 will have a turn to play live games of mental arithmetic against other children around the world, adding points to the World Maths Day Mathometer – uniting people in numbers.

If you want to do some extra practise at home, simply go to www.worldmathday.com and sign in using you regular Mathletics login and password.   For those of you with iphones, itouches and ipads, here is a link to a free app to download on itunes.

Since adopting the Mathletics online Maths programme last term we have seen many children taking full advantage of this resource and practising their mathematics skills at home.   All the children from K to 6 have a weekly opportunity to use Mathletics  at school, and teachers have seen the benefits of being able to assign tasks to children to review topics followed at school and to support individual needs.  The children have really taken to this programme and we have already seen some silver awards being achieved by children.

Want some extra spelling homework?  There’s also a World Spelling Day on Wednesday 3rd March and you can practise and complete using your Mathletics login and there’s even an app to download for that too!

A big thank you to everyone who helped support our Year 6 Bake Sale.  What a delicious choice of cakes and cookies there were.  We certainly have some talented bakers and generous cake buyers in our community.

Well done to our Year 6 and their parents for organising and running the stall and to Miss Cara as well. A big thank you, also, to the IGA supermarket for allowing us to set up outside their store.

When we had our school photos a few weeks ago, one of the photographers brought his video camera and put together a short video piece of the shoot.  It certainly brings photo day alive!  See the video on the Brilliant by Tropical Imaging Blog.

Thanks guys, such a novel idea that we know will be absolutely loved by children, parents and relations around the world.

It was school photo day last week and with all the children in the school’s individual, sibling and class photos to take that’s a lot of photos!

Here is an image you won’t see when you see the final prints.  It’s some of the Brilliant by Tropical Imaging’s team, hard at work taking the shots.

Photo day is a busy day but with a great team effort it runs smoothly and is a lot of fun.  A big thank you to everyone involved – once again some amazing smiles, captured of some amazing children, taken by some amazing photographers!

To see a selection of the photos, please go to the Brilliant by Tropical Imaging website and parents, don’t forget to order your copies by14th Feb.

We are all excited to discover that one of our banana plants has a big purple flower and lots of small green bananas developing on it.  Each banana is called a ‘finger’ and they grow in a group called a ‘hand’.

As you can imagine we are ‘going bananas’ with the thought of eating our own home grown bananas, but we won’t be rushing out  immediately to buy the ice cream to make banana splits, it may take another couple of months for the bananas to fully ripen!

Our banana plants, along with some papaya trees, were kindly donated to the school by a local company, Environmental Arts, who helped set up our garden environment.  We’ll keep taking a close look and watching out to see if we have more fruit growing in the near future.

Do feel welcome to come in and look at the garden for yourselves and to see our growing bananas.

You won’t want to miss this…skipping is all the rage at Provo Primary this term with children young and old skipping forwards, backwards, while running and turning.  There’s even Double Dutch and French Skipping – Ooh la la!  With ropes circling at playtimes, lunchtimes and PE lessons, it’s certainly creating lots of giggles and smiles while keeping the children active with hearts pumping and plenty of exercise. Click on to read  more and to find links to some great skipping websites.

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‘It was the best day of my life, so far!” said one of the three boys who enjoyed an afternoon of Lego fun this weekend with ex-Legoland model builder, Jamie.  Jamie has an amazing Lego collection and during the afternoon shared some of his secrets to Lego building.  They all agreed that making this animation above was the highlight, so read on to find out how they made it and what else they got to learn.

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