A unique Primary School, offering a British based, child centred education in the Turks and Caicos Islands
To mark the start of our ‘Keeping Healthy – Sleep Week’ the children came in their Pyjamas for Dress Down Day. What a wonderful variety of bedtime fashions we saw!
Donations of much needed breakfast items were collected for the Provo Children’s Home (PCH). Bloneva Green Williams, the PCH Chair of the Board of Directors, came and thanked the children for their support and, in keeping with the theme of the day, she wore her Pyjamas too!
Thank you to everyone for your kind support and donations.
A series of visits from Our Director of Culture, David Bowen, brought learning about TCI Culture alive with a fascinating exploration of artifacts, together with singing of songs and the retelling of personal stories and experiences of his life growing up on Grand Turk. Each class had two captivating sessions with David and learned so much through this hands on, multi-sensory experience. They particularly loved hearing the stories of his life as a boy and discovering about the different artifacts.
Thank you David, for sharing your time and knowledge with us and for making learning about TCI Culture such so fun and interesting.
Click on to see more more photos.
Wow – what great fun we had – playing soccer, skipping, running, racing, jumping, throwing, catching, rolling, relaxing and joining together for parachute games! Our Preschool and Junior Kindergarteners are certainly enjoying our amazing new grass field!
Our new grass field is ready for use and it was with great excitement that we gathered as a school to open it and try it out!
This grass is a much awaited, much needed and much appreciated new addition. It will be used by all children throughout the school, every day. The children expressed that their palms and knees were most thankful – the old rock surface wasn’t very forgiving when it came to falls and falling on this will be a delight in comparison!
The words the children in the photo above spell out say it all – everyone at Provo Primary wants to pass on a huge thank you to everyone who has helped make the dream of this grass area become a reality. It will be enjoyed for many years to come!
It was World Maths Day today and we were all excited to take part, logging on to our Mathletics accounts and going head to head answering Mental Maths questions with other children around the world. With up to 50,000 children from countries near and far, all online at the same time, it really did feel like we were uniting the world in numbers! The count was over 333,330,000 correct answers by the end of our school day, although many children said they would be going on again at home to raise the number even higher. I wonder what the final total will be…? Well done everyone!
It’s mid term and all the children are at home, so what’s all that noise coming from the school playground? Yeah…it’s the digger preparing the ground for our new artificial grass soccer pitch. With most of the work being done over the mid term break, we hope to blow the whistle to start our first game on our new pitch early next week. It’s wonderful to see this project final breaking ground – quite literally! Say goodbye to the hard, rocky, painful surface and look forward to a softer, level, kind-on-the-knees, grass one.
To celebrate the end of their dinosaur topic our Kindergarten children took the short boat ride to Little Water Cay in search of rock iguanas. Although not actually dinosaurs, these lizards, which are endemic to our islands, do conjure up images of prehistoric life when you see them close up.
The Turks and Caicos Rock Iguana is a protected species. They are primarily herbivores and feed on berries, leaves and fruit, occasionally supplementing this diet with insects. They live and sleep in shallow burrows they dig in loose sand or under rocks. In the morning they emerge from their burrows and bask in the sun before going off to feed. At midday, when the sun is the hottest, they retreat into the shade to avoid overheating.
On Little Water Cay the National Trust has built a boardwalk pathway. Accompanied by a guide, the children followed the trail, saw the iguanas at close range and learned all about them and why they are so special to our islands.
Thank you to everyone who helped make this exciting and interesting trip possible. Click on to see some photos of their adventure.
Last week, the Year 1/2 class carried out an experiment which involved a big bucket of water, playdough boats and golden pebbles. The children were investigating how changing the shape of a material that sinks in water can help it to float.
The children were each given a ball of playdough, which when they first put in the water, sank straight to the bottom of the bucket. They came up with the idea of molding the playdough into a boat shape, which they discovered allowed the playdough to float. Once it was in the water, they tested to see how many golden pebbles it could hold before it sank.
Click below to see more photos of the children experimenting, to see what they learned and how many pebble weights their boats could carry.
My Year 4 Math group has been busy investigating and problem solving these past few weeks. From testing statements and finding rules when doing calculations involving odd and even numbers, to exploring symmetry and 3D shapes and their nets, to finding the area and perimeter of rectangles and squares and seeing patterns in their results. I am really proud of each of the children’s efforts, their team work skills and how they have been applying their mathematical skills to all our investigations. We hope you enjoy sharing in their learning by watching this slideshow. Please also feel welcome to come and find out more about what they have discovered and to have a go at some of activities yourself.
This afternoon, the Kindergarten class invited their parents in to their classroom to show and share with them some of their favourite parts.
Miss Tracy and Ms. Myrna loved seeing the children show so much enthusiasm, happiness and confidence while reading their levelled classroom books and journals to their parents, giving tours of their dinosaur museum, playing favourite Literacy and Numeracy computer games, showing off their awards and explaining how they stay on the ball—one of our classroom displays to encourage helpfulness.
Please read on to enjoy some pictures of the children sharing their learning with their parents at this lovely ‘Open House’ event. What a special time it was!
Year 6 started their Design Technology topic on making bread last week by baking oatmeal breakfast bread and raisin swirl bread. With two talented bakers, Miss Cara and parent volunteer Caren, to guide them, they followed the recipes and worked superbly as a team to measure, mix, kneed and roll all the ingredients together. They even did the washing up! This was all great practise for their bake sale later in the week, although these two baked goods never quite made it to the sale…mmm…delicious!
Click on to see a gallery of photos of the class busy baking and to learn more about this bread making topic.
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Recently, Year 2 have learned all about traditional tales and have even written some of their own. The children really enjoyed reading and listening to the traditional tales and particularly enjoyed going on a hunt to find more traditional stories on their own. The children loved it when they found examples of traditional stories in their own home, or in the school library.
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.
Year 6 took part in a festive bag-pack at IGA on Tuesday the 14th of December. On a quest to raise money for a trip to Washington D.C in the summer, the children have been racking their brains for as many different fund-raising ideas as possible. The trip is a once in a lifetime chance for the children to visit some of the most important historical sites in U.S.A. history as well as being a well-deserved treat after all their hard work in numerous exams this year.
From 16.30 – 18.30 the children worked extremely hard, packing bags for customers. It was a busy time of day for the supermarket and they were often faced with long queues, however the children did Provo Primary proud with huge smiles and polite and friendly attitudes. It was a fantastic learning experience for the children, letting them practice good communication skills as well as being their very first opportunity to work for money. The children amazed Miss Cara by fostering mature and independent behaviour well ahead of their age.
At the end of the bag-pack, all were tired but enthusiastic about their experience. IGA staff were effervescent in their praise of the children’s efforts and eager for them to come back whenever desired!
Thanks to the amazing efforts of our PTA President and all our parent class reps, our curry night was a fundraising success!
Not only did everyone have a fun evening, but we raised the money we needed to complete our soccer pitch project.
Now with the turf on order and in production in the Netherlands, the project – which kicked off during the last school year – is finally just weeks away and it is going to be an amazing addition to the school.
Not only will the children be able to play soccer or football – depending on which side of the pond you come from – the new artificial turf will be an all purpose grass area that can be used by all children. The more than 2000 sq ft of grass area will offer the children a place to run, jump and play safely during play time and Physical Education classes. Children from Preschool through Year Six will benefit from this new area, scheduled to be installed in January 2011.
Thanks to the amazing generosity of the parents and community supporters of the school during our curry night we were not only able to order the highest quality turf, but also some of the extras the children had on their wish list -such as new goals and nets to prevent balls from landing over the fence in the bushes.
So a big thank you to everyone who in every way helped to make this dream a reality.
Our Year 4/5 learned first-hand why paying attention in Math class can turn you from flop to top in the work place.
The children are currently learning about weights and measures, but to take the lesson out of theory in into practice, their teacher asked the chefs at our local ‘Beaches Resort’ to give her a little help. Chef Darren invited the students into his kitchen to see how he and other chefs use math everyday cooking up perfection in the kitchen.
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Thank you to everyone who is helping to make our soccer pitch dream a reality. With our upcoming Curry Night and Children’s Art Auction fund raising event that we hope will complete the funds needed, here is an update on the worthy cause it will support.
In the previous school year, members of the student council unanimously voted that the project they would most like to accomplish was bringing a proper soccer pitch to the school. This was a big dream they brought to the PTA, asking for help to find a way to make it a reality.
Well, what a super term Year 3 have had so far. Lots of kind, wonderful and talented people from our community have been willing to come and share their skills, interests and experiences with them. The visits by each of these special people have helped highlight to the children how lucky they ‘really’ are. Year 3 would like to say a ‘big thank you to all of the volunteers; they have helped to make their learning so much more memorable, meaningful and real! And of course not to forget how super Year 3 have been at listening, questioning, discussing and learning, and making their special visitors feel welcome and appreciated. So who has come in and what talents did they bring…
Year 6/7 thoroughly enjoyed an exciting end of year adventure field trip. The day started with a ‘Big Blue’ expedition to Little Water Cay to study the local rock iguanas in their habitat. There was also the opportunity to snorkel in our beautiful turquoise ocean to observe the underwater wildlife, and to kayak in the mangroves to see the many juvenile species living there. The day ended up with a fun time playing on the beach. A few downpours didn’t dampen any spirits and everyone enjoyed this special day together.
On Monday, Years 3, 4 and 5 excitedly headed down to Big Blue Dock to meet Chris, Laura and Ben, our ‘Big Blue’ happy tour guides and boat captain, for our much awaited summer field trip! After being fitted with fins, life jackets, and after a formal introduction to the boat and water safety, we set sail for Little Water Cay. The signs were there that we were going to have a remarkable day as we saw a little sting ray before we had even left the dock!
The Preschool Fathers’ Day Bear Hunt was a huge success, with a great turn out of “daddies” for this interactive event! They were all good sports, taking their shoes and socks off and joining their child in a tactile journey of fun… tracking through a playground scene recreating a grassy lane, river, mud swamp, forest, snow storm that lead to a bear cave! I think the dads liked the cotton balls flying around in the snow storm the best! Thanks again for great enthusiastic participation. It was lovely to see.
Junior Kindergarten created an under the sea theme for their Fathers’ Day celebrations last week. Each child wore a sea creature mask, and dads came fishing and caught their sons and daughters! The children sang under the sea songs and presented their dads with ocean gifts that they had made. There was also a delicious fishy feast to eat on their own specially made fish plate: fish sandwiches (with herbs straight from our garden), fish decorated cakes, cookies and jello, all washed down with a special homemade iced tea brew. Thanks to all the dads and visitors for coming. We hope that everyone enjoyed this special time together and had a ‘whale’ of a time!
Year 2 have been really busy in Science this half term looking at ‘Plants and Animals in the Local Environment’ .
They were very lucky to be invited to the Beaches Turks and Caicos Resort to explore the many plants they have in their garden nursery and throughout the resort.
Did you know that the resort recycles all their used water and uses it to water the plants on the Resort? Did you know that a banana tree only flowers and grows bananas once?
The trip provided an opportunity to compare the vegetation at the resort, which is very much landscaped and irrigated, with the predomintely native bush that we have in our playground.
What a fabulous morning it was… A BIG thank you to ‘Beaches Turks and Caicos’, the children really learned a lot!
Three ships from the Dominican Republic Navy made an official visit to the island on Monday June 14 for three days. The vessels were crewed by more than 40 sailors. Year 3/4 accepted an invitation from the Dominican Republic Naval fleet and headed to the Turtle Cove Marina for an exciting tour of one of their ships. The children were escorted around the boat by naval officers who kindly answered all their questions.