A unique Primary School, offering a British based, child centred education in the Turks and Caicos Islands
What fun was had on Friday morning when the Year Three Dolphins made a visit to the Cheshire Hall National Trust historical site. We were greeted by the curator Jonathan, who shared his knowledge and stories with us. Cheshire Hall was set up over 200 years ago by Thomas Stubbs , who had been encouraged by his brother, Wade, to leave his home in England and develop a cotton plantation.
While the Year 3 Dolphins are busy learning about how a balanced meal should contain certain food groups to make a meal a ‘healthy meal’ – proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals (such as calcium) and a small amount of fats and sugars, the JK class have been busy growing their own vegetables, and selling lots of healthy, vitamin full fruits and vegetables at their class (make-believe) shop.
JK kindly invited the Year 3 to come and visit them to do some shopping and to check out their fabulous growing skills. Lots of fun and knowledge was exchanged between the 2 classes.
The Year 3 Dolphins have found out that if you were a misbehaving child that lived amongst the Native Indian Iroquois tribe, your parents would not just tell you off, they would either throw water at you, or you might even get dunked in a stream to help you to mend your ways. However, if you were very, very naughty you would be sent to meet the incredibly scary Mr Longnose.
The Year Three Dolphins have been extremely busy the past few weeks designing and making our very own tipi. It all started when we decided that we wanted to improve the look of our school garden. Using our growing knowledge from our Social Studies topic, which has been based on the Native Americans, we combined our Art Design, Science and Design Technology knowledge and skills along to create a TCI-style tipi!
A successful shopping trip to IGA was had on Tuesday by the Year 3 Dolphins. We shopped till we dropped! We managed to practise our estimating and our adding skills, making sure we had enough money to pay at the till – what is that decimal point for?
What a wonderful opportunity it was for us all to buy our own shopping, exchange money for our goods and check our change.
A huge THANK YOU to IGA for letting us have this real hands-on experience AND for the generous ‘re-cycled bag’ that was full of delicious healthy goodies. Wow! What a treat!
Tasty success for the Year 4 gardeners…patience, perseverance, lots of loving and watering has paid off! Tomatoes galore have been growing and the excitement continues as a new batch are on their way. Snack time has never been so tasty, even for those that really didn’t like tomatoes “…there is nothing like an organic school-grown tomato!” the children exclaim.
The delicious fruit, vegetables and herbs that have been growing in our garden has even been named –There’s… Larry, Ted, Moe and Crispy the tomatoes, and …Spike the pineapple, Mr Murphy beans, Doogal Parsley, Jivin Chive, Wean the cantaloupe, Rocco the dangerous cucumber and Zigby the banana tree to name a few of many other culinary characters!
A big thank you to Catherine who has inspired us all with her patience and wonderful green fingers. She has been away for a few weeks but I’m sure she will be pleased to hear that we have been tending the garden well in her absence.
I wonder what we will be feasting on next!
This term, Year 3 Dolphins have been so lucky to have parent and professional artist ‘Lotte’ doing lots of wonderful creative art with them.
The class were introduced the work of artist Hundertwasser. They really enjoyed discussing what they could see in his paintings and were keen to create their own work using ideas they had seen – creating their own imaginary dream world.
With Miss Lotte, they talked about how Hundertwasser used colour, form, pattern and shape in his artwork to assist him in ‘expressing’ his thoughts.
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The Dolphin Class has also been fortunate to have a parent helper, Mrs Catherine, come in and work with us to help us to plant new herbs in our school garden. do you know the herb we are holding in the photo and about to plant?
This on-going project is a great opportunity to combine our classroom learning in Science about how plants grow, with the outdoor environment. It has also allowed for plenty of ‘hands-on’ learning.
Anybody looking for some healthy herbs this half term? Come along to the Dolphins class I have a feeling we are going to be ‘growing experts’ very soon! A huge thank you, Mrs Catherine. [Read more…]
What as fabulous start to the new school year in the Dolphins class. We have worked in pairs using our computer research skills, looking into lots and lots of interesting facts in relation to our class creature, the Dolphin. Not only did we learn how to record the information researched into a colourful spider diagram, but we also jointly presented our newly found facts to the rest of the school during our first assembly on Friday. Well done Dolphins! What would like to know about dophins? Well come into the Dolphin Class and see if the answer is on our informative spider diagrams.
Canines, incisors, molars… a whole lot of ‘wisdom’ was acquired during Year 3’s visit to Dr Mark Osmond’s Dental Clinic last week.
We got to see how healthy teeth should look and how our teeth could look if we didn’t look after them –argh! That bit was quite scary; the pictures were quite yukky! You can see some of our horrified reactions in the photos below. We were very relieved to find out that we were caring for our teeth properly.
Not only did we get to see and hold real teeth (It’s OK, Dr Mark made a deal with the Tooth Fairy), but we also got to sit in the dental chair without having to have any treatment whatsoever. Phew!
Thank you so much Dr Mark for inviting us to your clinic, it was a real fun and informative visit.
The recycle tallies were recorded and counted on the final day of the month. The first class to win the Green Recycle Certificate – which entitles them to one extra special ‘Golden Time’ – were the Year 3 Dolphins. They collected an astounding 251 tallies – that’s 251 pieces of recycle items that, as the Dolphins say “ will help to make our world a better place!”
To compliment their success Year 3 created a rap to remind us of how important it is to recycle.
After much discussion, Year 3 have decided to put their extra ‘Golden Time’ towards a trip to our local Sandwich Shop where they will be able to create their own ‘healthy and delicious’ wrap (or rap!) or salad to eat for lunch. This relates really well to their ‘Healthy Eating’ topic in Science and their Design and Technology project of designing and making their own ‘healthy treat’. How excitingly scrumptious is that!
Provo Primary School now has brown recycling bins on the premises. After a visit to the Recycling Plant last term, the School Council have a devised a simple ‘Recycling Mission’ to encourage us all to recycle. They hope you can all participate!
Their intentions are that all snack\lunch recyclable refuse will be taken home to be washed and placed in the brown bin located at the school entrance, in the mornings as you come into school. Other household recyclables can also be brought from home.
To encourage and entice your participation, they have created tally sheets for each class to record the number of objects placed in the bin. These tallies will be counted up each week and the class who collects the most tallies at the end of the month will receive a special ‘Recycle Certificate’ which will entitle the class to an extra ‘Golden Time’.
Well done, School Council. I wonder which class will collect the most recyclables this month? We look forward to an update on this fantastic initiative later in the term.
The Year 3 and 4 enjoyed their visit to the movies the other day to see the animated version of Dr Seuss’ fabulous book ‘The Lorax’. In recognition of this wonderful author, (and to assist us with our fraction work – what fraction of the hat is red?) we all made hats using the famous Dr Seuss stripy hat logo to get into the swing of things.
We all thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and watching the film. In the next school term, we will be using the story as a foundation for lots of other activities – from exploring the Local Environment, Pollution Issues and Conservation to writing a persuasive text.
Friday afternoon in the ‘stocks’ at Ports of Call was very busy. The Year 3 Dolphins had committed many a crime in their Tudor Life. Cutting purses full of money from the rich.. stealing bread from the bakers in the market place..stealing vegetables and herbs from the farmers fields…pick-pocketing a golden watch from the land owner up the lane…stealing a chicken from their neighbour… What a ghastly lot!
“But we were hungry and poor and could not get work” they howled. All their suffering however was rewarded by a delicious ice-cream treat from the nearby parlour – yummy!
A big thank you to all those parents who participated in the ‘stock experience’. With the Turks and Caicos thought to be discovered by the Europeans during Tudor times, it was a great way to link our topic to our local environment.
Today, the School Council visited the TCI Waste Disposal Plant, on a fact finding mission to discover how we can play our part in recycling on the island. They learnt about the importance of recycling and the processes that our rubbish goes through at the plant. The children asked lots of questions and came away with lots of information and ideas. The school has 2 new recycling bins and the School Council will now be organising a whole school campaign to use them as much as we can. We would like to pass on a big thank you to Ramez Hakoura from TCI Waste Disposal for allowing us to visit. We look forward to learning more from him when he comes to our school to help the School Council lead an assembly on recycling . Click here to watch a local TV report about their trip.
The Year 3 Dolphins had a wonderful IGA shopping experience they will never forget. Not only did they get to practise their ‘estimating weight’ skills – “Does this coffee jar really weigh that!” exclaimed Will, they also got the opportunity to do their own shopping. Their generous and trusting parents gave each child a shopping list from which the children had to –
* find the product in the store
* round up the price to the nearest dollar
* estimate the total cost of their shop
* pay for the goods
* and of course check the change!
Some parents wrote some really tricky shopping lists!
A huge THANK YOU to Billy the carpenter, our School Council and Nana Beezy for helping us to create our school signs, one for the front entrance… and one for the back. And they were ready just in time for our Christmas Performance – we really didn’t want anyone to lose their way and miss the fantastic show!
A fabulous team effort!
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Well, the Dolphins in Year 3 have been looking at containers. They wanted to know how this container was actually made so they decided – once empty again – to dismantle it. They discovered it was actually made out of a 2d flat shape called a ‘net’. Once the Dolphins had discovered this they wanted to make their own 3d shape using a net.
Watch this Space! Not only have the School Council have been busy doing a survey to find out which colour scheme to use for our new sign – for the front and back of the school; but they have also been busy arranging and attending appointments with Mr Billy – the carpenter – to discuss and measure up the rather large pieces of wood needed for our new signs.
Thank you Mr Billy and ‘great work’ to the School Council. We can’t wait to see what happens next!
Quadrilaterals? Vertices? Parallel lines? Lines of symmetry and how many sides? These were all facts that were being discovered while the Year 3 Dolphins were painting irregular shapes… ‘Kandinsky style’.
During a paper folding shape-making activity, they not only used their new shape vocabulary to describe the shape they made, but also showed how well they could work together – researching, listening, sticking, creating – producing one whole new shape, by placing their shapes together…confused? Best read on and check out the photos to appreciate their newly created polygons. Fabulous work Dolphins what a colourful and creative week we have had!
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Busy busy! With campaigns and elections over last week, the newly appointed School Council have met twice already this first week to discuss new ideas to help make our school and its environment an even better place to be!
Our first meeting involved lots of very interesting discussions and points of views about particular issues that the class representatives had already accumulated from their class members – WOW, how efficient! Well done to the new representatives. I have a feeling we will be having a very productive year ahead!
A super ‘well done’ to all of those pupils who placed themselves forward as representatives. The feedback from teachers was really positive. They were not only impressed by how well you all put yourselves forward, but also by how responsible and earnest you all were about your role as a school representative. We are very proud of YOU!
Find out more about our School Council and its achievements and look out for future news on the blog.
