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.

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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We hope you all enjoyed your school holiday, and that you are ready for another exciting year at Provo Primary!

Thank you for all your support and kind festive thoughts, cards and gifts.

A special thank you to all of our wonderful PTA members for all their hard work throughout the year.

Wishing all of you and your families lots of fun holiday memories and a peaceful, happy and prosperous New Year.

See you again on Tuesday 11^th January, 2011.

Santa came to visit us today bringing every child in the school a gift.  All the children went out to greet him as he arrived, not by sleigh, but on a shiny red fire engine, with flashing lights and loud sirens blaring.  Santa knows that all the children at Provo Primary school LOVE reading, so each year he brings a library of wrapped books in his sack.  THANK YOU SANTA and happy reading everyone!

Tickets for our end of term productions are now available in the office.  Read on to see a synopsis of each of this years shows.  We hope to see you there! [Read more…]

During our ‘Be Healthy Week’ the children participated in lots of extra exercise at school. Early morning exercise was a hit with the children joining in with some group yoga and aerobics.  A big thank you to the parent volunteers who led these amazing sessions.  What a way to kick start our day – this certainly got some hearts pumping and muscles flexing!  After these, everyone was left feeling exhilarated and raring to start their lessons!

Our Year 3 – 6 Sports Day was also a big success.  With the long jump, throwing, obstacle races and of course the popular sprints and relays it was an exciting event with lots of team spirit, personal bests and lots of fun!

Coining the phrase “Eating a Rainbow’ the children learned about how the colour of fruits and vegetables gives us a clue of what goodness lies within.    During our ‘Be Healthy Week’, we focused on promoting how our bodies benefit from a wide variety of these as we learned about how each one provides us with different vitamins and minerals.

Each day at snack times the children recorded the variety of fruits and vegetable they had eaten and graphed their results.  On Friday the children collectively ate 26 different one – our weekly record!

They have also taken turns at doing a short presentation on the nutritional value of a chosen fruit or vegetable and brought in some samples for the children to enjoy.

A parent volunteer has also come in to talk to the children and brought in a selection of papaya, pomegranates, raspberries and blackberries for the children to taste. The children enjoyed trying these and went on to create posters to highlight and share with others what they had learned.

It is wonderful to report that many of our children already bring in lots of healthy fruit and vegetable choices every day as part of their snacks and lunches.  We hope that during this week they will have seen the benefits that eating a wider variety of these can bring.

Look at all the superb art work  created by the children in each class at Provo Primary School using a range of art techniques and styles.  What talent – the pieces are truly outstanding!  What could be a more fitting theme for our art work than Flamingos, a beautiful bird found locally here and also our school logo.  The art work will be auctioned off at our Curry Night tomorrow. What a creative way for the children to play their part in raising the funds for their new soccer field.  Wouldn’t you just love to have one of these masterpieces in your home or business? Click on to see all the artwork  in full and pick your favourite…if you can.

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Well done to everyone who joined in with our ‘Walk to School Wednesday’.  Parking up the hill from the school, around 60 children, parents and teachers strode the 800 metre walk down to school as part of our ‘Be Healthy Week’.

As in most school playgrounds it is common for us to hear the sounds of giggles, shouts and screams, and the patter of footsteps as the children run around and play together.  We also usually hear the tinkle of the steel drums resonating from the music room and, at this time of year, the tunes and singing from our upcoming End of Year Show as children enthusiastically practise on the stage. 

But today there was a new musical sound in the air that was coming from a small group of boys from Year 2 and 6 who were beating drums together in the familiar rhythmic pattern of junkanoo.   I am not sure what inspired this musical junkanoo band to form but when their sounds caught the attention of the nearby Kindergarten class, they were eagerly invited to come over to perform.  With shakers shaking and bodies jiggling to the beat, it was like carnival time as the captivated children joined in and enjoyed the concert. 

Moments like these are truly wonderful.  They celebrate the incredible spontaneous creativity of our children, their musical talents and joy of performing.  With different age groups naturally coming together in this way, they also capture the true feeling of community that is so strong within our school.  What an inspiration!

Hundreds flocked to our school for one of the island’s biggest Halloween parties last weekend.

Star attraction was the specially-built haunted house, although the ‘throw a wet sponge at the teacher’ game also proved popular among pupils. Other activities included spooky golf, scary basketball, apple bobbing, pumpkin bowling and dancing on the stage.

The party, which began with a trick or treat trail around our local Flamingo Park, raised more than $2,000, most of which will go towards the building of an artificial turf play area at the school and some towards an upcoming Year 6 field trip.

Dressing up was a big part of the evening and the work that went into some of the costumes was absolutely incredible. Our friends at Tropical Imaging were there taking photos and through this raised $400 for a charity working in Haiti.  See some of the amazing costumes here.

The Halloween party was organised by volunteers and, on behalf of everyone at the school, we would like to say a big thank you to all the parents, families and community members that helped make this event such a huge success. Also thanks to all the residents of Flamingo Park who kindly took part in what was a fantastic trick or treat trail.