A unique Primary School, offering a British based, child centred education in the Turks and Caicos Islands
We ended our theme week with an opportunity for the children to come to school dressed up as a great thinker. We saw a wide variety of characters and everyone was able to express why they thought their chosen character was a great thinker. The teachers all dressed as Provo Primary Students to celebrate the fact that we all think that our students are great thinkers!
Early Years opened an Art Gallery to display and sell the fantastic creative art work that the children have produced during this week’s theme week. Pieces went from 25 cents to $2 with families pleased to take home their child’s masterpieces. All the classes in the school also enjoyed seeing what the younger children in the school had been working on during their theme week activities. What a wonderful way to end this enjoyable week.
In keeping with our ‘Great Thinkers’ Theme Week, we hosted a fun, family quiz night. It was a great night, with eleven teams made up of international members, young and old. Well done to everyone who came along and participated and thank you to all the members of staff who helped out.
I couldn’t resist putting up these great photos of Year 2 thinking about ‘who or what made the tracks?’, today’s daily challenge thinking question. After much deliberation, the class decided that it was elephants that made the tracks. They chose to work together in groups to create the elephants as junk models.
Click bleow to take a look at the elephants and to see the children in further thought… I wonder where the elephant was going? Where in the world were tracks were found? What were the tracks found in… mud, sand, chocolate, butter? Shall we follow them? I love the deep in thought expressions on the children’s faces as perhaps they ponder these questions.
Mrs. Shara presented a creative challenge in Gym class as part of our Thinking Skills Theme Week. The children were given a famous quote and were asked to imaginatively interpret the essence and meaning of these through movement. Forming small groups of 3, they discussed their ideas and began exploring the concepts. At the end, they performed their creative pieces to their classmates, who tried to guess what the quote was about.
Today’s Theme Week challenge for our mixed aged teams was to create the best hat they could out of newspaper. Within a time limit of 20 minutes, a frenzy of designing, cutting, taping and decorating took place, with teams working together, listening and talking with each other, adapting ideas and overcoming challenges. The children really enjoyed the activity and there were lots of smiles as they completed the task and shared their team creations. What really struck us all was the complete diversity in the finished hats. No hats were the same, with each group creating them for different characters, occasions and climates. From crowns to caps, business hats to beach sombreros, helmets to sailor hats – what amazing creativity! Which one would you wear? See a slideshow of the children busily making the hats and see the final products being modelled.
The Early Years began their Theme Week of “Creative Minds at Work” by collaborating to create a story together. The Preschool, Junior Kindergarten, and Kindergarten all sat in a circle in the Preschool Room and together made up a wonderful tale. They decided to add illustrations to it and also to retell the story in their individual classrooms, revising it if desired. What a wonderful way to celebrate Literacy, the creative imagination of a child and the wonder of storytelling. The stories can be found displayed in the walkways or in the classes. Do come and enjoy them.
Our Thinking Week theme week started off with great success today, with ‘guess the character’ posters, daily class challenges, mixed-age team challenges and lots of classroom activities to keep them thinking all day long! See a slideshow of some of today’s activities. A big thank you to all the teachers who have worked hard to plan and organise activities both for their own classes and the whole school.
Thinking skills are becoming essential tools in our rapidly changing global information age. We want our children to be able to analyze information, make decisions and come up with creative ideas on how to solve problems. Over this week, we strive to ask questions and provide fun activities that will deepen the children’s thinking, encourage them to think logically and critically, to work together with others and celebrate their individuality and amazing creativity.
Suzie, an adult female green turtle and first turtle in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) to be fitted with a satellite transmitter tag, arrived back in the TCIs’ coastal waters on Sunday after an amazing 6,000 kilometre migration around the eastern Caribbean.
Earlier in the year, Brian and Natasha from the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources (DECR) came to visit our Year 3/4 class to talk about sea turtles (See our previous blog post). The children created some turtle art work and this is currently displayed at the Environmental Centre opposite the Children’s Park in the Bight. Click on to learn more about Suzie and her travels.
Year 5 teamed up with one of our Year 1 Literacy groups to read some information texts together. This linked in very nicely with our Turks and Caicos Education Department’s ‘Join the Reading Rush 2010’ celebrations
Both classes really enjoyed the session and a variety of knowledge was absorbed! Well done, everyone!
The Junior Kindergarten are learning about people who help them in the community. One of their dad’s is a plumber and he came in to talk to them about his job. He brought in lots of water pipes, levers, switches and tools for them to explore and connect. Together, they made a model of a simple desalination plant, which changes salt water to fresh water.
Since his visit, the children have continued to enjoy using the water pipe pieces in their free play. When creating hotels, homes and hospitals with the big bricks and waffle blocks, they include the water pipes to construct water systems and take on the role as plumbers and maintenance workers.
Here is a slideshow of the children building with the water pipes. This project has introduced lots of new vocabulary, encouraged logical thinking and provided lots of practise of using fine motor skills. Best of all, it has used real life materials that have tremendously enhanced and extended their play.
Year 3/4 has been working exceptionally hard during their Literacy lessons to learn how to become journalists!
After studying a variety of local newspapers and identifying their key features, the class split into pairs and chose a fairy tale or story of their choice to write a report about. Some chose Little Red Riding Hood, Matilda, Cinderella or Snow White. Each pair was given the task of reporting the story from a different perspective.
The children impressed their editor so much that all the children’s reports made the front page! This of course meant the children had extra work and had to prepare headlines, photographs with captions and even create appropriate adverts!
If you would like to read the children’s front page stories they are in the Library and Miss Steph’s classroom…
Yesterday, a special family tour was arranged by the kindergartners, to share all the wonderful minibeast topic work that they had been doing this past month.
The room was buzzing (excuse the pun) and the children were really keen and proud to show everyone around and to talk about what they had been learning about. The tours were very thorough and no areas were left out as they circulated the room. Parents expressed their thanks and appreciation, and went on to say that it was really lovely to see both the creative side and the more academic areas being explored and covered through this topic.
Well done to Miss Tracy and all the children, and thank you to everyone who came along. The Kindergartners’ next topic is ‘families and pets’ and I am sure that in a few weeks time they’ll want to have another tour to share all their learning again. Until next time…
Year One’s art topic this term has been texture and pattern. Last week, they looked online at some aboriginal paintings. They used their interactive whiteboard to look closely at the patterns and talked about how they could imitate them using everyday objects from their classroom. As their classroom is called the Gecko room, they decided to make geckos. First, they created a sandy background by marking brown, yellow and beige paint with their fingers. Then they each printed a pattern on their geckos using the wrong end of a small paintbrush. These were inspired by the aboriginal designs that they had seen. Click here to see a slideshow of them printing their geckos. Look at the level of concentration on their faces. This activity required a great deal of patience and careful control of their fine motor skills. Do come and see all of the children’s geckos displayed in their classroom. I’m sure the children would love to show you their art work.
The Preschool has been exploring a variety of sensory experiences that we like to call ‘Messy Play’ Together they have made ‘Clean Mud’, which is made from soap and tissue paper. They have also created ‘Wet Mud’ with soil and water. Drawing in shaving cream sprayed onto a table top is also a favourite activity.
Through ‘Messy Play’ they have had experience and practise of small motor skills, language development and multi-sensory exploration. Click here to see a slideshow of the children busily enjoying their ‘Messy Play’.
Searching though some recent photos, I was drawn to this one. How great to see two buddies, sitting on a rock together in the playground, doing some nature sketching together. Their teacher, Miss Tracy said that as part of their minibeast topic, the class had been out on a nature walk with Mrs. Catherine around the school yard to look for minibeast homes. The children had also brought out their books and found quiet areas to sketch and colour. Afterwards, they talked about what they had drawn and labelled their pictures. Many of the children found leaves with holes in them and speculated that perhaps it was a caterpillar that had made them. Well… they have been learning a lot about caterpillars this week!
Year one demonstrated some amazing problem solving skills in their Numeracy class today. Games and challenges involved them finding different ways of making 7. They used a variety of addition and subtraction strategies, lots of mathematical vocabulary and were encouraged to record their findings in their own individual way.
The steel drums are a much loved part of our school. We currently have two after school steel band clubs. In the club, the children learn how to play the drums and play tunes together. They often practise during their playtimes and lunchtimes. We have found some digital steel drums that you can play on the Internet. Click on to find the links and have a go… [Read more…]
Year 2 have been looking at patterns in ‘mother nature’. Take a look at a slideshow of their pencil, computer and printed patterns.
First they went on an adventure walk down to “Flamingo Pond”. There they collected lots of natural materials.
Using magnifying glasses they looked carefully at the patterns that they found in the collected natural materials. They learned how to use pencils in different ways and copied some of the patterns they could see.
Later, they used these patterns to test their ‘control’ skills on the computer and re-created their original natural designs using the different tools in the ‘Paint’ program.
After this they cut an orange in half and looked carefully at the beautiful natural design inside (Then they ate it…yummy!!!) Again, using their new found pencil skills they made a template of the patterns that they found and used the template to create a print, (Cor! This bit was really exciting!)
Finally, they used all of their studies and produced a ‘mother nature’ collage. We think they turned out great… who would have thought there were so many patterns in all the natural things around us!
David Bowen, our Director of Culture, came to help out with rehearing one of our Year 5 performances in our upcoming End of Year Show: Bob the Elf – Christmas around the World.
The story is about an Elf who travels the globe with Santa on Christmas Eve learning about how Christmas is celebrated around the world. On his journey he visits our country, the Turks and Caicos where he sees some ‘Massin’, our traditional native Junkanoo music parade. In the photo above you can see a sneak preview of the children practising.
The children will be busy this week making creative masks and costumes out of just about anything. Here is a photo of a man dress up in his ‘Massin’ costume to give you a glimpse.
They can’t wait for you to see it on the night!
Junior Kindergarten have been learning about families and homes. They did a project at home to build their own home. Look at all the wonderful individual designs in this slideshow. Well done, everyone. There are some amazingly creative homes and they look like they were a lot of fun to create together with your family.
Year 2 made some delicious healthy fruit smoothies as part of our ‘Be Active’ Week.
Everyone had a turn at preparing the fruit and choosing what they would like in their own special smoothie recipe. They used the juicer to make it and then enjoyed drinking it down. Can you spot the smoothie moustache!
Thank you Jo for coming in and making these together with the children. Great fun and a super way to encourage healthy eating habits!
Across the curriculum, our two Year 1 classes are making full use of the computer technology available to them. They have used the computers and new eno interactive whiteboard (IWB) in the Year 1 adjoining classrooms. They have also visited the computer suite and used the computers and the IWB in there. See a slideshow of them busy at work.
In Numeracy, an interactive hundred square was projected onto the IWB. The children looked at number patterns and calculations on this. They used the IWB pen to click on the numbers and highlighted them in different colours.
In Literacy, they have looked on the Cbeebies website to learn how the ‘Magic Pen’ writes. They then wrote large letters and numbers using the IWB pen. Everyone also had the opportunity to use the IWB to draw a large picture. Developing gross motor control using the IWB is great fun!
In History they have used the Internet to find out about toys today and in the past.
Click to see another slideshow of some of the other fun things the Year 1s have been up to.
Using a set of colourful scarves created a multi-sensory treat for both the Preschooler and Junior Kindergarten classes last week. They explored both colour and body movements as they enjoyed playing with the scarves while listening to music. Watch a slideshow of them in action.
Last week Year 5 spent lots of time in the ICT suite for various lessons. On Monday, they were busy taking meal orders for a fictional burger bar, and creating a spreadsheet to enter the data into and work out the class’s meal costs! On Wednesday they returned there in their geography lesson to research and ultimately produce a fact sheet about Miss Beki’s home town of London. At the end of the lesson she felt they knew more about it than her! They also had digital photography with Mrs Krys, looking at Photoshop and learning how it all worked!
Every Tuesday, Year 5 have a library session where they spend some time thoroughly looking at the fiction and non-fiction books our library has to offer and carefully selecting two for their week’s reading. It also gives Miss Beki a chance to hear everybody read and help the children select books that are suitable for them! This week we are hoping to put together some book reviews to be displayed!