Hello Provo Primary! Since leaving Providenciales in 2004, I have never forgotten our friends and colleagues at Provo Primary School.  My family (Husband Brent and son Russell) and I hold many great memories of living on the island and meeting so many wonderful people.  I frequently peruse the Provo Primary website and blog and really enjoy reading the current events and looking at photos of so many familiar faces.

I now work at an ESL school, in Toronto. I continue to have a passion for fundraising and when the Haiti disaster occurred, I wanted to help. My thoughts and prayers were with our many friends on Provo, from the Haitian community. Our school, ILSC-Toronto held a week long fundraising event. [Read more…]

We deeply admire the out-pour of care and support from our school community when others are in times of need.

Last term, our Christmas Drive resulted in an amazing response of donations of toys, household and toiletry items, clothing and food for the new Provo Children’s Home.  The children there are now settled in their new home and all of the items have been gratefully received and are being used.  A heartfelt thank you again, everyone.

In our ‘Celebration Assembly’ on Friday, Miss Beki, who volunteers at the home, told us that these donations were also being appreciated by some Haitian orphans who are staying there this week.  This is a touching story of how our children are directly helping other children in our community.

Support in our school community was once again generous for our neighbouring Haitian community who experienced a devastating earthquake a few weeks ago.  [Read more…]

Donna Seim, author of ‘Where’s Simon, Sandy?’ came once again to visit us and share with us her wonderful story about a local, Grand Turk, donkey that wouldn’t quit.  Children in JK through to Year 1 thoroughly enjoyed the story and took the opportunity to ask Donna lots of interesting questions about it and about being an author.  David Bowen, our Director of Culture, accompanied her, bringing his trusty blow-horn conch shell with him. What a noisy shell it is!

Donna’s book won a ‘Mum’s Choice Award’ last year and certainly got the thumbs up from our children.  Thank you again,  Donna.

Donna has also worked hard to connect our school with a school back in her home town in Newburyport,  Massachusetts.  Children there wrote penpal letters to our Years 2, 3 and 4 children and they have written back to them.  Unfortunately, our letters are still travelling in the post.  Fingers crossed they won’t take too much longer to arrive.  We look forward to our next letters and seeing Donna again the next time she comes down to visit.

Once a month at Provo Primary School, we offer our children the chance to ‘dress down’ and have a non-uniform day in return for a donation of a dollar that goes towards a chosen charity.  This November, we decided to ask our children to do something a bit different and donate a gift for the Provo Children’s Home. [Read more…]

On 5th October 1994, the first World Teachers’ Day was observed. Today, fifteen years later, the world continues to commemorate the day, highlighting the very important role that teachers play in their respective countries, and elsewhere.  Here is a message from our Permanent Secretary, Dr. Beatrice L. Fulford…

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Earlier this month, we were invited to take part in the raft race at this year’s 19th Fool’s Regatta.    The Fool’s Regatta is one of the social highlights of the year in TCI. It is always a fun event and this year the proceeds will go to the Volunteer Fire Fighters and the new National Sailing Centre.  The emphasis is on the getting the children involved with hobie-cat,  boat, caicos sloop and home-made raft races for all to take part in.

The opportunity to build, decorate and race a raft was a challenge that was eagerly accepted by eighteen of our children from Grades 3 -7. Over a period of two weeks, the children worked in teams after school to see their design move from the drawing board to water.

The “Flame ‘n’ Go’s” team created a spectacular pink and orange craft using an inflatable mattress and plywood; “Peace Out’’ opted for  an extremely lightweight creation made of plastic piping and 8 five gallon water bottles; and “The International Boat”,  our heavy weight contender, consisted of a wooden frame surrounding two extremely large flotation devices.   Look at the slideshow to see the stages of construction. Reported by Mrs. Stefanie.

Today during their PE lessons, the children throughout the school had the opportunity to take part in a modern dance workshop, led by choreographer Luis Kavouras and students from the University of Nevada Las Vegas’ (UNLV) Department of Dance.

After watching a few short performances that portrayed  different styles of dance, the children were taught a sequence of movements from ‘Icarus’, a modern dance piece choreographed by Luis.  The children thoroughly enjoyed this experience and it was truly amazing to see all ages, together, performing alongside  the dancers.

Click on to learn more and to see some short movie clips of the children performing the ‘Icarus’ piece… [Read more…]

In support of the TCI Red Cross Appeal Week, we had a special ‘Red and White Dress Down Day’ and raised $117.  The Red Cross is the world’s largest independent humanitarian and voluntary led organization.  The purpose of this week is to raise the awareness of and raise funds for the Red Cross. The funds raised will help the Red Cross assist in preparation, response and recovery to emergencies.  Some of the children also have designed posters for a competition and others attended the ‘Build a Red Cross Emblem’ Fun Day.  Thank you to everyone who has helped support this worthy cause.

The theme for this year’s National Trust lead Earth Day celebrations was ‘A Green Generation”.  We joined together with other primary schools on the island to participate in a tree planting ceremony at Cheshire Hall (a National Trust heritage site).  We chose to plant a Jamaican caper seeding. When we had finished planting it we celebrated by chanting out “We’re green and we’re cool, at Provo Primary School” and each of us gave our tree a special hug!  It’s great to think that in years to come we will all be able to visit our school tree and remember how we celebrated our awareness of the environment on Earth Day by planting it.   Click here to download a movie of us planting our tree.

Play some fun Earth Day games here.

At Provo Primary we always encourage healthy eating as an important part of children’s education and we are grateful to Temika Handfield for coming into the school to highlight and inform us on a variety of  healthy eating topics.  Temika is a former parent of the school who is now studying food and nutrition at the Florida International University in Miami.  As a part of her studies, she is researching parent’s perceptions of obesity in the Turks and Caicos Islands.  I’d like to thank everyone who supported her today by taking the time to complete her questionnaire.  We wish Temika all the best with her studies and future success.

A topic often raised by parents is… ‘Where can we find ideas for exciting and easy-to-prepare healthy snacks and lunches?’  Our Preschool class is addressing this question by compiling a cook book of healthy recipes that they enjoy. We look forward to the publication of this in the near future and hope that their favourite healthy choices become yours, too.

In the meantime, a couple of great websites on healthy eating I can recommend are:  Kids health by Nemours, one of the largest nonprofit organizations devoted to children’s health and Children’s Lunchboxes, a great BBC site with lots of ideas to try.  Finally here are a few interactive games about healthy eating that your children might enjoy playing from the UK  Food Standards Agency.   Happy healthy eating!

Today we were honored and delighted to listen to the sounds of Hayden and Gershwin, performed to us by a group of six classical musicians visiting from New York and Boston.  The ensemble included two violins, a viola and a cello from the string family and  a clarinet and a bassoon from the woodwind family.  Each musician talked to us about their instrument and how it makes its sound. They then went on to play a variety of solos, duets and ensembles.   To help explain the layers of music, they likened it to the layers of a pizza.  The bassoon was the crust, the viola the tomato sauce  and two violins were the pepperoni and the cheese!   So next time you order pizza don’t be alarmed if your children mention classical music and start playing an air violin!  We would like to thank all the talented musicians and also Tani Rydon and Amanyara Resorts for kindly bringing them to the school to share their wonderful sounds.

This morning, the whole school joined together to watch an amazing performance of Cinderella, told in a  ballet. Pages to Pirouettes is a dance group from Pennsylvania that the TCFAF (Turks and Caicos Friends of the Arts Foundation) have brought to the island.  Their mission is to enrich cultural awareness and appreciation in the community by bringing the art of story ballet to young audiences.  They certainly achieved their goal here today – the children thoroughly enjoyed the show!  Click below to watch a clip of the performance and see the children having a go at some ballet positions!

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This week is our National Education Week and each year at Provo Primary we mark this time with a special ‘theme week’ of fun activities. The theme for the Early Years classes is ‘The Creative Mind of a Child’ and for the Grades 1 -7 ‘Time Travellers’. Some activities will be class based and some whole school. The Grades 1 -7 kick-started their Time Travellers theme, with an opportunity to dress up as character from History. Click on the news report movie below to find out more…

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There are lots more movies of the children who dressed up – too many to post I’m afraid, so we hope to share these in school over the week.

Armed with gloves and bags, a group of our children from JK through to Grade 7 supported National Clean-up Day today by helping to clean up one of our popular beaches, Sapodilla Bay. We often visit this beach as an end of the year treat so this was a good beach for us to choose.  A big thank you to all the children and parents who came to support this event.

All the children from Grade 1 to Grade 7 also cleaned up our school grounds on Friday afternoon in recognition of the campaign.

Click on to see more pictures of our beach clean-up [Read more…]

Today, we had a visit from author Donna Seim.  She has written a book called ‘Where is Simon, Sandy?’ which retells a Caribbean folktale about a donkey that wouldn’t quit.  Donna took the scene of our capital island of Grand Turk for the setting of her story.  All the children in Grades 1, 2 and 3 enjoyed listening to Donna read the story and they had plenty of comments and questions to ask her.  At the end, the children sang the TCI cultural song, ‘Dry Conch’ to Donna as a thank you.  Donna was accompanied by Mr. David Bowen, our Director of Culture.  She kindly donated a copy of the book for our library, but if you want your own copy, you can buy it at the Unicorn Bookstore.  All proceeds from the sale of the book will benefit the Turks and Caicos National Museum’s children’s programme. Learn more about Donna,  see a slideshow on the making of the book and learn some fun facts about donkeys at her website http://www.donnaseim.com/

When we wear a poppy, it helps us remember and be thankful for the many people who gave their lives in war for our freedom.   On Remembrance Day we were able to make a donation to the Turks and Caicos ex-Serviceman’s Legion and wear a poppy.

Representatives from the National Trust are making sure that everyone is aware of the importance of maintaining the TCI’s ecosystem…and they are starting with the little ones. A group from the National Trust visited Provo Primary School yesterday…

See more photos at the TC Sporting Club website.

A well known ancient African proverb states that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and it is so true. In order to raise children successfully, we can’t do it alone.  Here at Provo Primary School we have a strong sense of community, with families and friends all striving to work together for the same cause. The success of our school today is based upon this community spirit that we feel so strongly. Everyone in our school works together towards the same goals and we reap the rewards of working as a team.

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Our Grade 6/7 took time out from their studies to offer some help pupils from Iris Stubbs Primary on South Caicos that were affected by Hurricane Ike.

On Friday 2nd November we held a Bad Taste / Bad Hair Day in order to raise funds for UNICEF.

Throughout the week children had been collecting money from family and friends to try to help children who are less fortunate than themselves.

     

   

The children knew that every little helped and that all the money raised would provide chidren with Fresh water, Nutrition, Health and Education that we all take for granted!

What a fantastic result -we raised $1602.50 !!!!!

This will change lives and save lives – You should all be very proud of your efforts.