The much awaited new 2010-2011 yearbook has arrived and here are some of the parents eagerly flicking through the pages, at 5 minutes to 3, just before the children come out of class wanting to take their peek.

They say “a picture is worth a thousand words,” so this yearbook must be worth millions! Each photo encapsulates life at Provo Primary School and showcases the many and varied educational opportunities that our children have experienced over the year. Whether it is a snapshot of a child’s learning, a significant school event or simply friends sharing happy times together, each photo captures that one moment in time and tells a story all by itself.

This is our  7^th edition of the school yearbook, which is created by the hard work and dedication of Krys Mann who collects and takes photos throughout the year.  With these, she produces this special book that allows us to look back and reminiscence about all of our wonderful memories.  Thank you so much, Krys!

Excitement filled the air today as we cut off our banana stem.  With some bananas already starting to turn yellow, it was time to bring them inside for their final ripening.

The biggest surprise, however, wasn’t the great weight of the banana stem or the number of bananas in total – it was the frog that jumped out and scared us all when we took it inside.  It was a Cuban Tree Frog whose pale green skin matched perfectly to camouflage him among the bananas!  Sorry froggie, you’ll have to find a new home now.

As the bananas ripen we will share them out with all of the classes. To celebrate our first harvest, each class has been given the challenge to create a special banana dish.   I do hope I get to try all the delicious recipes on the Provo Primary Banana Menu!

Each time a book is bought through our Scholastic Book Club, the school gains bonus points that can use to buy addition books and resources.  Using the 34,000 bonus points we have earned so far, the children and teachers have chosen and ordered lots of new books and resources for their classes.  In less than a week, nearly all of it has already arrived, and there was great excitement in our Celebration Assembly today when each class was presented with their own box of goodies.  Everyone was keen to look at their new books and start reading! 

The children and teachers would like to thank everyone who has helped to raise the bonus points that have been used to buy these books.  The Scholastic Book Club has been a great success and we would like to take this opportunity to thank Bonita for all the hard work she has put into organising and running this for us.  Look out for your May and June catalogues in the next couple of weeks and start ordering your summer holiday reading books!

All the children celebrated National Red Cross Week with a special red and white dress down day and raised $83 to pass on to our local Red Cross organisation.

Red Cross Week commemorates the birth of Henry Dunant, the founder, the man who first started the Red Cross, on 8th May 1828. Henry’s idea was to create a group of people who would help people during man-made wars and natural disasters.  They would be neutral and help people on both sides of a war and wouldn’t take side.  The Red Cross is a signal to people that help is on its way.  Today, the Red Cross help people in lots of different ways.  There is a team of volunteers that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to respond to everyday emergencies.

This week highlights the work of the Red Cross here in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and aims to raise funds for their work with communities at risk from natural and man-made disasters and emergencies.  Here in the TCI, the Red Cross help us with hurricane preparedness and are on hand to help people with disaster relief.  They also provide first aid training and supplies and have a thrift store which helps raise funds.

Congratulations to both our boys and girls soccer teams who played fantastically in the inter-school tournament.

Our primary goal was to have fun and to do our best and they certainly achieved this.  There was some great goal keeping, super tackles and passes and some stunning goals to entertain the cheering crowd who “oohed” and “ahhed” and supported from the sidelines. We even won the MVP in the boys competition.

The girls came 3^rd in their group and played extremely well, each game becoming more confident and determined, winning their final game 4-1.  The boys made it all the way to the finals, displaying great soccer skills and passion.  They kept their heads up high and kept trying until the final whistle, losing 1-4 in the finals.

We are very proud of how each player embraced the challenges of each game, keeping up their team spirit, sportsmanship and, above all, their enjoyment of taking part throughout the whole tournament.

Thank you to our parent team coaches and to all of you who came to show your support.  “Go, Provo Primary!”  Thanks also to TCIFA for organising the tournament and well done to all the schools and boys and girls who took part.

Click on to see more photos of the action…

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The Garden Art Club is very proud to present their finished mural on our garden wall.  They chose the theme of ‘under the sea’ and worked independently to research ideas for sea creature images.  The designs were transferred onto the wall using chalk and then the painting began.  They worked so well together when it came to painting the images, sharing equipment, ideas and helping each other to complete each part of the mural.

To further add colour to our garden this term the club has also been busy planting new seeds. They have planted different types of lettuce and tomatoes, beetroot, pac-choi, radish, sapodilla, and a mystery fruit too! They are doing such a good job remembering to water them every day and with looking after our bananas too. Well done Garden Art people, you’ve been real stars!!!

Click on to see all the talented artists at work.


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Today we had a visit from two enthusiastic UK medical students, Alex and Bella, who are here on island working at the Hospital.  Together they visited each class in the school, talking about studying to be a doctor, answering questions and showing the children some of their medical equipment.

The children asked lots of questions and especially enjoyed having a go at using the different medical equipment on each other.  Many expressed their desire to work in the medical field in the future and the older children appreciated the opportunity that this gave them to finding out more about the study and work involved.

For our youngest children, visiting the doctor can sometimes be a scary experience, especially when you are not feeling well and it is an unfamiliar environment.  Meeting the doctors here at school, they felt confident and at ease to ask lots of questions.  Alex and Bella’s friendly and kind nature soon won them over and it was great to see them taking the time to help to reassure some of the children of their fears.

We would like to thank Interhealth Canada TCI for allowing Bella and Alex to come and visit us.  They have been a great inspiration to many children – who knows, perhaps they will work alongside Bella and Alex in the future!  Click on to see more photos of their visit…

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Our much-loved storytelling evening returned this week, as part of our ‘Be Healthy – Sleep Week’.  Dressed in Pyjamas and cuddling their favourite bedtime toys, the children arrived and settled down for an evening of tales. David Bowen, our Director of Cultural started the evening, theatrically telling a story to all, accompanied by his bongo drum.  He enthralled the audience with a Caribbean tale that, very appropriately, emphasized the importance of a good night’s sleep!  Then it was off to night-time ambient classrooms for some further stories told by teachers and volunteer storytellers, together with a cup of milk and a cookie.

Bedtime stories offer a superb opportunity to establish a daily routine. Parents and children often live extremely busy lives. There are many responsibilities that must be attended to throughout the day, such as work, school, chores, errands, extracurricular activities, homework, cooking, and similar types of events. Once the day has calmed and is approaching its end, children and parents alike can be comforted by the fact that they get to spend a little quality time together. In addition to this, children benefit greatly from some sort of daily routine in their lives.

Reading together is also an important element to a child’s success in reading and creativity, and a time in which parents and children can spend enjoying each other’s company, and sharing love for one another. It is a process in which many special memories are created, as well as a time when children can pay special attention to the story, the characters, the plot, and the lessons that can be learned from the story that they are listening to.

Our storytelling evening was a great success and we hope that it will have inspired all of our parents to continue to incorporate bedtime stories into their child’s life.

What’s happening here – was our Year 4/5 class really fast asleep in the middle of class!

Well, every term we have a ‘Keeping Healthy’ theme week.  This term the focus was on the importance of sleep and why we need sleep to keep us healthy, happy, and doing our best! Throughout the week all the classes explored the theme through a range of activities. Some classes kept sleep diaries to monitor just how many hours of sleep they actually get, some designed their ‘dream’ bed and others worked together with other classes to create posters to pass on facts and information.

The children in the photo above aren’t really asleep.  One of the activities was to take photos of yourself sleeping in unusual places and this is one of the many poses that the children came up with!

If you would like to know more information about the importance of sleep and just how many hours are advised for children, we recommend this great website:  Sleep for Kids.  It’s jam packed with great ideas and activities too!

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.

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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!

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.