A unique Primary School, offering a British based, child centred education in the Turks and Caicos Islands
Launchball is a physics-based Flash game produced by the Science Museum in London.
It’s a great game that those of you who are familiar with ‘The Incredible Machines’ and ‘World of Goo” will really enjoy.
The aim of the game is to get a ball from a starting position to a ‘goal’ by placing additional blocks onto the grid-based screen. Blocks include springs, slopes, magnets, lights, mirrors and so on.
30 levels to complete and a create and share section, too. The challenge is on!
Mrs. Mary and Mr. David are teaching Spanish this year. They are following the units provided in the UK “Framework for Languages”.
The first unit is called Yo (All about me). In this unit children learn to greet others, say how they are and introduce themselves. They begin to respond to and ask questions about their name and age. They learn to count, read and write numbers. They discuss linguistic diversity within their class and learn that Spanish is spoken in many places around the world.
The framework ensures that children”s learning in each year group is guided through clear stages of progression and that they are challenged.
Teaching involves a wide variety of active learning and collaborative activities. The children explore and learn Spanish through games, songs and rhymes, simple conversations and role-plays activities, interactive whiteboard and computer activities and independent worksheets.
Here are a couple of fun websites to share at home: BBC Primary Spanish and Online Games Let us know if you find any others or have any good resources that we can use at school.
As a school we like to promote nutritious eating habits and at our playtime snack each morning, we encourage the children to choose to eat their healthy snacks first.
It was wonderful today to see so many children and teachers throughout the school with a wide variety of healthy choices. A big thank you to all our parents for supporting us in our endeavors to promote healthy eating.
See a slideshow of some of the healthy fruit and vegetable snacks that were being munched on and were caught on camera today!
What better way to sum up our first day back Provo Primary than looking at these smiley faces. Walking through the school today, it was truly evident that the children and teachers were excited to be back. New children settled well and old friends were pleased to see each other. The classrooms looked wonderful and the children were eagerly engaged in their first day back activities. At playtime, it was lovely to hear the familiar sounds of the steel drums and children happily at play in the playgrounds. A wonderful start to the new year!
Please take a look at our first day at school in the slideshows below. Some classes have more photos than others and I can’t promise you that everyone is in them, but it does offer you a glimpse into the day in the life of your child that I am sure you’ll be happy to see.
Early Years (Preschool, Jnr. Kindergarten and Kindergarten – Well done especially to all the 2 and 3 year old Preschoolers who had their first day ever at school today!
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.
I want to pass on a big thank you to Shelley, our web hoster, for helping with a recent emergency maintenance update. We have been unable to access the blog for a couple of weeks and thanks to Shelley, we are back online and will be posting again this week. Shelley has been a fantastic support over the years, ever since her two children attended the school way back about 9 years ago. Thanks for all your support and help Shelley – it is very much appreciated.
As part of Teacher Appreciation Week I asked the children to tell me words that best described their teachers. These were made into poems and presented to them in our end of week ‘Celebration Assembly’. The teachers were touched by all the lovely compliments.
Here is a collection of all their words represented in a ‘word cloud’. The bigger the words, the more children used them. Their appreciation truly speaks for itself!
Thank you everyone for making all the teachers feel appreciated this week. Provo Primary is certainly a very special place to be a part of.
The teachers were treated to a delicious ‘Teacher Appreciation Breakfast’ this morning provided by a very generous and thoughtful group of parents. There was a variety of amazing dishes including some scrumptious home-cooked goodies. Thank you – it was all really yummy and thoroughly enjoyed!
Swimming lessons for our Kindergarten, Grade One and Two children started last week with great success. The aim of the first session was to assess the children’s confidence, water skills and swimming ability. All the teachers were thoroughly impressed with the children’s efforts and are now ready to further develop the children’s skills in the following weeks. A big thank you to the Turks and Caicos Yacht Club for allowing us to use their beautiful pools. They are perfect for teaching swimming at this level. Also to Carolyn for taking all the photos so that we can all see our children learning this important life skill. Parents, please email the school if you would like the password for the movie above.
At Provo Primary School, we think our teachers are very special, they work extremely hard and not only teach, but offer guidance, emotional support, care and many other things to our children. They are a huge part of their lives.
Anybody who has spent any amount of time with a large (or small) group of children will know how exhausting this in itself can be. At the end of the day or the week, teachers are tired, but they still do more.
Sometimes we forget all the extra things that our teachers do. We think of their work day as 8.30-3.00PM with long evenings, weekends and holidays to relax. This is, not entirely true. Teachers often work long hours outside the classroom, planning, preparing or marking work, sorting classroom materials and putting up displays, writing reports, even sorting out cupboards and preparing for hurricanes. All this they do in their own time, at weekends or before and after school.
What normally keeps teachers going is the children. Our reward is seeing them develop from the beginning of the year to the end. The hugs, the pictures, the smiles make our efforts all worthwhile.
This week is a time when we can all appreciate and think about the things that teachers do. Thank them and tell them they’re doing a good job, notice their displays and think about all the love and hard work that they have put into them. Smile and encourage them, when they look tired and understand that it takes a very special person with a kind and unselfish heart to be a teacher, especially one who works at Provo Primary.
THANK YOU,
Alison
Our 2008/2009 Yearbooks arrived today and everyone was eager to collect their copy and immediately started flicking through its colourful, photo-filled pages. This year we have two yearbooks, a Preschool-Grade 5 book produced by Krys Mann and a Grade 6/7 book produced by the class themselves. Both are packed full of memories of our year and I am sure they will be enjoyed for years to come.
For the past five years, Krys has worked diligently to put together these amazing books. The collection is a wonderful record of the children’s time at the school for each family to treasure forever. It is also an amazing historical archive of our successful school, highlighting the happy, creative and holistic approach that we believe compliments our highly academic curriculum. I am sure that I am joined by many grateful children, parents and teachers in thanking Krys, we all truly appreciate all the hard work, time and effort that you put into creating these for us.
For the past 8 years, Mrs. Bonnie and Mr. Joel have been coming to the island to volunteer at Provo Primary School. We love having them here and the children really look forward to their visit each year.
Mrs. Bonnie is an extremely experienced teacher and lives on the beautiful island of Victoria in Western Canada where she currently teaches university student teachers.
Whilst at Provo Primary, Mrs. Bonnie will help out in a variety of ways with her main focus being on poetry, science and Grade 6/7 guided reading. We look forward to some exciting activities such as squid dissection, which I know is amongst one of both hers and the children’s favourites. Mr Joel will help with teaching swimming this month and will also teach some American history.
We really appreciate them giving up their time to be here with us again this year. Thank you Mrs. Bonnie and Mr. Joel.
Our ‘ Body and Brain Triathlon’ incorporated three challenges: Spelling, Mathematics and Aerobics. The event was a phenomenal success with the children rising to both the physical and mental challenges. They all did their best with their spelling and number activities and enthusiastically danced, skipped, yoga stretched, shot hoops and circuit trained to achieve their personal best in their class aerobic activities.
We would like to extend a big thank you to all the families, friends, community supporters and other generous donators, not to forget the children themselves, for their enormous efforts.
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…]
Congratulations to our Grade 3 winner in the recent Red Cross’ National poster competition. The poster competition was judged by art professionals, independent of the TCI Red Cross. Entries were judged based on the theme “Power of Humanity/People Helping People”.
This is the 200th post on our blog and to celebrate, let’s pass on some interesting facts about the number 200:
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.
All the children from our Preschool to Grade 6/7 classes enjoyed our annual Easter Egg Hunt today. Many thanks to our dedicated PTA parents who helped organise this egg-citing egg-travaganza!
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?’Â 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.
Our Early Years classes, Preschool, Junior Kindergarten and Kindergarten, enjoyed their sports’ Day today. It was lots of fun! It all started with some popular circle games, that had the children, jumping, hopping, skipping and skating! Following this, each class demonstrated their games skills and teamwork with their own activities. Held at the nearby Graceway Sports Centre, lots of families and friends came to watch and cheer on the children together with the older children from the school. Click below to see a movie clip of the children in action. [Read more…]
Theme week this year has been a fantastic success!  There has been a wealth of exciting activities and projects which the children have really enjoyed and there has been a real buzz throughout the school. There are many people to thank so please read on… [Read more…]
This afternoon, the Grades 1-7 ended their theme week with a “Time Travellers’ Walkabout”. Each class decorated their room with all the things they had been working on this week. Each one looked wonderful and the children were all very proud of what they had done. Some children dressed as characters and they travelled through time, visiting each others rooms and learning about all the periods in time that they each had been studying. It was amazing to see and learn about all the different projects. Each class had helpful curators that gave a guided tour of the room and answered any questions. See a slideshow of our walkabout.
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!