Watch out for Mr Longnose!
The Year 3 Dolphins have found out that if you were a misbehaving child that lived amongst the Native Indian Iroquois tribe, your parents would not just tell you off, they would either throw water at you, or you might even get dunked in a stream to help you to mend your ways. However, if you were very, very naughty you would be sent to meet the incredibly scary Mr Longnose.
Years 2 – 6’s Science Fair – March 2013
This term and throughout Science Week, children in all classes from Year 2 – 6 have been busy observing, experimenting and reflecting on all kinds of scientific knowledge. Now, through our Science Fair, it was the turn of our young scientists to share their discoveries with their fellow students, parents and visitors!
In science, in addition to discovering a great deal of new information about a topic, children are encouraged to develop their science enquiry skills (the scientific method). These skills underpin the essential processes required for carrying out investigations, drawing conclusions and forming scientific understanding. The children were encouraged to communicate these skills through their Science Fair activities.
We hope that through watching this short movie, you will see how practical investigation and developing an understanding of scientific enquiry skills is a huge part of our science programme here at Provo Primary School.
If you fancy singing along to the background music as you watch, and learning more about elements of the scientific method, you can print out the lyrics here. It’s such a catchy tune!
Year 3’s Tremendously Terrific Tipi – Wow!
The Year Three Dolphins have been extremely busy the past few weeks designing and making our very own tipi. It all started when we decided that we wanted to improve the look of our school garden. Using our growing knowledge from our Social Studies topic, which has been based on the Native Americans, we combined our Art Design, Science and Design Technology knowledge and skills along to create a TCI-style tipi!
Year 3 Dolphins go Shopping Galore!
A successful shopping trip to IGA was had on Tuesday by the Year 3 Dolphins. We shopped till we dropped! We managed to practise our estimating and our adding skills, making sure we had enough money to pay at the till – what is that decimal point for?
What a wonderful opportunity it was for us all to buy our own shopping, exchange money for our goods and check our change.
A huge THANK YOU to IGA for letting us have this real hands-on experience AND for the generous ‘re-cycled bag’ that was full of delicious healthy goodies. Wow! What a treat!
KS2 Gym and Handball PE Showcase
Thursday 14th Feb, 9:15 – 10:15am @ Graceway Sports Centre
All children in Key Stage 2 will be participating in our Spring Term PE Showcase next week.
Gymnastics showcase: This term, our gymnastics unit has focussed on balance and all presentations will exhibit an array of skills linked to this theme. Children in Years 4, 5 & 6 will be presenting their routine individually this year!
Handball showcase mini-tournament: We are pleased to introduce this new sport to our PE curriculum this year. Children in Years 3 & 4 have been refining the skills required to play handball, from positioning and passing to travelling with the ball and shooting. Children have been divided into 4 teams for the mini-tournament. Each team will participate in 3 games, following a round-robin league format.
The showcase will also be an opportunity to learn more about our second new sport that has been introduced to our PE curriculum this year – squash.
We look forward to seeing as many parents and supporters at the event as possible!
Poetry Inspired by “Hailstones and Halibut Bones”
Inspired by the poetry and illustrations in Mary O’Neill’s amazing book “Hailstones and Halibut Bones,” children from Year Two and Three wrote their own colour poems using their five sense as a guide. Here are seven examples for you to enjoy:
From Year Two:
Turquoise
Turquoise looks like a bubbly sea, a blue, blue sky and fresh flowers,
Turquoise feels like fresh air in your hands,
It sounds like blowing grass in the wind,
It taste like mint ice cream,
Turquoise smells like fresh leaves and waving grass,
Turquoise makes me think of happiness and fun.
Excavation at Provo Primary!
Year 3 Dolphins put their archaeologist hats on!
Discoveries from the past were found in the grounds of Provo Primary School (Secretly planted by Miss Mani). Using gloves, spades, tweezers and magnifying glasses the children carefully extracted each artefact from its place. How long had these artefacts been here? Where did they come from? Who did they belong to? What can these artefacts tell us about life, characters or objects from the past? Year 3 will be busy using this evidence to try to answer all of these questions. What conclusions will the Dolphins make I wonder?
Year 3’s Lollipop Thoughts!
This term, Year 3 Dolphins have been so lucky to have parent and professional artist ‘Lotte’ doing lots of wonderful creative art with them.
The class were introduced the work of artist Hundertwasser. They really enjoyed discussing what they could see in his paintings and were keen to create their own work using ideas they had seen – creating their own imaginary dream world.
With Miss Lotte, they talked about how Hundertwasser used colour, form, pattern and shape in his artwork to assist him in ‘expressing’ his thoughts.
[Read more…]
What a Guy!
What a Guy!
In preparation for the School Council’s Bonfire Night party at Bay Bistro, children in Years 2, 3 and 4 all had a busy day making a Guy Fawkes to put on the fire. After hearing the story of the Gunpowder Plot and learning about how Bonfire Night is celebrated in the United Kingdom, it seemed only right that our own Provo Bonfire should have real Guys!
Children in Year 2 worked together to make a huge, life-size guy by stuffing clothes with newspaper. In Year 4 children were challenged to develop their sewing skills and make a Guy typical Stewart clothing. Children from Year 3 joined the Year 4s and really did prove that “many hands make light work”! Some super cooperation and communication ensured that this difficult task was completed on time and in style. After a very busy day, both Guys looked fantastic!
Children from both classes were proud to parade their Guys at home time. Everyone was excited to see them sat on the Bonfire at the party!
Year 3’s Pumpkin Faces
Year 3 went pumpkin crazy this week.
Linking Art with Literacy’s poetry, guided reading and handwriting, we each created a pumpkin to decorate our classroom door for our PTA Halloween party. Each pumpkin face looks so unique with it’s own individual character and expression! Brilliant work, Year 3!
Click on ‘Read more…’ to take a look at some photos of our different activities, and read our class pumpkin poem.
Year 3’s Sunset Silhouettes
One of our parents at the school is a talented art teacher. She has been working with the Year 3 this week, helping them to develop their art skills.
In our sunset silhouette art project the children mixed primary colours to create secondary colours. They learnt how to blend these colours in horizontal lines to create a sunset sky effect.
Then using templates, as well as their own shape ideas, they cut out different silhouetted objects in black paper and stuck them onto their sunset background. Some children also overlapped their silhouettes, just like they do in real life.
The activity encouraged the children to understand how things that are closer appear bigger, and how things further away appear smaller and they were introduced to the vocabulary foreground, mid-ground, and background.
Thank you, Charlotte. We had great fun and learnt lots of new art techniques, too!
Creating a Giant Set of Cuisenaire Rods in Year 3
Cuisenaire Rods provide endless opportunities to introduce, investigate, and reinforce key math topics such as addition, subtraction, geometry, measurement, multiplication, division and much more.
Cuisenaire Rods come in 10 colour-related sizes and also electronically as virtual manipulatives!
This week, Year 3 has carried out a number of Cuisenaire Rod investigations. Take a look at them busy applying their measuring, adding and multiplication skills to solve the different problems.
Peace and Tranquility in Year 3’s Mindful Corner
Year 3 are enjoying their very own peaceful classroom space in their new ‘Mindful Corner’. Relaxing with a book on the cushions, tracing patterns and feeling textures, observing nature, releasing anger by squeezing the ‘argh’ balls, writing down their thoughts and listening to serene music. There’s something in here to help everyone relax.
Everyone is appreciating this special area. The children have been bringing in their own special items to enhance and share in the Mindful Corner, and children from other classes are keen to come in and experience this quiet, relaxing space, too.
The ‘Mindful Corner’ was inspired by us being introduced to the MindUp Curriculum, which aims to provide children with emotional and cognitive tools to help them manage emotions and behaviour, reduce stress, sharpen concentration, and increase empathy and optimism.
Please feel welcome to come in and enjoy the peace and tranquility in our ‘Mindful Corner’ for yourself!
See some photos of us exploring our new area here. [Read more…]
Growing Herbs in our School Garden
The Dolphin Class has also been fortunate to have a parent helper, Mrs Catherine, come in and work with us to help us to plant new herbs in our school garden. do you know the herb we are holding in the photo and about to plant?
This on-going project is a great opportunity to combine our classroom learning in Science about how plants grow, with the outdoor environment. It has also allowed for plenty of ‘hands-on’ learning.
Anybody looking for some healthy herbs this half term? Come along to the Dolphins class I have a feeling we are going to be ‘growing experts’ very soon! A huge thank you, Mrs Catherine. [Read more…]
Dolphin Research
What as fabulous start to the new school year in the Dolphins class. We have worked in pairs using our computer research skills, looking into lots and lots of interesting facts in relation to our class creature, the Dolphin. Not only did we learn how to record the information researched into a colourful spider diagram, but we also jointly presented our newly found facts to the rest of the school during our first assembly on Friday. Well done Dolphins! What would like to know about dophins? Well come into the Dolphin Class and see if the answer is on our informative spider diagrams.
Yr 3 Dolphins visit the Dentist
Canines, incisors, molars… a whole lot of ‘wisdom’ was acquired during Year 3’s visit to Dr Mark Osmond’s Dental Clinic last week.
We got to see how healthy teeth should look and how our teeth could look if we didn’t look after them –argh! That bit was quite scary; the pictures were quite yukky! You can see some of our horrified reactions in the photos below. We were very relieved to find out that we were caring for our teeth properly.
Not only did we get to see and hold real teeth (It’s OK, Dr Mark made a deal with the Tooth Fairy), but we also got to sit in the dental chair without having to have any treatment whatsoever. Phew!
Thank you so much Dr Mark for inviting us to your clinic, it was a real fun and informative visit.
Congratulations Year 3 Dolphins – Green Recycle Certificate Winners
The recycle tallies were recorded and counted on the final day of the month. The first class to win the Green Recycle Certificate – which entitles them to one extra special ‘Golden Time’ – were the Year 3 Dolphins. They collected an astounding 251 tallies – that’s 251 pieces of recycle items that, as the Dolphins say “ will help to make our world a better place!”
To compliment their success Year 3 created a rap to remind us of how important it is to recycle.
After much discussion, Year 3 have decided to put their extra ‘Golden Time’ towards a trip to our local Sandwich Shop where they will be able to create their own ‘healthy and delicious’ wrap (or rap!) or salad to eat for lunch. This relates really well to their ‘Healthy Eating’ topic in Science and their Design and Technology project of designing and making their own ‘healthy treat’. How excitingly scrumptious is that!
Al Médico por Year 3
Key Stage 2 PE Showcase
This week, children in Key Stage 2 were excited to present their PE learning in our end of term showcase event. Older children participated in a Gymnastics Show while children in Years 3 and 4 participated in a 4-on-4 Basketball Tournament. This was the second of two such showcase events this term and we were very pleased that is was again well supported and praised by parents. We’d like to say a big thank you to Adina and all the staff at Graceway Sports Centre for the use of their amazing facilities, which have enabled the children to learn and improve so much this term!
Dr Seuss’ The Lorax
The Year 3 and 4 enjoyed their visit to the movies the other day to see the animated version of Dr Seuss’ fabulous book ‘The Lorax’. In recognition of this wonderful author, (and to assist us with our fraction work – what fraction of the hat is red?) we all made hats using the famous Dr Seuss stripy hat logo to get into the swing of things.
We all thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and watching the film. In the next school term, we will be using the story as a foundation for lots of other activities – from exploring the Local Environment, Pollution Issues and Conservation to writing a persuasive text.
‘The Funky Four’ perform their new Hip Hop Dance
Four girls from Year 3 have been busy during their recess time creating a hip hop dance, which they have named ‘JKKS – The Dance’. It was so creative, I just had to video it and share it with you all! The girls say that they were inspired by their PE gymnastics lessons, their weekend ‘hip hop’ dance lessons and by watching some of the older children creating dance routines. The complex dance has been choreographed and performed with no music, so don’t panic if you hear no sound coming from your computer! As they danced, the children counted out beats of 8 in their head to keep time and to move in unison. Well done ‘Funky Four’ – it’s fabulous – you should be very proud of your group effort! We look forward to further new dances from ‘The Funky Four’ and hope to share other children’s dance videos in the near future.
Key Stage 2 Rugby
The children in Years 3-6 have been excited to try their hand at another fantastic sport this half term! We were delighted to offer a course of Rugby ‘taster’ sessions when we received the offer of coaching from the Turks and Caicos Islands Rugby Football Union!
These sessions have focused on the key skills of passing, movement and game-play. Some children, who already participate in the TCIRFU’s clubs, were keen to show off their skills in the sport, while others were excited by the challenge of something new!
We will watch this space and look forward to seeing our students developing a good understanding of another exciting team sport.
Why were the Dolphins put in the Stocks….?
Friday afternoon in the ‘stocks’ at Ports of Call was very busy. The Year 3 Dolphins had committed many a crime in their Tudor Life. Cutting purses full of money from the rich.. stealing bread from the bakers in the market place..stealing vegetables and herbs from the farmers fields…pick-pocketing a golden watch from the land owner up the lane…stealing a chicken from their neighbour… What a ghastly lot!
“But we were hungry and poor and could not get work” they howled. All their suffering however was rewarded by a delicious ice-cream treat from the nearby parlour – yummy!
A big thank you to all those parents who participated in the ‘stock experience’. With the Turks and Caicos thought to be discovered by the Europeans during Tudor times, it was a great way to link our topic to our local environment.
Taking Ownership of the Library!
Inspired by lots of newly bought fiction books and our computer system needing updating, a chance to make a change and take ownership of the how the library is organised was seized by KS2 children this week. Discussion, debate, research and lots of sorting occurred as the children worked together to re-organise all the fiction books from the library shelves into their respective genres, during World Book Day Celebrations last week.
“It felt good to work together to organise the library”…”I like how the different genre stickers will help me find the sort of books I’m interested in”…”I think our new library looks bright and colourful”.