A unique Primary School, offering a British based, child centred education in the Turks and Caicos Islands
Do you want to know how each of your bones bones protect you, help you move and support your body? Well, you’re in luck! We have created the perfect text for you!
Our Year 4 bone experts have been busy learning how to write explanation texts this term. We discovered lots of great facts during our Moving and Growing topic and we wanted to help you understand the special jobs each bone does.
A group of our School Councilors were proud today to present boxes of food and $472.13 of Dress Down and Yard Sale money to Tanis Wake-Forbes from the Provo Children’s Home.
Tanis was thrilled by everyone’s generosity, stating that the donation and food items were much appreciated. In particular, she told the children that she was happy to see children working together to help other children. She also said that she would like to pass on a huge thank you to all of the Provo Primary families for their support.
Well done to all of our school councilors who, together with Miss Mani, organised both a toy and book sale at our recent PTA Yard Sale and the food drive collection. Look what you can achieve when you work as a team.
Our Preschool class had lots of fun bouncing like ‘Bouncing Ben’ from Letterland.
They bounced up and down the green field collecting paper carrots. Afterwards, our little ‘bunnies’ enjoyed crunching on real carrot sticks.
The Bounce-a-thon was a preschool adaptation of our Bike-a-walk-a-thon fundraising event. Congratulations to all our bouncing bunnies and thank you for all the generous donations you collected that will go towards the purchase of new computer and reading resources across the school!
The Toddlers Run-A-Thon was a great success! The toddlers ran ten whole laps on green field. That is the Toddler equivalent to the Boston Marathon! We ran with our teachers, with rainbow streamers blowing behind us as we blazed ahead! Ready, Set, Run! Click on ‘Read More…’ below to see more photos.
Thank you to all the toddler parents and friends for all the generous donations you gave for this fundraiser. These will go towards the purchase of new computer and reading resources for children to benefit from, throughout the school.
Our theme during ‘Keeping Healthy Week’ is ‘The Science of Sports’ and our bike-a-thon provided a wonderful opportunity to explore the science of cycling.
The stage area became an outside bike investigation classroom, filled with activities to explore. It was lovely to link this learning to our fundraising event and to see so many children involved and keen to explore.
Bicycle maintenance is important to learn and many were drawn to the bicycle repair shop, where mechanics tinkered away, fixing and cleaning a bike. Some explored and built with cogs and gears, while others enjoyed designing bicycle helmets and futuristic bikes. A history and science fact table told the story of early bikes and displayed amazing bike science facts and information. There was also a comfy reading corner where children gathered to read and share non-fiction books.
Hands-on, meaningful learning – love it! We hope enjoy seeing the photos of the children exploring the science of cycling.
Provo Primary School is offering an Easter Camp from the 26th March to 5th April. Children will enjoy a range of daily fun on-campus activities, including: Spring-themed arts and crafts, soft play, construction play, role play and outdoor play. Click here for an Easter Camp 2013 Registration Form.
Next week is ‘Keeping Healthy Week’. Following the theme of our Education Week on Science, we will focus on “The Science of Sports”. Over the week we have organised a few activities and events to explore the theme and to help raise awareness for the importance of developing healthy life choices.
Monday: School fundraiser – Toddler’s Run-a-thon, JK and K’s Trike-a-thon and Year 1-6’s Bike-a-walk-a-thon’.
Tuesday: ‘Walk to School’.
Tuesday: Preschool Bounce-a-thon.
Wednesday: ‘Early Years and KS1 Sports Day’.
Thursday: KS2 Gymnastic and Handball Showcase.
Friday: ‘Walk to School’.
Look out for blog post next week showing highlights of our activities.
Years 4, 5 and 6 carried on from a superlative Science Week with a superb visit to the British West Indies Collegiate School. Year 3 had been visited by two of their pupils during Science Week.
Head of Science, Mrs Nicola Haynes, welcomed the children and introduced them to Science at KS3 and 4. The children had the opportunity to see what the fantastic laboratories at the school are like and carried out their own scientific investigation.
Using Bunsen burners for the very first time and a range of chemicals, the children learned the different coloured flames metals produce when burned. They also learned lots about the etiquette of working in a laboratory and even got to quiz a few A-level pupils on what it’s like to learn science at such a high level.
It was a spectacular scientific afternoon and Mrs Haynes was a wonderful science teacher! Thank you for allowing us to visit.
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.
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!
Friday morning saw the launch of our first Science Fair. Throughout our Early Years’ classes, a multitude of hands-on learning activities were being explored. It was lovely to see parents, visitors and children together observing, problem solving, predicting, thinking, making decisions and most importantly talking about what they were doing. A big thank you to all our teachers for their hard work and to all the parents and visitors who came to enjoy and share the science learning with the children. If sadly you weren’t able to make it, we hope you gain a feel for our Science Fair through the short movie above.
As part of World Book day, Year 5/6 took on the challenge of working in teams to complete a specially designed non-fiction quiz. The quiz was organised to ensure the children had to think carefully about how a library references its books. They also had to focus on key words in each question to work out where they would find the answer. The children worked together superbly and used their solid understanding of how to approach a non-fiction book (using contents, glossary and index) to identify the page/s needed. It was a really close competition with teams finishing just seconds after each other!
Each year we celebrate ‘World Book Day’ with a dress-up day. This year, as it was during our Science week, we linked our themes and focussed on non-fiction science books.
All children were invited to participate in a ‘Phenomenal Phenomenon Dress-up Day’ by wearing a costume that represented something from the world of science! Children were asked to research a fact to accompany their costume, which they then shared with their class and friends.
The costumes truly were phenomenal, ranging from amazing animals, brilliant bugs, wild weather, crazy colours and a whole lot more! The facts were amazing as well. We hope you enjoy our Phenomenal fact movie – thank you Mr. Toby for creating this.
Well done everyone – you all showed such creativity. It was clear how much effort and thought had been put into the costumes and everyone looked proud to wear them and share their facts. Take a peek at some more photos below. [Read more…]
Year 2 have written their very own non-fiction books about insects. In order to be successful authors the children had to:
Finally their books were ready for presentation! Congratulations on your remarkable books Year 2 – you are fantastic non-fiction authors. Thank you Miss Sian for making this movie with the children.
To celebrate ‘World Read Aloud Day’, children across the school shared and read science books together. Children in our Year 2 class made their own books about insects that we find here in the TCI and shared these with the Year 1. Our Year 5/6 class connected with a school in the USA and read to each other over the Internet. Buddy reading is always so much fun!
‘World Read Aloud Day’ is about taking action to show the world that the right to read and write belongs to all people. By raising our voices together on this day we show the world’s children that we support their future: that they have the right to read, to write, and to share their words to change the world.
Each day of Science Week, our Ks1 and 2 classes took turns to challenge their fellow students with an exciting ‘True or False Science Quiz’!
Teams were formed, with mixed ages and score tallies recorded over the week. The questions were devised by the children themselves and related to science work being studied in their class. Each day at quiz time, the class who were quiz masters read their questions out aloud to the teams. These lead to lots of discussion, with older and younger children sharing their knowledge and ideas. Once a team answer was decided, the appropriate ‘true’ or ‘false’ card was displayed.
What a fun way to share our science knowledge, with different age groups working together and sharing their knowledge and learning.
Each year, during the TCI’s National Education Week, we have a themed week in school. This year’s week will have a strong Science theme, with children investigating and experimenting across the school.
Year Two students had fun exploring friction as part of their study of forces and motion.They loved singing a song about friction that helped them understand and remember the concept, and they carried out several experiments to see friction in action. For one of their experiments, the class was divided into two teams. The teams had a race to see which team could move the most jelly cubes from one bowl to another using chopsticks. Then the race was repeated after a small amount of cooking oil was added to the jelly cubes. The students quickly discovered that the jelly cubes with oil on them were much harder to move because the friction was reduced.
In Year 1, we have been learning that some of the food that we eat comes from plants. In fact, many of the fruits and vegetables that come from the supermarket have grown from plants.
We were very lucky to be able to visit one our classmates’ garden to see some of these different types of fruits and vegetables. We tasted fresh tomatoes and sugar cane from the garden and we even got to plant our very own cucumber! We looked very closely at the different plants we could see. This helped us when we carefully drew and labelled them.
We had such a lovely time and would like to thank our special family for allowing us to come and visit them.
One sunny morning, Preschool all went out to the big playground to paint on the ground using a mixture of water and glitter. They created some fantastic outdoor art. As the children painted, they commented on what they could see… “look a circle, an aeroplane, a letter D, a cross, a house, a face, a girl, a train, a letter A, a caterpillar, a letter H, a triangle, a sad face and a car”. After a while, the water dried up and our playground was covered in glitter art.
The children adored the freedom of being able to paint with no restrictions. They also enjoyed being able to choose to sit by themselves, quietly with a few others, or chatting in a group. It was amazing to watch our little artists so absorbed in creativity.
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!
‘Big Writing’ is something Provo Primary have been focusing on for quite a while in Year 5 and 6. Children will tell you ‘VCOP’ (Vocabulary, Connectives, Openers, Punctuation) is a HUGE part of good writing! We have also been fortunate to have our amazing PTA help us move even further towards higher quality writing sessions by raising money to buy the fantastic interactive whiteboard software which supports this.
More students than ever laced up skates for the PTA’s hugely popular 2nd annual “Great Family Skate”, racing around the Sports Centre rink to the latest music while parents socialised in the stands and toddlers boogied on the dance floor. A puck shooting contest saw many happy kids rolling away with gift certificates to Island Scoop and Giggles, and all were in agreement that the 90 minute party went by much too quickly.
Today we started to explore water in our Science lessons using some ‘Magic Jungle Beans’. We counted 8 tiny beans into a bowl of of cold water and took turns mixing them. In the cold water the beans did not grow…. so we moved them into warm water and ‘POP’ the first magic jungle bean cracked open and a hippo-shaped sponge grew by absorbing the water, right before our eyes! It was so much fun watching the beans ‘grow’. After they all the beans had opened, we counted and named the animals that had grown: 2 hippos, 2 monkeys, 2 crocodiles and 2 elephants! Tomorrow we will be exploring sinking and floating!