Provo Primary School

During our ‘Be Healthy Week’ the children participated in lots of extra exercise at school. Early morning exercise was a hit with the children joining in with some group yoga and aerobics.  A big thank you to the parent volunteers who led these amazing sessions.  What a way to kick start our day – this certainly got some hearts pumping and muscles flexing!  After these, everyone was left feeling exhilarated and raring to start their lessons!

Our Year 3 – 6 Sports Day was also a big success.  With the long jump, throwing, obstacle races and of course the popular sprints and relays it was an exciting event with lots of team spirit, personal bests and lots of fun!

Coining the phrase “Eating a Rainbow’ the children learned about how the colour of fruits and vegetables gives us a clue of what goodness lies within.    During our ‘Be Healthy Week’, we focused on promoting how our bodies benefit from a wide variety of these as we learned about how each one provides us with different vitamins and minerals.

Each day at snack times the children recorded the variety of fruits and vegetable they had eaten and graphed their results.  On Friday the children collectively ate 26 different one – our weekly record!

They have also taken turns at doing a short presentation on the nutritional value of a chosen fruit or vegetable and brought in some samples for the children to enjoy.

A parent volunteer has also come in to talk to the children and brought in a selection of papaya, pomegranates, raspberries and blackberries for the children to taste. The children enjoyed trying these and went on to create posters to highlight and share with others what they had learned.

It is wonderful to report that many of our children already bring in lots of healthy fruit and vegetable choices every day as part of their snacks and lunches.  We hope that during this week they will have seen the benefits that eating a wider variety of these can bring.

Look at all the superb art work  created by the children in each class at Provo Primary School using a range of art techniques and styles.  What talent – the pieces are truly outstanding!  What could be a more fitting theme for our art work than Flamingos, a beautiful bird found locally here and also our school logo.  The art work will be auctioned off at our Curry Night tomorrow. What a creative way for the children to play their part in raising the funds for their new soccer field.  Wouldn’t you just love to have one of these masterpieces in your home or business? Click on to see all the artwork  in full and pick your favourite…if you can.

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Well done to everyone who joined in with our ‘Walk to School Wednesday’.  Parking up the hill from the school, around 60 children, parents and teachers strode the 800 metre walk down to school as part of our ‘Be Healthy Week’.

As in most school playgrounds it is common for us to hear the sounds of giggles, shouts and screams, and the patter of footsteps as the children run around and play together.  We also usually hear the tinkle of the steel drums resonating from the music room and, at this time of year, the tunes and singing from our upcoming End of Year Show as children enthusiastically practise on the stage. 

But today there was a new musical sound in the air that was coming from a small group of boys from Year 2 and 6 who were beating drums together in the familiar rhythmic pattern of junkanoo.   I am not sure what inspired this musical junkanoo band to form but when their sounds caught the attention of the nearby Kindergarten class, they were eagerly invited to come over to perform.  With shakers shaking and bodies jiggling to the beat, it was like carnival time as the captivated children joined in and enjoyed the concert. 

Moments like these are truly wonderful.  They celebrate the incredible spontaneous creativity of our children, their musical talents and joy of performing.  With different age groups naturally coming together in this way, they also capture the true feeling of community that is so strong within our school.  What an inspiration!

Hundreds flocked to our school for one of the island’s biggest Halloween parties last weekend.

Star attraction was the specially-built haunted house, although the ‘throw a wet sponge at the teacher’ game also proved popular among pupils. Other activities included spooky golf, scary basketball, apple bobbing, pumpkin bowling and dancing on the stage.

The party, which began with a trick or treat trail around our local Flamingo Park, raised more than $2,000, most of which will go towards the building of an artificial turf play area at the school and some towards an upcoming Year 6 field trip.

Dressing up was a big part of the evening and the work that went into some of the costumes was absolutely incredible. Our friends at Tropical Imaging were there taking photos and through this raised $400 for a charity working in Haiti.  See some of the amazing costumes here.

The Halloween party was organised by volunteers and, on behalf of everyone at the school, we would like to say a big thank you to all the parents, families and community members that helped make this event such a huge success. Also thanks to all the residents of Flamingo Park who kindly took part in what was a fantastic trick or treat trail.

Year 5 disappeared from school last week and spent their Numeracy lesson at one of our local supermarkets, IGA, investigating kilograms and grams. Upon arrival, the children were given a list of ‘weighty’ challenges to complete. These included finding the mass of a variety of items in store, working out the lightest and heaviest objects and also ordering items by weight.

Year 5 was then taken into IGA’s warehouse where they saw how really heavy objects were moved around the store. Luckily, they were able to solve the challenges set by the IGA staff and, as a reward, were allowed to feel the temperatures of their large walk-in freezers. At first everyone thought 34 degrees Fahrenheit felt cold, until they learnt the true meaning of the word. The rooms of 0 degrees and -15 degrees Fahrenheit were unforgettably cold….. Brrrrr!

Just before they left, IGA kindly arranged for everyone to each have a go on the checkout tills and to use their scales to weight some fruit.  We left owing $17.56… Thank you Ken for helping us – the children thought the trip was worth its weight in gold and really felt that they had practised a range of math skills and learned a lot about measuring weight!

For those of you who have been following the progress of our playground Bahama Woodstar hummingbird, here is an update.

Sadly, her first two eggs never hatched.  The mother had incubated them well past the average 14-19 days, but nothing emerged.  Mysteriously, we discovered that the eggs had disappeared last week, without a trace, and we were left to ponder as to whether they had been eaten by a predator or whether the hummingbird herself had disposed of them!  The hummingbird was still around and we wondered whether she was going to use the nest again.  Sure enough, a few days later, an egg appeared and this morning there were two!  See in the photo, proud mum and her fresh new eggs.   Why the first eggs didn’t hatch we will never know, were they unfertilized or did something go wrong?  Hopefully, all will go well with these two eggs.  At least with it now being the summer holidays, she can look after them in peace.  Watch out for our next update and keep your fingers crossed!

On Thursday 1st July, our seven Year 6 students graduated from Providenciales Primary School.  Each student made a personal speech highlighting memories of their time at the school and they were presented with a diploma.  We wish them all well with their future endeavours and hope that they will always keep in touch.

School is nearly over, but the fun with friends, doing exciting activities doesn’t have to stop!

We are offering Summer camps for all children ages 2 through 12 years of age.  The camp runs from 5th—16th July (Monday—Friday).  It is a morning programme from 8:30—12:00 noon.  Depending on attendance there will be three age groups:  2 – 4 year olds, 5 – 7 year olds and 8 – 12 year olds.  The cost is $30 per day / $125 for a week.

Under the themes of Drama/Performing Arts, Hands on Creativity, Thinking Skills and Sports, there will be a selection of fun activities planned throughout the week   Activities will include pantomime performances, skits and dance,  arts and crafts, cooking, computers, beach trips and nature walks, and  Mini-Tennis and Cricket workshops (with trained coaches).

See further details, download enrolment forms and register your child today:

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5-12-yr-olds-summer-camp-registration-2010

Individual tutoring will also be available in the afternoons.  Prepare your child for their class next year with qualified teachers supporting them with  aspects of their learning highlighted as needing development in their end of year reports.  Available throughout the Summer.   Please ask about this in the office or give us a call on 649 941 5638 for details.

Today, we were very pleased to discover a second hummingbird egg in the nest in our playground.

By our calculations, the mother hummingbird must have laid it 3 – 5 days after the first.  We knew that the Bahama Woodstar usually lays 2 eggs so we have been looking out, and hoping for a second egg to appear.

There had been much discussion by the children, parents and teachers alike as to whether we thought she would lay 2 eggs in succession, on the same day, or if there would be a gap between lays.  Our close observations have answered our theories.

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We are eggs-tremely egg-cited to see that our little hummingbird has laid an egg!

Having finished her nest a couple of days ago, we have since been waiting patiently, and checking the nest every time she has flown off for food, to see if she had laid an egg or two.  To our delight we saw one this afternoon.

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We have continued to record the hummingbird’s progress as she builds her nest in our playground. Take a look at the video highlights from day 2 and 3 and see some of the amazing behaviours we have observed as she creates her home.

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On Tuesday morning we had a special visit from some musicians down on island for the Amanyara Music Festival.  The children from Year 3-7 were involved in a mini workshop conducted (pardon the pun!) by 6 professional musicians.  The instruments we heard and learnt more about were the basoon, clarinet, double bass, cello, viola, and violins.  The theme of the workshop was “An Introduction to Cuban Music” and we learnt about different styles of Cuban music, how it sounds, where it comes from and how it has influenced other styles of music.  We also learnt about the Cuban sound “SON”, “RUMBA” and the “CLAVE” rhythm which holds the rhthym together in Afro-Cuban music.

At the end the musicians also played Michael Jackson music for us.  Read on to watch a movie clip of this and see if you can recognise which song it is.

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What an amazing little hummingbird!  While we were busy doing our school work today, she was hard at work building her nest.  By sundown a distinct nest was taking shape and off she flew for a well deserved night’s rest.  I’m sure she’ll be up at the crack of dawn and back to continue her efforts tomorrow.  Be sure to arrive early to school in the morning to see further footage on the computer screen in the walkway.  
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