Our Thinking Week theme week started off with great success today, with ‘guess the character’ posters, daily class challenges, mixed-age team challenges and lots of classroom activities to keep them thinking all day long! See a slideshow of some of today’s activities. A big thank you to all the teachers who have worked hard to plan and organise activities both for their own classes and the whole school.
Thinking skills are becoming essential tools in our rapidly changing global information age. We want our children to be able to analyze information, make decisions and come up with creative ideas on how to solve problems. Over this week, we strive to ask questions and provide fun activities that will deepen the children’s thinking, encourage them to think logically and critically, to work together with others and celebrate their individuality and amazing creativity.
Suzie, an adult female green turtle and first turtle in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) to be fitted with a satellite transmitter tag, arrived back in the TCIs’ coastal waters on Sunday after an amazing 6,000 kilometre migration around the eastern Caribbean.
With reports going out this week, it is common to see learning a particular set of multiplication tables written as one of a child’s targets for improvement. We often hear “How can I help my children memorise their multiplication tables at home?” Well it’s basically all down to practise, practise and even more practise, so here are a couple of website links that will help you support this practice at home with a variety of fun interactive online games to keep you all from boredom and frustration. Let me know your favourite games and let’s hope they help your child achieve those targets by the end of term! Of course in my day, I recall just reading and reading them over and over from my no-nonsense, pink “The Old Fashioned Multiplication Table Book.” No fun computer games in my day! Click on to find the game links…
The Junior Kindergarten are learning about people who help them in the community. One of their dad’s is a plumber and he came in to talk to them about his job. He brought in lots of water pipes, levers, switches and tools for them to explore and connect. Together, they made a model of a simple desalination plant, which changes salt water to fresh water.
Year 3/4 has been working exceptionally hard during their Literacy lessons to learn how to become journalists!
Children grow up so quickly and every parent wants to remember each step of their child’s life.
Year One’s art topic this term has been texture and pattern. Last week, they looked online at some aboriginal paintings. They used their interactive whiteboard to look closely at the patterns and talked about how they could imitate them using everyday objects from their classroom. As their classroom is called the Gecko room, they decided to make geckos. First, they created a sandy background by marking brown, yellow and beige paint with their fingers. Then they each printed a pattern on their geckos using the wrong end of a small paintbrush. These were inspired by the aboriginal designs that they had seen. Click here to see a 
We deeply admire the out-pour of care and support from our school community when others are in times of need.
One of the many highlights of my job as principal is when there’s a knock at my door, and some smiley faces appear, eager to share with me the outstanding work they’ve been doing in class.
David Bowen, our Director of Culture, came to help out with rehearing one of our Year 5 performances in our upcoming End of Year Show: Bob the Elf – Christmas around the World.
The children will be busy this week making creative masks and costumes out of just about anything. Here is a photo of a man dress up in his ‘Massin’ costume to give you a glimpse.