Children grow up so quickly and every parent wants to remember each step of their child’s life.

School photos have a special place in every  families’ hearts.  Each year, for as long as I can remember, an amazing team from ‘Brilliant by Tropical Imaging’ have come to take ours, capturing the vibrancy and diversity that is the beauty of our school.   They seem to have the natural ability to connect with each child, to capture their unique personalities and the magic in their smiles.    Thank you Anita, David, Kellie and Krys for your wonderful work, tremendous patience and boundless energy.  You really make this day a fun day for all.

School photos allow every child to cherish a keepsake of themselves and their fellow classmates, so don’t forget to order yours, today.

Please visit the Brilliant by Tropical Imaging’s blog to see some of this year’s amazing photos.

Yesterday, a special family tour was arranged by the kindergartners, to share all the wonderful minibeast topic work that they had been doing this past month.

The room was buzzing (excuse the pun) and the children were really keen and proud to show everyone around and to talk about what they had been learning about.  The tours were very thorough and no areas were left out as they circulated the room.  Parents expressed their thanks and appreciation, and went on to say that it was really lovely to see both the creative side and the more academic areas being explored and covered through this topic.

Well done to Miss Tracy and all the children, and thank you to everyone who came along.  The  Kindergartners’ next topic is ‘families and pets’ and I am sure that in a few weeks time they’ll want to have another tour to share all their learning again.  Until next time…

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 slideshow of them  printing their geckos.  Look at the level of concentration on their faces.  This activity required a great deal of patience and careful control of their fine motor skills.  Do come and see all of the children’s geckos displayed in their classroom.  I’m sure the children would love to show you their art work.

The Preschool has been exploring a variety of sensory experiences that we like to call ‘Messy Play’  Together they have made ‘Clean Mud’, which is made from soap and tissue paper. They have also created ‘Wet Mud’ with soil and water.  Drawing in shaving cream sprayed onto a table top is also a favourite activity.

Through ‘Messy Play’ they have had experience and practise of small motor skills, language development and multi-sensory exploration.   Click here to see a slideshow of the children busily enjoying their ‘Messy Play’.

We deeply admire the out-pour of care and support from our school community when others are in times of need.

Last term, our Christmas Drive resulted in an amazing response of donations of toys, household and toiletry items, clothing and food for the new Provo Children’s Home.  The children there are now settled in their new home and all of the items have been gratefully received and are being used.  A heartfelt thank you again, everyone.

In our ‘Celebration Assembly’ on Friday, Miss Beki, who volunteers at the home, told us that these donations were also being appreciated by some Haitian orphans who are staying there this week.  This is a touching story of how our children are directly helping other children in our community.

Support in our school community was once again generous for our neighbouring Haitian community who experienced a devastating earthquake a few weeks ago.  Read the rest of this entry »

Donna Seim, author of ‘Where’s Simon, Sandy?’ came once again to visit us and share with us her wonderful story about a local, Grand Turk, donkey that wouldn’t quit.  Children in JK through to Year 1 thoroughly enjoyed the story and took the opportunity to ask Donna lots of interesting questions about it and about being an author.  David Bowen, our Director of Culture, accompanied her, bringing his trusty blow-horn conch shell with him. What a noisy shell it is!

Donna’s book won a ‘Mum’s Choice Award’ last year and certainly got the thumbs up from our children.  Thank you again,  Donna.

Donna has also worked hard to connect our school with a school back in her home town in Newburyport,  Massachusetts.  Children there wrote penpal letters to our Years 2, 3 and 4 children and they have written back to them.  Unfortunately, our letters are still travelling in the post.  Fingers crossed they won’t take too much longer to arrive.  We look forward to our next letters and seeing Donna again the next time she comes down to visit.

Searching though some recent photos, I was drawn to this one.  How great to see two buddies, sitting on a rock together in the playground, doing some nature sketching together.   Their teacher, Miss Tracy said that as part of their minibeast topic, the class had been out on a nature walk with Mrs. Catherine around the school yard to look for minibeast homes.  The children had also brought out their books and found quiet areas to sketch and colour. Afterwards, they talked about what they had drawn and labelled their pictures.  Many of the children found leaves with holes in them and speculated that perhaps it was a caterpillar that had made them. Well… they have been learning a lot about caterpillars this week!

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.

Today, it was these two boys who had worked really well together in their Year 2 Numeracy class.  They excitedly shared how they had created their own two-digit addition sentences by playing a card game and showed me the strategy they used to find their answers.   They then went on to check their answers on a calculator and were pleased to announce that their brains were quicker than it!

At the end, I got the opportunity to share a new strategy for them to take back to share with their class and off they went.

I wonder who will be knocking on my door tomorrow, allowing me to share in their learning and celebrating their successes?

Year one demonstrated some amazing problem solving skills in their Numeracy class today.  Games and challenges involved them finding different ways of making 7.  They used a variety of addition and subtraction strategies, lots of mathematical vocabulary and were encouraged to record their findings in their own individual way.

Read the rest of this entry »

The steel drums are a much loved part of our school.  We currently have two after school steel band clubs.  In the club, the children learn how to play the drums and play tunes together.  They often practise during their playtimes and lunchtimes.  We have found some digital steel drums that you can play on the Internet.   Click on to find the links and have a go… Read the rest of this entry »

Santa came to visit the school today, arriving on a shiny fire truck.  This is a special Christmas tradition at the school that the children always look forward to on the last day of term.  Everyone gathers in the car park and awaits the sound, not of sleigh bells, but of the fire engine siren, announcing Santa’s arrival. 

Excitement builds as the truck draws nearer and the welcoming smiles, claps and cheers reach fever pitch as he parks and climbs out of the truck with his bulging present sack on his back.  He is then eagerly followed into the school by the ecstatic crowd. He sits himself down on our outside stage and the classes comes out in turn to visit him, each child receiving a gift from his sack.  He always brings everyone a book, for he is a clever Santa who knows that learning to read and enjoying reading is very important.  

All the children also got the chance to go on the fire truck – a big thank you to the members of the Turks and Caicos Fire Department for letting everyone take a closer look at the truck and for helping transport Santa to us. “Why does he come on the fire truck?” asked one of our five year olds.  I wonder what Santa said…perhaps you’ll leave us a comment and say what you think he replied!

See you next year, Santa and thank you for stopping by!

It was lovely to gather together as a school today to enjoy our annual traditional Turkey Lunch.  The children made special decorated place mats and listened to Christmas music as they munched away.  A special thank you to Robin and his staff for cooking the lunch and all of the school lunches this term.

Watch a slideshow showing some of the highlights our fantastic Christmas Extravaganza.  Our Preschool children flew on to the stage as beautiful Christmas birds, flapping their wings and dancing and singing to some Christmas action songs.  Junior Kindergarten were dressed as red-nosed reindeer and thoroughly entertained the audience with their jingling bell ringing, action songs and rhymes.

Kindergarten and Year 1 performed a play called ‘Christmas with the Aliens’.  The traditional Christmas story was retold to some alien visitors whose spaceship had broken down on earth.  With stunning costumes and wonderful singing and speaking voices, these confident performers amazed the audience with their talent.

What a show!  Well done everyone – a splendid success and great fun to watch.

Years 2 to 7 put on a fantastic end of term show this week.  Audiences were amazed and thoroughly entertained by the extremely talented dancers, singers, musicians and actors.  Some say it was the best Provo Primary Christmas Show to date!  See a slideshow of the main highlights.

Bob (the littlest elf) was rather disgruntled as she didn’t understand the true meaning of Christmas. So clever Santa decided to take her with him on his sleigh and show her all the wonderful things that happen around the world at this special time of year.

We’d like to thank all the children, staff and parents whose combined hard work and efforts have produced this wonderful show and a big thank you to Krys for these wonderful photos.

Year 2 have been looking at patterns in ‘mother nature’. Take a look at a slideshow of their pencil, computer and printed patterns.

First they went on an adventure walk down to “Flamingo Pond”.  There they collected lots of natural materials.

Using magnifying glasses they looked carefully at the patterns that they found in the collected natural materials. They learned how to use pencils in different ways and copied some of the patterns they could see.

Later, they used these patterns to test their ‘control’ skills on the computer and re-created their original natural designs using the different tools in the ‘Paint’ program.

After this they cut an orange in half and looked carefully at the beautiful natural design inside (Then they ate it…yummy!!!)  Again, using their new found pencil skills they made a template of the patterns that they found and used the template to create a print, (Cor!  This bit was really exciting!)

Finally, they used all of their studies and produced a ‘mother nature’ collage.  We think they turned out great… who would have thought there were so many patterns in all the natural things around us!

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 story is about an Elf who travels the globe with Santa on Christmas Eve learning about how Christmas is celebrated around the world.  On his journey he visits our country, the Turks and Caicos where he sees some ‘Massin’, our traditional native Junkanoo music parade.  In the photo above you can see a sneak preview of the children practising.

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.

They can’t wait for you to see it on the night!

Once a month at Provo Primary School, we offer our children the chance to ‘dress down’ and have a non-uniform day in return for a donation of a dollar that goes towards a chosen charity.  This November, we decided to ask our children to do something a bit different and donate a gift for the Provo Children’s Home. Read the rest of this entry »

Junior Kindergarten have been learning about families and homes.  They did a project at home to build their own home.  Look at all the wonderful individual designs in this slideshow.  Well done, everyone.  There are some amazingly creative homes and they look like they were a lot of fun to create together with your family.

Our Year 3 to 7 Sports’ Day was a huge success today with children demonstrating a range of athletic track and field skills, great sportsmanship and team work. From javelin and long jump to hurdles, sprints and relay races, all the children tried their individual best and had lots of fun. Thank you everyone who helped organize the event and to all of you who were able to attend.