Provo Primary School now has brown recycling bins on the premises.  After a visit to the Recycling Plant last term, the School Council have a devised a simple ‘Recycling Mission’ to encourage us all to recycle. They hope you can all participate!

Their intentions are that all snack\lunch recyclable refuse will be taken home to be washed and placed in the brown bin located at the school entrance, in the mornings as you come into school. Other household recyclables can also be brought from home.

To encourage and entice your participation,  they have created tally sheets for each class to record the number of objects placed in the bin. These tallies will be counted up each week and the class who collects the most tallies at the end of the month will receive a special ‘Recycle Certificate’ which will entitle the class to an extra ‘Golden Time’.

Well done, School Council.  I wonder which class will collect the most recyclables this month?  We look forward to an update on this fantastic initiative later in the term.

Throughout the school, the children took part in a number of activities to celebrate Earth Day, 2012.  In our Friday assembly, Year 5 introduced Earth Day with a presentation, Year 1 told everyone some facts about how they could help to ‘Save our Earth’ and Year 2 talked about how sea turtles are becoming extinct and the dangers they face, such as rubbish in the ocean.

 On Earth Day for the past 3 years, The Turks and Caicos Hotel and Tourism Association has organised a ‘TCI Shines Earth Day Clean- up Campaign’.  Donning gloves and raring to play their part, the children in years 3 – 6 collected rubbish outside the school perimeter fencing, around the TCIFA soccer field and up to the Graceway Sports Centre. The children in Years 1 and 2 collected litter from around the school playground.

The children filled approximately 30 large trash bags in total – almost all with rubbish collected from outside the school grounds.  The photo on the left shows the children with just a few of these bags.  The children were upset to have found so much rubbish that people had littered in our area, but felt happy that they had helped clean up their surroundings.

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Children were treated to a demonstration of Aikido this half term, courtesy of two of our own students!  The audience was amazed at the speed and power that our pupils possessed. Using the skills they had learned in an after-school Aikido club, they were able to show defensive moves with great skill and confidence.

When volunteers were taken from the audience, everyone was surprised how it was possible (with the help of some clever moves) to defend against an attack from the coach, Clay Seymore.

The demonstration concluded with a presentation of attack and defensive skills using long staffs. What a fascinating way to end this excellent demonstration!

If any parents would like to know more about Clay Seymore’s Aikido classes, please ask for details from Mr Toby or visit the Graceway Sports Centre website. [Read more...]

Today, the School Council visited the TCI Waste Disposal Plant, on a fact finding mission to discover how we can play our part in recycling on the island.  They learnt about the importance of recycling and the processes that our rubbish goes through at the plant.  The children asked lots of questions and came away with lots of information and ideas.  The school has 2 new recycling bins and the School Council will now be organising a whole school campaign to use them as much as we can.  We would like to pass on a big thank you to Ramez Hakoura from TCI Waste Disposal for allowing us to visit.  We look forward to learning more from him when he comes to our school to help the School Council lead an assembly on recycling .  Click here to watch a local TV report about their trip.

Happy New Year and welcome back to all our children, parent, teachers and community friends (locally and around the world).

‘We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called “Opportunity” and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.’ Edith Lovejoy Pierce.

Tradition continued this year with Santa arriving at Provo Primary School on a fire truck.  “Sleighs don’t work without ice!” explained a little boy, “and a fire truck is red like his sleigh.”  Santa always knows that we love reading at Provo Primary School, so he brings all the children a book as a special gift. Many thanks to Santa and his helpers at the Fire Department for taking time from their busy schedules to pay us a visit.  You made many boys and girls very happy today. Read on to see photos of Santa’s visit…

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Dancing Santa 2011 Turks and Caicos from Brilliant by Tropical Imaging on Vimeo.

Each year, Brilliant by Tropical Imaging create a much enjoyed ‘Santa Dancing -TCI Happy Holidays’ video featuring lots of local businesses.  This year they invited the children and staff of Provo Primary to join in the fun. There’s nothing quite like an early morning boogie, dressed in Santa hats and sunglasses, as a start to your school day! Many thanks and lots of holiday cheer to everyone at Brilliant by Tropical Imaging.

All the children gathered together today for a special Christmas lunch  – a yummy feast with turkey, potatoes, carrots and broccoli.  To celebrate this occasion, the children made festive hats and place mats.  These girls made snowmen place mats – snowmen in the Turks and Caicos?

A big thank you to Robin and his staff at ‘Pizza, Pizza’ for your hard work cooking our school lunches every day.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Robin for donating cookies for all the children at their end of term performances.

Donned with gloves and large rubbish bags, a group of keen Provo Primary children and staff joined forces with employees from The Alexandra Resort for the TCI SHINES CLEAN-UP.

Starting off at our school at 6:30 am we focused on the area around the Sports’ Centre and Soccer Field.  Sadly, there was quite a lot of rubbish to be found, which was mainly drink containers and food wrappers.  Fortunately, our enthusiastic team of junk-busters soon swooped in and picked it all up.  It was so lovely to look back and see the natural beauty restored after our efforts.  The children were proud of their efforts, but slightly bemused and disappointed that people had dropped their litter in the first place and didn’t understand why they hadn’t put it in a bin or taken it home.  There is hope for a cleaner future.

The TCI Shines Clean-up event was organised by the Turks and Caicos Hotel and Tourism Association.  They were excited about getting the children on the island of Providenciales to participate in this campaign and hope this will be the beginning of a programme that promotes, educates and inspires our youth to keep our islands ‘Beautiful by Nature’.

Well done to everyone who got up early and took the time to care for our local community environment.  Also, well done to those of you who joined in with other groups or took the time to clean up the area around your own home.  Every bit of effort makes a difference to show that we care.

This past week has been jam packed with wonderful performances in the arts.  Children throughout the school, from 5 to 12, have showcased their creativity and talent in Dancescapes 2011, the TCI Chorale music concert and the Celestial Music Studio Spring Piano Recital.

Well done and congratulations everyone,  What an array of talent – you were all fantastic!  I’m sure that other children in the school will be inspired by your achievements and will perhaps follow in your footsteps.

Five of our Year 6 students dazzled parents and friends with their piano playing in their Spring recital this Sunday.  They are all learning the piano with teacher Wendy Hayward of the Celestial Music Studio.  Some have been having lessons for a few years, others have just started.  It was a very entertaining event with a variety of pieces celebrating their range of playing abilities.

There was a large audience and I know some of the children felt apprehensive before playing, but their confidence blossomed as they played, and their efforts were appreciated by encouraging claps and support. Well done to all the pianists!  I’m sure that you all felt very proud of your achievements. Keep practising and enjoying this wonderful instrument and let us know when your next recital will take place. [Read more...]

Two of our students are enthusiastic members of the TCI Youth Chorale who performed on Saturday afternoon at the Edward Gartland Youth Centre. Singing together as a choir and also performing solos, they amazed the audience with their talented voices. It was great to hear the song, ‘A Friend Like Me’ again from our Christmas Show, ‘Cinderella Rockerfella’. It was sung beautifully and brought back a flood of happy memories

Congratulations to all the choir for a very entertaining performance. Well done also to piano teacher Wendy, vocal coach Addison and supporter Marilyn, and thank you for all your efforts and dedication in providing this opportunity for our youth.

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Today, we had a return visit to the school from dance students of the University of Las Vegas (UNLV). This is the third time that TCFAF has brought them to the island and we feel very fortunate that during their time here, they been able to visit the school and amaze and inspire us with their passion for dance.

Louis Kavouras, chair of the UNLV Department of Dance, started the session by encouraging the children express their views on “What is Dance?”  The dance students then went on to demonstrate Ballet, Contemporary and Jazz routines and the children commented on what they liked about each piece.

Over the week, many of our Year 1 – 4 children, have participated in after-school TCFAF workshops with the dance students, going on to perform in the ‘Dancescapes 2011′ community performances on Friday and Saturday night. It was wonderful to see the children enjoying themselves so much, feeling confident in their dance expression as they joined in with routines and displayed their own creative ideas. Miss Shara and her Bowen Dance Company also performed with three of our talented ex Provo Primary students. The highlight of the performance was the ‘Sea of Stars’ which was created after Louis was inspired by the clear night skies above the ocean here in Provo.

We would like to thank Louis and the UNLV Dance students for bringing us their message of dance and for inspiring us.  A huge thank you to TCFAF as well, for sponsoring this event and enabling us to participate and open our eyes and hearts to the diversity of the Arts.

To mark the start of our ‘Keeping Healthy – Sleep Week’ the children came in their Pyjamas for Dress Down Day.  What a wonderful variety of bedtime fashions we saw!

Donations of much needed breakfast items were collected for the Provo Children’s Home (PCH).  Bloneva Green Williams, the PCH Chair of the Board of Directors, came and thanked the children for their support and, in keeping with the theme of the day, she wore her Pyjamas too!

Thank you to everyone for your kind support and donations.

Thanks to the amazing efforts of our PTA President and all our parent class reps, our curry night was a fundraising success!

Not only did everyone have a fun evening, but we raised the money we needed to complete our soccer pitch project.

Now with the turf on order and in production in the Netherlands, the project – which kicked off during the last school year – is finally just weeks away and it is going to be an amazing addition to the school.

Not only will the children be able to play soccer or football – depending on which side of the pond you come from – the new artificial turf will be an all purpose grass area that can be used by all children. The more than 2000 sq ft of grass area will offer the children a place to run, jump and play safely during play time and Physical Education classes. Children from Preschool through Year Six will benefit from this new area, scheduled to be installed in January 2011.

Thanks to the amazing generosity of the parents and community supporters of the school during our curry night we were not only able to order the highest quality turf, but also some of the extras the children had on their wish list -such as new goals and nets to prevent balls from landing over the fence in the bushes.

So a big thank you to everyone who in every way helped to make this dream a reality.