Provo Primary School — Provo Primary School

Growing and Changing in Kindergarten

Tracy deCarufel — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:28:32 +0000

This week, Kindergarten has investigated how different fruits, vegetables and flowers grow. We have read lots of different different storybooks and non-fiction books about growing and changing. We visited the garden of one of the children’s in the class for an outdoor play and a picnic. We also got to plant 3 different kinds of seeds and starter plants—bok choy, black beans and pumpkin. We also got to smell and taste a few different kinds of herbs—mint and basil. Thank you to the family for letting us visit your lovely garden!

PTA’s 1st Annual “Great Family Skate”

Sian Jones — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:35:02 +0000

Please join us for Provo Primary’s 1st Annual “Great Family Skate”
Next week – Friday 24th February
5:30-7:00pm @ the Graceway Sports Centre
$10 admission for Sk8’ers / $5 admission for Non-Sk8’ers / Children under 3 free
Raffle Ticket included with purchase!

Kindergarten Journey’s into the Land of the Dinosaurs!

Tracy deCarufel — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:37:43 +0000

This half term, Kindergarten has enjoyed learning all about dinosaurs. We’ve learnt about how dinosaurs grew from eggs, facts about lots of different dinosaurs (Did you know that dinosaurs that walk on four legs are plant eaters?). We painted a Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs mural. In our role play area we created a dinosaur museum and acted as tour guides for the visiting Year 2 class. As our culminating task, made junk model dinosaurs! It was so interesting to see how creative all the children were in picking out their materials for the different body parts, cutting, gluing and taping independently, and then finally, painting their dinosaurs! Please check out the pictures to see how much fun we had learning about dinosaurs and making our 3D dinosaurs.

Una Semana Muy Ocupada – A Very Busy Week

Helen Barkworth-Knight — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:24:54 +0000

It seems Flamingo Class are very busy people! They’ve been learning how to tell us all about their packed schedules in Spanish classes and have created this wonderful video to show everyone what a multi-talented bunch they are! This half term they have been learning how to use different verbs to talk about their pastimes. They have linked thi together with the days of the week to give us a run down of all the activities in which they are involved. In our classes, the pupils have also learnt how to change verbs to talk about other people and the things they do in their spare time, as well as using verbs in the infinitive to give their opinions about different activities. In doing this, they have also managed to acquire a few new adjectives to justify their opinions. Pretty amazing stuff! Take a look at the video to see just how much these excellent Spanish speakers manage to fit into their week! “¡Buen trabajo, Flamingo Class!” (Good work, Flamingo Class!)

Preschool Enjoy their Indoor and Outdoor Activities

Claire Phillips — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:23:18 +0000

In the Preschool class, we have thoroughly enjoyed playing in our hospital role-play area, pretending to be doctors, nurses and receptionists and looking after our ‘patients’ and baby dolls with great care. Our hospital then went on to include a hair salon!

Building and construction have played a big part of classroom life and the children have been busy finding new ways of using our construction toys. We have also explored the topic ‘On The Farm’, and the children have adored painting and sticking to create farm animals and machinery. All their art work is making our classroom extremely bright and colourful.

As well as all of these indoor activities, the children have been very busy outside. Playing with balls on our school soccer field is definitely a firm favourite!

Please read on to see a selection of photos of our Preschool’s enjoying their activities.

School Lunch Menu

Sian Jones — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:03:43 +0000

Our school lunch menu form for Monday 20th February – Thursday 29th March, 2012 is now available.
If you would like your child to have lunch, please click on the image. Download, complete and return the form, together with payment by Monday 20th February. Forms are also available in the office.
Please note that we are unable to provide lunches unless payment is made in ADVANCE.

What on Earth is a Talking Text?

Toby Barkworth-Knight — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:44:04 +0000

This term, in the Flamingo Class, we have been thinking about how we can explain our ideas to someone else. Writing an explanation, it appears, is harder than you’d think!

To help us remember the structure of an explanation text, we have been learning a Talking Text! At first, we thought Mr Toby had gone mad! The talking text didn’t look anything like a book we’d seen before.

This means we all learned to speak our text aloud, before writing anything down! This helped us a lot, as we were able to make sure we included titles, subheadings, full stops, commas and subordinating clauses. All of that without even writing a single word!

This week we have been busy using our talking text to help us write our own explanations, based on our science learning. It was amazing how we were all able to remember our full stops better!

Feel free to drop by Flamingo Class to check out our fantastic writing!

Year 3 Shop till they Drop!

Mani Nyczka — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:17:56 +0000

The Year 3 Dolphins had a wonderful IGA shopping experience they will never forget. Not only did they get to practise their ‘estimating weight’ skills – “Does this coffee jar really weigh that!” exclaimed Will, they also got the opportunity to do their own shopping. Their generous and trusting parents gave each child a shopping list from which the children had to –
* find the product in the store
* round up the price to the nearest dollar
* estimate the total cost of their shop
* pay for the goods
* and of course check the change!
Some parents wrote some really tricky shopping lists!

We also got to go ‘behind the scenes’. We were shown the warehouse, shown how a fork lift truck works and best of all, we were invited to enter the largest freezer we had ever seen!

To top it all off we were all given a ‘goodie’ bag full of delicious fruit and the treat of some cookies. Year 3 would like to pass on a huge thank you to IGA – for their time, patience and generosity. All the children said, “That was the best trip EVER!”

Year 4 Investigate if all 3d Cube Nets make a Cube

Sian Jones — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:37:28 +0000

In our Year 4 Maths group we discovered that you can make many different net arrangements with six 2d squares, but are they all nets that all fold into a 3d cube? We decided to investigate this further. We used square tiles and masking tape to create each net and then tried to fold them up. We started to find that we were getting better at visualizing the net being folded up and could make pretty accurate predictions about which nets would or wouldn’t make a cube before we tested them. If you would like to have a go, try our worksheet and test the nets yourself. We also investigated dice nets. You can have a go at arranging the numbers on the dice net that we found most challenging here.

Happy Chinese New Year, January 2012

Claire Durack — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:35:41 +0000

Monday 23^rd January marked the start of the Chinese New Year and the Pelican Class had fun learning about Chinese traditions and that this year is ‘The Year of the Dragon’. We made Chinese moon cakes, a moving dragon picture and had a good go at eating noodles with chop sticks! Read on to see our pictures.

Year One Green Fingers

Claire Durack — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:33:20 +0000

The Pelican Class are exploring the Science topic ‘Growing Plants’. We have observed the different types of plants in and around our school environment. We have looked at the different parts of a plant and can label the roots, the stem, the leaves and the flowers. We have learned that some plants are vegetables and were shocked to find out that when we eat carrots we are actually eating the root of the carrot plant! In order to see this first hand, the children are growing carrot tops and, so far, three out if the four carrot tops have grown strong stems and leaves. We have also monitored and recorded the growth of bean seeds over the past two weeks. Initially, we ‘planted’ the beans in Ziploc bags but had to put them into glass jars after a couple of days because flies and ants seemed to like them a lot! Read on to see our wonderful work on this topic.

Year 6’s Whoopie-Pie and Other Baked Goodies

Sian Jones — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:42:13 +0000

Well done to the girls who took the turn to host the Year 6 baked goodie table at our yard sale this morning. There were homemade brownies, Biscotti, cakes and irresistible whoopie pie treats together with fresh coffee and homemade lemonade to tempt the hungry bargain hunting crowd. The Year 6 are raising funds for an end of year residential trip and certainly will have made some well earned money this morning, I’m sure.

Thank you to all the children and parents that helped with baking and supporting this venture. Yum, Yum!

Bargains at the PTA Yard Sale

Sian Jones — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:42:45 +0000

As the clock struck 9am, a large crowd of eager buyers surged into the school grounds, where an expectant 20 vendors posed ready for the buying rush ahead. There certainly were bargains galore at today’s PTA Yard Sale, with both sellers and buyers happy with their earned cash and new items to take home. With household goods and food, to toys and clothes on sale, our Provo Primary School yard sale is always a big hit with our local community. Look out for our next one later in the year. Thank you to our PTA volunteers for their work in organising this event. The money raised will help go towards our PTA Egg Hunt later this term which the children look forward to each year.

Fantastic Scholastic – January 2012

Sian Jones — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 04:46:50 +0000

There was great excitement at the end of school today. Our latest PTA Scholastic book order (totaling 303 books) had arrived and there was a reading buzz in the air as families collected their new books. Some children were so excited they just couldn’t wait to get started and, finding a place to perch in the playground, they delved into their new books right there and then.

The Scholastic International School Book Club has been a fantastic opportunity to promote and celebrate children’s reading at the school. Every 3 months children can choose and order from a fantastic range of books from around the world. As an extra bonus, our school earns 20% of the total order value back in FREE books! It’s a win, win all around!

Many thanks goes to our PTA volunteers who run this fantastic reading club. Click on to see more photos.

Year 5 and 6 World War 2 Wonder

Cara Buddle — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:00:22 +0000

The Years 5 and 6 are studying World War Two this term and were lucky enough to have a very special visitor this week, Sven Kirkegaad, a granddad of one of the children, who was just a little boy in Denmark when World War Two was going on. He told both classes about his experiences of living under German occupation: the rationing of food; the blacking out of lights as British bombers flew overhead and the nice and not so nice soldiers. Some of the children’s comments were… “He told us some very interesting stories. ” … “ My favourite story was when he was telling us about the German soldier who came to his door, asking for his father and his mother had to race away on a bicycle to find him.” Listening to a firsthand perspective of war really helped the children understand how different and difficult life could be, as well as informing them about a different country’s experience of war. Next week, Year 6 are looking forward to making models of ships which were involved in the battle at Dunkirk and possibly even a few famous Spitfires!