Mapaputle Primary
Grade 4 · Tshepo K.
"My favourite tree"
Painted in tempera. Tshepo's grandmother says he sat under this tree the entire weekend before he painted it. Mma Lesedi calls it the best blue she has seen this year.
Inside the school yard
Three classrooms, one yard, sixty stories.
A small tour of where the day happens, what our learners make, what they win — and what made it into the term-letter home.
A modest place, kept well.
Three classroom blocks, one staff room, one kitchen, one library that fits in a converted store room. Click any tile to view it larger.
Grade 3 classroomPhonics wall, chalkboard, 18 desks. The youngest readers' room.
Reading corner libraryAround 800 books, donated. The Methodist church refreshes the basket every Easter.
Playing yardDirt pitch, two goalposts, one drum that calls the children back to class.
Edible garden400 m² of spinach, beetroot, butternut. Watered by Grade 5 on Tuesdays.
NSNP kitchenWhere 60 cooked meals are made every school day, by 10:50.
First-aid roomShared with the staff bag-storage. The clinic nurse uses it twice a term.
Lunch courtyardWhere the daily NSNP plates are eaten, mostly cross-legged in the shade.
Staff & admin roomOne kettle, three desks, the only printer on site. The heart of paperwork.
Our environment is small but never neglected. Floors are swept twice daily, the kitchen is inspected by the district environmental health officer once a year, and not a single classroom in 2024 was without chalk for more than 48 hours.
From the classroom walls.
A handful of pieces our learners are proud of this term. Click to view full size.
Grade 6 · Lerato M.
"Mmino wa Pula" (Song of Rain)
A six-line Setswana poem written for the Bojanala District spelling-bee Setswana category. Lerato placed second on this poem, and the school waited at the gate for her bus.
Grade 5 · Class project
Heritage Day masks
Newspaper, glue, leftover paint. Twelve masks, one per learner, made for our 2024 Heritage Day assembly. They have hung above the chalkboard ever since.
Grade 5 · Mpho S.
"From bean to plate"
A life-cycle diagram of the dry beans grown in our school garden, drawn from observation over six weeks. Mr Tau pinned the original on the staff-room door.
Grade 7 · Boitumelo R.
"My promise to Grade R"
Boitumelo wrote this letter to next year's Grade R class, in her best handwriting, on the last day of term. We laminated it and hung it on the Grade R door.
Grade 3 · Class project
"Ko gae" (At home)
A cardboard model of a Mapaputle homestead, complete with chickens, a maize patch and a granny on a chair. Built in pairs over four weeks.
Quiet wins worth recording.
Our numbers are small. We count them anyway, because they are real, and because every name behind them has been hand-written into a register at this gate.
0%
of our 2024 Grade 7 cohort were promoted to high school.
0%
Grade 3 home-language reading benchmark in 2024 (up from 61 % in 2022).
0
cooked meals served to learners every school day through NSNP.
Setswana spelling-bee runner-up
Lerato Mokoena (Grade 6) placed second across the district's primary-school Setswana category — representing the smallest school on the programme.
Bojanala Heritage Choir invitation
Our seven-strong choir was invited to perform on the Bojanala Heritage Day district programme. Mma Lesedi conducted; the children clapped the rhythm themselves.
News & term letters.
A few of the things we wrote home about this term.
Event
22 February 2026
Open House on Saturday 14 March: come and walk the school grounds with us
Our annual Open House for prospective Grade R families. Tea and vetkoek from 09:00, school tours from 09:30, and a Grade 3 reading at 11:00. RSVP not required — just arrive.
Community
02 March 2026
Saturday Garden Day: 18 parents, 4 hours, 120 spinach seedlings
The Kameelboom Farmers' Forum joined our SGB for a Saturday morning of bed-prepping, mulching and seedling-planting. The whole NSNP kitchen ate from this garden by week three.
Achievement
12 March 2026
Lerato places second at the Bojanala District spelling bee
Our Grade 6 reader represented Mapaputle alongside 24 other Bojanala primary schools, finishing second in the Setswana category. The whole school waited at the gate.
"More stories — the small ones — live in the parents' WhatsApp group. Ask Mma Joyce to add you."