This term, Primary 4-7 have been learning about renewable energy sources and ways we can save energy and make eco-friendly choices! After the October break, we will be learning about Sustainability and what we can do day-to-day for a better future! To make this big topics seem relevant to us in little Leswalt we had asked to visit the new housing development to find out how they make sustainable choices in their new land development. 🏘
This morning, we buddied up with our friends from Kirkcolm as well as site manager Ross and his colleague Sophie from McTaggart Construction and made our way across to the building site in our snazzy hi-vis vests! We were given a tour of the plot, where Ross explained all the adaptations they make to their houses to ensure sustainable living; from foam insulations, to wood identification trails to make sure they know exactly where the timber frames were grown.🌲🏘 ♻️
Afterwards. we invited Ross and Sophie back to Leswalt to show us how the experts do it and build some houses of our own! 🏡 We used cardboard boxes and MakeDo kits to build a sustainable house of our own and absolutely loved using the bolts and tools to do it! So much so, that McTaggart Construction have kindly offered to purchase for us to use in school! 🎁📦
*Disclaimer, the Leswalt housing will be much sturdier, and will include roofs
We had an absolutely super morning, and love every opportunity for the upper classes to get together for fun projects! A big thank you to Sophie and Ross from McTaggart Construction for taking the time to show us around the housing development and their very generous donation of the MakeDo kits for us to keep working on our building skills in school 🙂!
This term, the Primary 4-7 class have been working hard to save up their “class cash”. This week the managed to secure £1000 in savings and decided the only logical thing to do would be spend in on having a “Fondue Party!🤑 We enjoyed a selection of fruit and chocolatey goodies dipped into some delicious melted chocolate🍫. A super end to a super term! Well done Team P4-7! 😋
On Thursday afternoon, the boys are girls made the wet and wild journey over to Leswalt Church with their tatties, beans and carrots to celebrate Harvest. Reverend Marlene led a fantastic service, we loved sharing with her our crisps and sandwich picks! The boys and girls performed some beautiful songs; “Thank you for Almost Everything” was sang P4-7 and the little class gave a very cute rendition of “Big Red Combine Harvester” before everyone came together to sing “5 a day” We finished off with another sing of The Big Red Combine from 1-3 (it was too cute not to!) 😊
On Friday morning, Mrs Kyle, Mrs Baillie and our brave P6’s and 7’s headed around the village to delivery some bags filled with our lovely harvesty foods to Leswalt’s community member! We thoroughly enjoyed our door hopping! The perfect way to brighten up a wet and wild weekend with some wholesome foods 🙂🍲
Thank you to everyone who joined our celebrations at Leswalt Church and the kind food donations. A big shout-out to the Baxters and their hens for the very generous egg donation, Papa John and his committed green fingered gardening club (Leo) for their (giant!!) carrots and onions!🥕🥔🌽
As James said ” The Leswalt community is so nice!” We definitely agree! 💕
Meta Skills
Creative Cassidy Communicating Cate
Collaborating Cora
Article 14 – I have the right to have my own thoughts and beliefs and to choose my religion, with help from my parents
This morning Leswalt opened our doors a little earlier to welcome our first crew of breakfast clubbers! On the menu this morning Mrs Kyle whipped up a delightful array of continental options – yogurt, cereal, toast and fruit. Just like the toaster, the first day of the breakfast was popping off with lots of happy, smiley faces enjoying their breakfasts, with some sampling many of the choices on offer – I think its fair to say the first day was a big success and we hope it continues to make everyone smile! I for one would love Mrs Kyle to serve me my breakfast each morning 🍌👩🍳🍽🍞
After breakfast some of the girls had a little play of the games on offer, including hungry hippos – but luckily there is no chance of any of them in the building now! 🤤 This breakfast club is funded by a successful grant application to Bright Start breakfast club to give our little people exactly that – a bright start to their day!
Meta Skills – Collaborating Cora, Communicating Cate
Article 27 – The right for children and young people should be able to have the food and housing they need to reach their full potential.
On Monday, we welcomed Richard Patchett back into school to do some outdoor maths with us! Richard had kindly collected some branches for us and we made sling-shots using elastic! Using the conkers we collected on Friday afternoon from the Wetlands and some kind conker donations, we (safely) launched conkers using our slingshots (Risk assessment assured😏). The aim was to launch the conkers to hit the target and use their adding strategies to tally up their scores! Such a fun, hands on opportunity for children to use their maths skills!
Tuesday – Big Maths with our Big People ✖️➕➖➗
On Tuesday afternoon, both classes welcomed their families into school to show off our Big Maths! Whether you’re Primary 2 or Primary 7, Big Maths is a big deal! We had a fantastic afternoon showing off our Clic Tests and the strategies we use to reinforce number operations and facts. We then tested our quick number fact recall with our Learn In Tests, with the added fun of our families joining in with the Primary 6-7 test! 😆Primary 1’s had fun with their big people in the hall, playing some fun games and showing off how we use Numicon to reinforce number recognition.🔢👨👩👧👦
Photoshop Filter Fun 🔣🖼
On Tuesday afternoon, Primary 4-7’s captured some of Leswalt’s beautiful landscapes; from still waters to winding paths, rowed up fields and autumnal trees at the Wetlands🍂🌳🌿 Back at school, the pupils worked hard to edit their photographs using the iPads ‘edit’ function. We looked at percentages and how the increase and decrease in saturation, vibrancy or sharpness percentages can really alter the shot. We experimented with the percentage combinations on our own shots and feel very proud of the Instagram worthy shots we have created!
James and Murray
Eilidh and Keira
Hannah and Lily
Colin and Ben
Rachel and Rebecca
Wednesday – On Wednesday both classes played some fun maths games indoors, Primary 4-7 played an all-time favourite – SPLAT! to practise their tables and number fact fluency! Miss Douglas had created a fun Kahoot Quiz to compete against each-other to solve maths word problems!✖️➕➖➗
Thursday – Chasing Shadows: Maths Measurement 🌞
This term, P1-3 have been learning about the sun, moon and stars. Today’s mission was to explore the movement of the sun throughout the day, by measuring their shadows at different times. With the help of their P4-7 buddies, they headed out early this morning to measure their shadows in the morning sun – afterwards, they predicted what would happen later in the day, would they move? would they get bigger or smaller? ☀️
Later on, they tested out their predictions by re-measuring their shadows, before and after lunchtime. 📏They were amazed to see that their shadows were not the same length as in the morning, and some were pointing in a different direction too. Some fun hands-on maths fun in the sunshine!
Friday – Mandala Maths in the Mud! 🍂🌳⚪
This afternoon Primary 4-7 ventured up the Wetlands to create some Mandala Pattern Art, practising some of the symmetry and rotation we have been learning as part of our shape focus in Maths! We collected sticks, stones, conkers and feathers and used these to create unique mandala patterns!
Phew! We’ve had a fantastic week and luckily some fantastic weather to celebrate Maths in Nature as Part of Scotland’s National Maths Week! 😆
This morning P4-7 , armed with snacks and carboard headed over to Kirkcolm for a morning of flight with Visible Fictions’ “The Impossible” Project!✈️
Over the course of the term the boys and girls have been learning about the 4 forces of flight, famous aeronauts from the past and what exactly is in a flight deck of a plane!? They put this knowledge to work by creating their very own flight decks to take part in the audio drama, this gave them a space to experience the story from which helped to immerse them in the experience.
When we arrived, we teamed up with Kirkcolm’s upper class for a game of ‘Guess What’s in the Box’. The three volunteers used adjectives to describe the textures of the unknown objects and using their clues, we identified a pilot’s hat, a yellow plane and a globe which led us to think about famous pilot Amelia Earheart and her plane, ‘the Canary.’👩✈️ Afterwards, we wired up our headsets, and immersed ourself in our cardboard flight decks and enjoyed an audio drama of a plane journey and crash!
We had a fantastic morning learning about the history of flight and having fun with our Kirkcolm friends! 👩✈️ 👨✈️
A warm sunny day in September… unheard of! Primary 1-3 made the most of the great weather today by heading outside for some fun shadow science 🌞! This term, they have been learning about the sun, moon and stars. Today’s mission was to explore the movement of the sun throughout the day, by measuring their shadows at different times. With the help of their P4-7 buddies, they headed out early this morning to measure their shadows in the morning sun – afterwards, they predicted what would happen later in the day, would they move? would they get bigger or smaller? ☀️
Later on, they tested out their predictions by re-measuring their shadows, before and after lunchtime. They were amazed to see that their shadows were not the same length as in the morning, and some were pointing in a different direction too.
It was a wonderful day of hands-on learning , making the most of the sunshine! 🙂
Today, Primary 4–7 pupils armed with iPads explored the beautiful landscapes of the Wetlands and Village, capturing everything from still waters to winding paths, rowed up fields and autumnal trees.🍂🌳🌿 The trip followed a special visit from a local photographer, Chris Smith who shared expert tips on how to frame a shot, look for interesting angles, and use light creatively. We put his top-tips into practice outdoors, taking some lovely landscape photos.
Back at school, the pupils worked hard to edit their photographs using the iPads ‘edit’ function, we experimented with colour, contrast, and cropping to make their images stand out. The results were fantastic – We are very proud of the effort and enthusiasm shown by everyone, and we look forward to displaying some of the pupils’ favourite shots around school!
Check out the photo library to see our work! 😄 📸
Eilidh and KeiraColin and BenHannah and LilyRachel and RebeccaJames and Murray
According to Gregor, today has been the “best Friday ever!”. This judgement was based on all the sweet treats provided in school today.
At breaktime the boys and girls of Leswalt were treated to some birthday cake from Noah, in Primary 1. Noah is only 4 today, but tomorrow he will turn into a big 5 year old! Happy birthday to Noah ! 🎂
After lunch, the boys and girls of P1-3 enjoyed some jelly, cream and sprinkles from Mrs Mc Knight. Yesterday, they had all made the jelly in school as part of their writing and writing the procedure on how to make jelly. 🍹
Then, to end the day the younger children enjoyed some Oreo biscuits – this time as part of their Science learning and teaching. They enjoyed taking bites out of the biscuits to demonstrate the different phases of the moon. 🥮
So, fruity Friday was replaced for one week only with some sugar. By the smiles on their faces, I do not think they minded!
At the beginning of the school year all pupils were given the opportunity to take on a bit more responsibility around our school by applying for various positions including; Pupil Council, Eco Committee, House Captains, Digital Leaders and Monitor jobs. These jobs ensure that pupils’ voices are heard in everything that we do and allow them to take ownership over our fab wee school! ❤️💬
Having looked through the applications , we have now selected our reps for the current session – these effective contributors will be working together to help our school continue to be the happy place it is and make it shine even more🌟
Pupil Council
Jack (P1), Betty (P2), Cameron and James H(p3), Eilidh (P4), Olivia (P6) James McD (p7)
Eco Committee Leo (P1),Gregor (P2), Jorgie (p3), Emma (p4), Murray and Rebecca (P7)
Digital Leaders
Rachael and Ben (p7)
House Captains
Rachael (Corsewall) and Colin (Lochnaw)
Monitors:
Playground – Jorgie (p2) and Lily (P5)
Meta Manager – Eilidh (P4) James McD (P7)
Dinner Hall – Beathan (p3)
Cloakroom – – Erin (P2) Keira (p4)
Library – Hannah (P4) Jessica (P2)
