This afternoon P4-7 welcomed police officer, PC Amy McGregor into our classroom to talk to use about harmful substances and keeping ourselves safe and healthy, to support our HWB learning – substance misuse. 👮♀️🚨🚓
She spoke to us about the dangers linked to smoking and vaping, alcohol and drugs and warned us about the effects that these substances can have on our bodies and choices and most importantly the importance of making safe, healthy choices. PC Amy encouraged us to think about peer pressure and the importance of looking out for each other and encouraging our friends to make positive choices.
It wasn’t all serious, though – PC McGregor had a warm and friendly way of explaining things and made sure that everyone felt comfortable joining in the discussion.
Thank-you to PC McGregor for taking the time to visit us!😃
Meta Skills
Collaborating Cora
Curiosity Carlos
UNCRC
Article 13 – Share what you think, unless it harms others
This morning our P3-7’s traded their usual classroom seats for a bus journey to Stranraer Academy to meet a real-life author. Excitement levels were high as we prepared ourselves to meet the likes of Julie Donaldson, Roald Dahl or Michael Murpurgo… When we arrived we met the one and only Martin Stewart, a talented Scottish book author and former teacher from Troon!🌟 ✍
Martin has written amazing stories like Riverkeep and The Sacrifice Box, and he told us all about how he dreams up his ideas. He shared funny tales from his own writing journey, gave us top tips for creating characters and plots, and even showed us some pictures of his pets who feature as characters in his books.📚
We were fascinated – and more than a little impressed. Turns out, being an author is equal parts imagination, determination, and a dash of madness! Pupils asked some brilliant questions, and Martin gave honest and inspiring answers.
The bus ride home was filled with chatter about new story ideas and how maybe one day, a Leswalt pupil’s book will be on the shelves too. A huge thank you to Martin Stewart for sparking our imaginations, and to Stranraer Academy for hosting such a fab morning. 🚌
This afternoon we had Rev Marlene in to join us during our assembly. In keeping with the infant classes’ RME topic she came to spoke about the creation story and how God created life and love. She firstly spoke about how inventions have changed the way we live and how our lives have changed as a result of them over time. She asked us what we think the most important invention of all time was and we spent a while discussing how important some materialistic objects are to us and how we simply couldn’t do without them! She then went on to explain that without God creating the world none of us would have life or love – two of the most important things that make the rest of the inventions well and truly worthless! ❤️🌎🧔
A very important and thought-provoking message indeed! Thanks again to Rev Marlene for her wise words and her time. ⛪✝
Meta Skills – Curiosity Carlos, Focussing Fergus
Article 14 – The right o have my own thoughts and beliefs and to choose my religion, with help from my parents
What a fabulous Fri-YAY we had! This morning our super Primary 7’s buddied up with our new Primary 1’s to create their ‘all about me’ flags. We loved hearing about your hobbies, pets and families. We look forward to decorating our school hallway with these!🖍🚩
In keeping with this flag theme, we buddied back up and toddled along to the park for a fun in the sunshine and play a new game; ‘Capture the Flag.’ 🏴🏳We split into two teams, hid our flags, marked out a jails and enjoyed running around as attackers and defenders with the aim of capturing the opposing team’s flag. We finished off our FRESH AIR FRIDAY afternoon with an obligatory swing on the swings, slide on the slide and whirl on the roundabout. 😄
We hope that everyone comes home tonight having had a great first couple of days back at school – albeit a little tired and dishevelled – and that’s just the teachers!😏
Meta Skills – Creativity Carols, Collaborating Cate, Feeling Felix, Curiosity Carlos
UNCRC – Articles 13 The Right to Share Thoughts Freely
The sun was shining. The uniform was crisp and clean. And, all the boys and girls were smiling as they arrived at Leswalt Primary for their first day back at school after the Summer holidays❤ .
All our new pupils – Jack, Noah, Leo, Ellis, Merida, Olivia and James tootled off into their new classes when the bell rang like they had always been here.
And, everyone was in for a treat, as the fabulous Mrs Ferguson had left a playtime snack for all – crisps and chocolate treats for all the boys and girls, as a thank you for her fond farewell at the end of last term.
All the boys and girls had brought a snack with them today. So, tomorrow for one week only we will forget fruity Friday and they can help themselves to something from the treat box!😋
It has been a great first day so far – here is hoping everyone come back to school tomorrow smiling too! 😁
This afternoon, we had the pleasure of hopping aboard a bus and tootling around the shoreline to spend time with our friends at Kirkcolm Primary for our annual Inter-Schools Sports fun! 🏃🏻♀️☀️
Friends and family came to enjoy the sunshine and cheer us all on as we raced against one another on those traditional Sports Day races – flat race, egg and spoon, sack, skipping, distance and the relay! There were cheers a-plenty as we all gave the races our best. Stickers galore were handed out, water bottles guzzled and faces got pinker by the minute as everyone joined in together.
The loveliest aspect had to be the supportive atmosphere…how lovely to hear the chants of children as they cheered one another on. Just great to see such sportsmanship. 👏❤️
Well done each and every one of you! These pictures tell the story of a great afternoon…
Meta Skills – Integrity Imani, Adapting Aleksander, Feeling Felix
UNCRC – Articles 13 Sharing Thoughts Freely and 31 Rest, Play, Culture and Arts
This afternoon we were very fortunate indeed to have the lovely Lauren in to visit us at Leswalt to talk to us about her career as a physiotherapist.
Armed with lots of fun things for our wanna-be physio, nurses and doctors to play with Lauren spoke to us about her career as a Physiotherapist in Stranraer and her journey in becoming one. She explained that she went to university to learn how to do the job and during this time enjoyed her placements!
She spoke about how interesting her job is and the many different things she gets up to as no day looks quite the same as another. She said she loves worked with people in their houses and in care homes to make sure everyone keeps active and healthy to make sure their bones and muscles can move the way they are supposed to!💀🏃♀️
She was able to tell us how she uses her Meta Skills as part of her job:
Creativity Cassidy – As Lauren works with children she has to make sure that she makes their appointments as interesting and fun as she can so often has to make up fun games and activities to convince them to do the exercises she wants them to!
Communicating Cate – Lauren works with lots of different people, especially older people who love to tell stories, this is one of her favourite parts of her job!
Collaborating Cora – while working with the NHS Lauren explained that there is a lot of overlap and multi agency working to make sure everyone gets the best possible care, she explained that her job requires her to work with various health care workers including doctors, care workers and nurses!
Focussing Fergus – As well as working with people, Lauren also has to to do some paperwork to make sure that everyone has the right information that they need. 📝
A huge thank you to Lauren for her time this afternoon again, the boys and girls thoroughly enjoyed her visit and has plenty of interesting questions!
On Friday afternoon we were very excited to have Rhuri Paton (Jorgie’s Daddy) join us in school for our careers in the community assembly! At our last assembly we had Lauren, Jorgie’s mummy in so Rhuri had a tough act to follow! 🙂
Rhuri explained that since leaving university he has been through more jobs than he could even count, but this time he thinks he has finally found his forever job as a signaller with Network Rail. He has recently qualified after a lengthy period of training in Glasgow and now works in the Glenwilly box on the Stranraer line. Unfortunately, on our recent jaunt from Ayr to Stranraer we didn’t see him but now understand what goes on in his little box and what’s inside! 🚂🛤🚝🚆
We have been learning all about the 12 meta skills as part of our assembly focus and Rhuri explained the key skills he needs to do his job including:
Adapting Aleksander – He explained that weather can interfere with the tarins, especially in the remote little area we live so you don’t know what problems you will have to deal with on the railway line so being adaptive is a skill that every signaller needs.
Collaborating Cora – Rhuri told us that usually he works alone, and often on his shifts is just him inside his little box but he has got to be good at teamwork when working with members of the public to help them to cross the track. He also must work with the train drivers, passing tokens to them during their journey when they pass the Glenwilly box.
Communicating Cate – One of the many interesting things Rhuri told us during his visit was the various ways that signaller and railway workers communicate with each other using bells and radios. Any miscommunications may lead to delays and safety incidents so it is important that he listens well to hear the sounds and be able to reply!🔔
The boys and girls also had a great time listening Jorgie’s Daddy explains his job as a signaller – Rhuri is a busy man and also works as a football coach on the weekends as well where he would use lot of different and perhaps some of the same Meta Skills!⚽
RRS Article 13 (freedom of expression) Every child must be free to express their thoughts and opinions and to access all kinds of information
As a finale to our fabulous Forest School experience, Richard joined us this morning and worked with us all to get a little fire going in the playground for us to toast marshmallows! Lucky us!
Recapping those all important safety rules first, every child had fun toasting at least 2 (some may have munched more!) marshmallows and dipping them in some melted chocolate too if they fancied! Staff felt it would be rude not to join in with such fun…
As Mondays go – this was a pretty fabulous one! Thank you Richard!
It is not an exaggeration to claim that Leswalt Primary enjoyed possibly the best day ever on their school trip today!
We travelled in style with a return trip to Ayr on the train (thank you to Mr James Neil for organising this for us!); scored SO many strikes whilst ten pin bowling; darted about the Laser Tag like ultraviolet ninjas; munched the tastiest lunches washed down with a welcome refreshment; bounced happily around the park; devoured ice lollies on the beach (HUGE thanks to Beathan’s mum and dad for treating us to these!) and had the MOST fun ever on the beach playing with our friends and splashing in the sea! 🚝🍟🍦☀️🌊🏖️
Thank you must also go to some very kind residents of Church Grove who donated money to the school for all boys and girls to get an incecream !
The weather was perfect, the activities were such fun and the company was the best you could hope for.
The happy photos below speak for themselves…
Quite literally, the best day out with the best people! 🥰
