And just like that the school year 2020 is over!
It has certainly been a roller-coaster – and we have all came out the other side smiling.
All the boys and girls left today with Christmas goodie bags to enjoy.
Wishing all a very merry Christmas and happy and healthy new year, from everyone at Leswalt Primary!
On a wet and windy last day of term Mrs Claus and her elves (aka Mrs Ferguson and Mrs Baillie and the p5-7 children) went a wander round the village to distribute the Christmas cards all of p1-7 had made in school to some of the elderly residents of Leswalt.
Many doors were opened, to delighted faces and the children wished all “Merry Christmas”. It was a lovely way to spread the Christmas cheer, even the rain didn’t dampen our smiles!
As part of our Eco Schools work learning about food and being responsible citizens, this Christmas we decided to run a ‘Reverse advent calendar’ – rather than the boys and girls getting a chocolate each day (they weren’t too impressed with this idea initially, I think many wanted the chocolate!!), they were asked to bring in a donation for the local food bank.
We spoke all about why it’s good to help charities, particularly people in need our local area, and learned about the work of the food bank. By the end, we were overwhelmed with our families’ generosity – we had pupils bringing in bags of donations as they realised how important it is to support the charity (despite only 1 item being requested per family!).
We are delighted to be able to deliver such a huge donation from our little school to the Wigtownshire food bank this Christmas – and we hope that it manages to help lots of families in the area.
What a fantastic week we’ve had at Leswalt Primary!
The P1-4 class enjoyed their party on Wednesday afternoon, with P5-7’s turn on Thursday afternoon. House Captains Andrew and Gregor had organised a fun-filled afternoon of dancing and games with a quick snack refuel as a mid-afternoon break! They played the ever-popular Snowman game, Christmas Corners, Musical Bells and Reindeer Relay to name just a few. Some fabulous dancing moves were on display too! Happy smiley children made us all feel very Christmassy!
Unfortunately, Covid-19 restrictions meant that Santa wasn’t able to appear in person but he had communicated with the Parent Council who were able to carry out his wishes and have the presents delivered ready for the children to open as they took a quick break from their party fun! They LOVED their gifts and there were some very excited squeals as the paper was ripped off! A delicious party snack and the children were all ready for some more partying!
The Christmas parties were fabulous – full of lots of giggles and cheery faces! Thank you to all those who helped to make it special – including a big thank you to the Leswalt Community Association for supporting our Christmas parties and in-school festivities, by using the funding they received from the D&G Council Christmas grant 2020. Much appreciated!
Merry Christmas Everyone!
Normally at this time of year the staff and pupils would be rehearsing getting ready to put on a Christmas show in Leswalt village hall for the community to enjoy.
Unfortunately, COVID prevented our usual Christmas concert. However, even a World wide pandemic could not stop the creativity and sense of fun of Leswalt staff and pupils .
Click on the link here to see how Christmas 2020 will always be remember for being special.
I hope it makes you smile!
Huge thanks to Laura McClymont from Active Schools for popping by Leswalt and delivering Playmakers session 1 out of 2 to Primary 5-7.
The pupils discussed ‘what it means to be a good leader’ – offering up keywords such as sportsmanship, including everyone, encouragement, clear instructions and planning organised sessions.
Some of the older pupils have worked on some aspects of Playmakers before and are acting as mentors to the younger pupils, with then end result to be a planned activity session with groups of children from P1-4.
Laura will be back with us on Friday of our first week back in 2021 for session 2. The pupils have been tasked with writing up their lesson plan for then – time to get our thinking caps on!
It’s Christmaaaaas!!! Well… it’s definitely getting closer! There’s a definite festive feel in the air at Leswalt as the staff and pupils wore their cheery Christmas jumpers and headwear to school today AND had the added bonus of tucking in to a tasty turkey lunch – complete with crackers and some Christmas tunes of course! Great fun!
In September we were successful in receiving some funding from Maths Week Scotland. Mrs Mc Harg put in a funding bid for a grant. The only condition was that we had to use this to promote Maths, so we decided to purchase a new playground marking in the shape of a giant target. This will enable pupils to work with numbers in a fun way both at break times and during lessons if they go outdoors.
Today the team from Sovereign play were on site to install the new maths target round the back of the school to give the children another focus at playtimes and maths lessons. We all went a wander round this morning to check it out and were delighted with the final design.
Primary 5-7 pupils have transformed themselves into the next Steven Spielbergs! They have been working extremely hard with Mrs Copeland to produce short stop motion animations of our Learning Superheroes. The 5 learning superheroes tell us how to be a better learner and each one has a motto which spells out the word REACH – hence our school vision, values and aims statement is to ‘REACH for the Stars!’ There are 5 superheroes in total:
Pupils worked in small groups to write and produce a short stop motion animation for one of the superheroes. All of the animations were then put together to produce 1 class film. Click on the link below to see their masterpiece for your self – enjoy!
https://glowscotland-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/gw12mchargshona_glow_sch_uk/EYWXjR2F7K1BvQbpBeDXENoBMoTVl5cceJmlVxsBcTqzbQ?e=82F7gB
Primary 1-4 have been very creative and have all made some very cute Christmas woolly bunnets with Mrs Mc Knight.
Everyone made elf sized winter warmer head wear in class, using lots of brightly coloured wool. These creations will be entered as part of the Royal Highland Education Trust (RHET) competition to make a Christmas decoration using wool. The boys and girls will send off their photographs to be judged. And, once made they took great pleasure at hanging them all on the Christmas tree in the school hall for everyone to see.
Well done p1-4 , they all look very cute and cosy!
