Today is Odd Socks Day – a day when we remember it’s cool to be different, it’s ok not to be the same as everyone else and, in fact, life is much more interesting when we don’t all look the same, like the same, do the same and believe in the same things! We celebrated our differences by wearing odd socks to school – a clear sign that we are all different and that’s a good thing!
Odd Socks Day kicks off Anti-Bullying week when we take the time to emphasise what bullying is and strategies for how to deal with this. The theme this year is ‘Choose Respect’ so we had a chat about what this means to us. As we are proud holders of our Gold Rights Respecting Schools Award, we had lots of ideas as to how to show respect towards ourselves and others and ways in which we can help to overcome bullying! This all links into our UNCRC learning with a focus on Article 2 No Discrimination and Article 19 Protection from Violence. All explored through teamwork and co-operation within our happy wee Leswalt team!
Pupils of Leswalt Primary paid their respects today, on Armistice Day.
At 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month, all pupils visited the Memorial in Leswalt.
At the memorial, Daisy, house captain, read the poem “Flanders Fields”. The oldest and youngest pupils at school, Sean and Gregor, laid the wreath. This wreath was made by all at Leswalt Primary and was made by drawing round all of their hands.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
This term, P6/7 are finding out more about Democracy and Government. We started with a chat about this yesterday which tied in some interesting History and Current Affairs which both linked to politics and government – the story of Guy Fawkes and the US elections!
Today, we enjoyed an online session with the Scottish Parliament. We joined the Teams meeting and met Isabel who led us through a very interesting PowerPoint all about the Scottish Parliament building, how laws are made, the difference in powers between the UK and Scottish parliament and MSPs who represent us in the Scottish Parliament.
Isabel shared lots of information with us and we participated in a quiz which really got us thinking too.
FUN FACTS
Did you know?
Anyone can take an issue to the Petitions Committee who will listen to the viewpoints and this can then be taken forward. The youngest petitioner has been a 7yr old who raised a petition to make using renewable water bottles mandatory at school!
Every ‘bill’ is an issue which is brought forward. This is then discussed by committees. If it goes on to become a LAW (this usually takes about a year) it is finalised by the stamp of Royal Assent from the King. The wax used to seal the Royal Assent is made from the beehives at the Scottish Parliament!
The Scottish Parliament has 129 MSPs. There are 62 SNP members, 31 Conservatives, 22 Labour, 7 from the Green Party, 4 Liberal Democrats, 1 Alba representative and 1 independent member. The First Minister is John Swinney and the Presiding Officer (who takes on a role a bit like Mrs Baillie!) is Alison Johnstone.
We are really looking forward to finding out more about this topic – watch out for our own parties, campaigns and election!
Leswalt Primary all had some fabulous frightening fun at their Hallowe’en party today.
Some pupils came to school dressed in their spookiest best , and some had a costume change at lunchtime– we had a lot of zombified professions as well as some classics!
The party started with the best costume from each year group – this year Patricia the dinner lady had the very difficult task of judging . You can see from the photos everyone looked super spooky A big well done to the parents as well as the pupils – a lot of effort went into some of these costumes! 🧛♀️🦇🎃
Then we got stuck into some games. Pupils had a blast playing the games organised by the house captains. The games began with everyone strutting their stuff to prove who was the best dancer. Mrs Kyle was our own Craig Revel Horwood and judged the moves on the dancefloor. It was a win for the wee class with Beathan, Gregor , Jorgie and Hannah winning our glitterball ( or tubes of sweeties!)
Next was a very competitive game of creepy corners, which features a lot of strategising but our final winner was Cameron! Next up we played pass the pumpkin with two of the smallest pumpkins ever – our winners were Emma (P1-4) and Ela (P5-7). 👻💀
Zombie Arms was next on the agenda, when the music stopped arms would mysteriously disappear and pupils had to find somewhere to link up. Our winners for this were Hannah (p1-4) and Colin (p5-7)
After all that running around we were all feeling a bit hot and sweaty so we thought why not cool ourselves down by sticking our heads in a huge bowl of water, filled with apples!! 🍎 Both classes played Dookin’ for Apples, a fan favourite which was lots of fun! Those wearing face paint sadly had to sacrifice their carefully painted designs in attempt to retrieve an apple, which meant we had some very wet, soggy looking pandas leaving the playground at 3pm!! 🍎🐼
Everyone left after “the best party ever” ( quote from some soggy P7s!) and was given a toffee apple and sweet treat from Leswalt Community association – who also provided all the prizes and apples, many thanks must go to them for their generosity.
The planning and hard work of this party has to go to the House captains, Isla and Daisy who have been working hard from the very beginning to ensure everything was ready to go and they put on an excellent time for the whole school! ⭐🤩
