This Friday (2nd December), we are opening our doors to family and friends to welcome them into our shiny, new school and share an afternoon of early Festive fun; all whilst fund-raising to support one of our school friends!
Come along between 1:30pm – 4pm to be in with a chance to purchase one of our homemade Christmas decorations; sit back with a cuppa and some delicious home-baking and enjoy a sneak peak of a few Christmas show songs with some entertainment from Leswalt pupils at 2:30pm!
Plus, you’ll be able to see our refurbished school and all the happy, smiling faces in it!
We have been busy elves for the last few weeks learning our show songs; making Christmas crafts to sell (cue lots of glitter!); designing posters to advertise our Open Afternoon; delivering leaflets around the village; making phone calls to invite special guests along; writing letters to ask for home-baking; making yummy chocolate crispies and organising our sales tables.
Lots of work but very worth it – as all donations collected at the door will be presented to Glasgow Children’s Hospital who are caring for and supporting one of Leswalt Primary pupils.
A cheery bunch lined up to join us at Leswalt Primary this morning – but it seems lots of pupils forgot to get dressed for school! Pjs, cuddly dressing gowns, snuggly hoodies and cosy slippers seemed to be the dress code – and that was just the teachers! There were also some fabulous storybook characters joining us too and all in the name of Children in Need.
To add to the Friday fun, everyone enjoyed some Tri-Golf with Stuart Fisher. At breaktime, Ms Stevenson and Rose (House Captain) painted Pudsey faces for a donation and Mrs Kyle and Thomas (House Captain) supervised the Pudsey biscuit decorating table.
To round-off Book Week Scotland, the pupils held a book swap so they’re all home with a new book to cuddle up with this weekend.
We raised over £140 for Children in Need – what a fabulous amount for a little school!
P5-7 have been enjoying the Glasgow Science Centre Powering the Future workshops over the last two terms and today we were delighted to welcome Megan and Aileen from GSC in person!
We enjoyed a busy morning of active learning finding out more about renewable energy sources and the ways in which Scotland is working towards a greener future.
Megan and Aileen were on hand to offer guidance, demonstrate some very cool experiments and answer questions.
P5-7 literally had a blast participating in this workshop this morning! HUGE thanks to the GSC for taking the time to come and visit us – greatly appreciated!
The rain dried up and the sun was shining so Leswalt pupils donned their Winter cosies and wellies and headed to Aldouran Wetlands to meet members of Stranraer Rotary Club. They had invited us along to plant purple crocus bulbs as part of Rotary International’s Purple for Polio awareness campaign.
Polio is a disease which can cause paralysis. Fortunately there is a vaccination which is given to children and so it has akmost been eradicated worldwide. Almost – but not quite. The Purple 4 Polio campaign was introduced by Rotary International in 1985 as a way to remind us all of this awful disease and to help raise awareness towards fundraising. A life-changing vaccine for a child costs just 20p! But, in some countries, this isn’t readily available.
Our Leswalt pupils were welcomed by a team of Rotary volunteers led by Mr Gordon Wemyss. The helpers dug the holes, whilst the willing children followed behind planting the bulbs into the holes. A whopping 3000 crocus bulbs were planted!
So, keep your eyes peeled next Spring for a beautiful array of crocuses – and remember Purple 4 Polio!
After a break of quite sometime, during which we were ‘living’ at Kirkcolm whilst refurbishments took place, we have returned to school!
We took the opportunity to get out and about in the community as we headed up to Leswalt’s war memorial today to observe the 11am silence.
The last couple of days have involved in pupils learning about the significance of the poppy, how it came to be the Remembrance symbol, how charity money is used to help veterans and their families and the importance of showing respect to those who have served their countries.
The children enjoyed finding out more by watching and discussing a short animation from Poppyscotland, making their own poppy wreaths and designing posters, leaflets, PowerPoints to explain more about the story behind the poppy. Some pupils even made iMovies.
It is great to be back in our wee village and to be able to observe Remembrance Day in our community.
Shape Hunts, scavenger trails and some STEMazing kicked off our celebration of Maths Week Scotland!
P1-4 held their very own shape hunt in school with Mrs Warwick. They went on a 2D shape hunt around the school, armed with an ipad and a tally mark sheet. Lots of circles and squares, the odd rectangle and 1 hexagon! They also joined in with the Cuthbert Sees Double interactive story and activity. They listened to a story about Cuthbert the Crocodile finding he couldn’t double his numbers and was sad that he couldn’t join in with his friends game. His friends helped him learn ways to double so he could join in. The pupils then had a shot at playing our own doubling game using dice. They even tried to make it harder by using more dice!
STEMazing involved the whole school getting together for a live lesson which was led by Anne Okafor from Cruden Construction. She is a construction planner and talked about the maths involved in her job. From the three Cs: being curious, creative and courageous to designing prototypes and carrying out Tests to Destruction! Working in groups; using 8 sheets of scrap paper, some tape and books as a weight – the pupils investigated which shape could bear more weight; building triangular prisms or cylinders to be used supports. It was agreed that the cylinders worked better as they have no corners (weak points) and the circular face of the cylinder is equal the whole way round so allows for equal weight distribution.
P5-7 headed off to DGC Stranraer Campus for a fabulous morning of maths/careers and further education awareness with their North Rhins friends. See the blog post especially dedicated to this for more details and some fabulous photos!
Back in class, pupils explored maths through science through maths with their data analyst hats on and the P5/6 team created an indoor maths trail for P1-4 to solve with a P7 buddy (Mrs F created a maths trail for P5/6 so they didn’t feel left out!)
This Friday afternoon fun maths activity rounded off a week of Maths Week Scotland!
By-passing secondary altogether, out intrepid team of maths superstars headed into the DGC Stranraer Campus today! On offer was an interactive morning of maths fun! And my oh my, it was a very a busy time with pupils involved in everything from (are you ready for quite a list…!)?
following a recipe to make play dough
reading instructions and measuring amounts to make up baby bottles
using logic to solve jigsaws and games
using directional language to play Twister
number knowledge for a game of bingo
measuring liquids to create fruit drink concoctions
thinking about fractions when slicing fruit to add to a healthy fruit salad!
Then, top all of that off with, some STEM construction work involving 3d shapes and straws and K’nex and you have what was summed up as “the best day of school…ever!”
Phew! What an action-packed session. Huge thanks to the lecturers and students for being so accommodating and to Ms Whorlow for organising the whole event! It was absolutely fabulous!
We successfully applied for funding from the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (EMS) School Enrichment Fund to pay for transportation costs for all three schools from our trio to attend this great event. Thank you also to this organisation for making today’s learning experience possible.
In preparation for Maths Week Scotland next week, we all got to participate in a hands-on, fun maths workshop today led by Mrs Hall from the D&G STEM team and created by the Liverpool Mathematical Society. And it certainly lived up to its name – it was indeed MEGA!
The P1-4 crew enjoyed their maths fun first thing; whilst the older bunch got their thinking caps on after breaktime.
The pupils kicked off their session with some triangle problem solving – they talked about the different skills they were using to find the solution: trial and error, logical thinking, guess and check, look for a pattern and work backwards.
Pairing up with their Talk Partners, they then chose from the many challenges on offer…and my oh my were those brain cogs whirring!
Such a fun morning of maths challenges using oodles of skills!
The children were excited to become App designers today!
Francis Wallace, Principal Engineer of the Make It Happen Club joined us this morning to offer us the opportunity to take part in an exciting App Design challenge. The children have the chance to enter their own app design creations into a competition just for the North Rhins Partnership. The winning design from across our three schools will be made into reality for everyone to enjoy and use!
The children really enjoyed listening to Frances and looking at some previous winners. They ranged from number apps to help people with their times tables, flags of the world questions, apps to help people with day-to-day routines etc. Lots and lots of brilliant ideas.
We took some time to think about all of our ideas and then we put pencil to paper and created our own app design. They all designed individual apps – ones we would certainly love to install and use!
App designs completed and entries submitted to Frances. We’ll await the results! Good luck all!
As a celebration of our tattie planting and harvest, today we planned to enjoy a day of tattie-related activities in conjunction with the Dandelion Growing Project!
Our plans did alter slightly on hearing the sad news of the passing of our Queen yesterday. We felt it right that some time should be used this morning to talk about her life, death and lasting legacy. All pupils showed their respect by watching the CBBC Newsround clip and joining in our group chat with their thoughts and feelings.
Following this, we then got on with our day’s events.
Lots of us planted the tatties we got last term at home and some have even shared photos of their crops. The plan for today was to be an all-out Dandelion Project celebration back at our shiny new Leswalt Primary but, as we’re not there yet, this has been postponed. Still, it seemed a shame not to celebrate our gardening efforts in some way!
Starting off with some potato based cooking, we worked in teams to create traditional Scottish macaroons using a recipe with a tattie base! We confess to being a little dubious at first, but after adding the icing sugar and mixing all together to create a fondant and then rolling these into balls, we had to admit the plan seemed to be working out!
Michelle popped these in her fridge to set and we then dipped them in melted chocolate and coated them in coconut.
Whilst they set for the second time, we headed outdoors for an afternoon of Tattie-athlon activities. From a Tattie Toss to a Tattie Tip-toe; Tattie on a Teaspoon to the Tattie Tumble and the Tattie Target to the Tattie Trot – each team put forward a team member to take part in an afternoon of good fun, teamwork and sport!
Popping our sweet tattie creations into our tupperware boxes, Mrs F and Mrs McKnight totted up the scores… which team would be crowned Top Tatties?! Would it be the Choppy Chips or the Tattie Planters? Perhaps it would be the Tattie Heroes or the Tanging Tatties? Or maybe the Tattie Tossers or the Tattie Demolishers?
The points were checked and verified and the Tattie Tossers were declared the Top Tatties! The team proudly posed for a photo with their ‘no expense spared’ Tattie Trophy and prize of three tatties each to take home!
Fun Friday indeed!
Mix it up Rachael.
Tattie Tip-Toes – dribble that tattie!
Coating the chocolate fondant with coconut was a messy job!
Getting the texture just right.
Dipping the fondant into melted chocolate – mmmm!
The winning Tattie Team!
All smiles from Faye – Sean not so much!
Tattie Tumble – who would get a strike?!
Daisy, Cara and Evan from the Eco Committee get ready to harvest the potatoes planted last term.
Small but perfectly formed – our first crop of Leswalt Primary potatoes. We’ll harvest the rest in a few weeks.
Tattie on a Teaspoon – balancing skills at the ready!
Rolling the fondant into balls.
Tattie choosing for the hard sell persuasive pitch!
Sean Paul’s turn to get mixing.
Packaging up their Scottish macaroons to take home.
Tattie Trot – potatoes between the knees please!
Mashed potatoes and icing sugar? Really? Amelia and Keira don’t look so sure!
