Today we all took advantage of the glorious sunshine to head over to Aldouran Wetlands. P1-3 were looking for signs of Winter and P4-7 were ‘adjective collecting’ for their Haiku poetry writing; the carpet of Autumn leaves and bare trees were a great stimulus for our imaginations!
We explored the gardens and found a brilliant new structure there – a fabulous new outdoor classroom! We can’t wait to use this lots over the course of the school session! What a lovely morning!
Today the whole school travelled to the Ryan centre to watch the new adaptation of “The Little Vampire”, an animated film of a series of books about how 2 young boys overcome their differences and prejudices to become friends. This film was being shown free to schools as part of National Film week. What a lovely way to spend a blustery Friday morning – watching a movie with friends!
Today the boys and girls of Leswalt Primary headed over to Leswalt Parish Church where they were met by three ladies of the congregation. The ladies told the pupils about the ceramic poppy garden, created by a member of the congregation, one poppy for each Leswalt parishioner lost in WW1 and WW2. They also told us about the stunning poppy fall outside the church (1564 poppies were crocheted, knitted or felted to create this memorial for the 1564 days WW1 lasted). Together we all held a 2 minute silence to take some time to pay our respects.
The P4-7 class had printed a poppy banner under the guidance of Mrs Copeland our art teacher. The children felt it was a fitting tribute to hand this over to the church so that this can be put on display in the village hall on Remembrance Sunday.
Alison from Apex visited on Friday afternoon (and will be in every Friday over the next six weeks) to talk about Healthy Eating. The children got the chance to chop vegetables, smell their soup simmering, taste their culinary creation, enjoy some fun games about nutrition AND head home with a recipe card and a back of vegetables so they can show their folks at home how to make this delicious soup too! The first group had a fabulous time and learnt lots too. The rest of the school were most envious but their turn will come…promise! What a great opportunity!
Laura McClymont got the class together today to work on their organisation and leadership skills – the Playmakers’ Award.
Working in small groups, the pupils used teamwork to plan and deliver a sporty activity to the rest of the class. The children thought about the personalities and skills within their group and how to ensure everyone was involved in the activity. Fabulous life skills to have! Laura was on hand to offer any nuggets of advice to the children too.
The children enjoyed their session and are already looking forward to their next two sessions.
Today P4-7 were lucky enough to welcome John from Computer Xplorers. He spent a whole day with the class jam-packed with fun hands-on activities to investigate energy and renewable energy sources.
We started by looking at the transfer of energy through thermal imaging. Maisie left her hand print on the desk transferring the heat from her hand to the desk, Phoebe left her toasty footprints on the floor – we couldn’t see the handprints of footprints with our eyes but we could with the thermal imaging camera! Cool!
Throughout the day, the children worked in 2s and 3s to build Lego Educational models. John organised a competition – to design and create a model which could produce the most voltage. The small groups tested out their designs and then tried to improve on the voltage they could produce by altering their design slightly. Chloe and Euan won having produced a voltage of 14.94v!
The boys and girls also built wind or water turbines and tested these out. Then found out more about solar energy by building (and racing!) solar cell cars.
John spoke to the class about the desperate need for renewable energy sources for the future of planet Earth. The boys and girls had already done some work on fossil fuels; how they were created and the finality of their supply and so were aware of the importance of renewable energy sources.
The second challenge faced by the pupils was to build a wind or water turbine. John talked to them about wind and water power first and how this would work on a grand scale.All groups worked together so well on this. I overhead snippets of chat, “this is well cool!” and “I’m getting the hang of this” to “you want a shot doing the next bit” – so good to observe children working in this way.
In the afternoon, the children were set the task of building a solar panel car which they powered with a lamp (unfortunately weather was against us today).
So – three renewable energy sources covered in a day and awareness raised within our adults of the future and all whilst having lots of fun! Win win!
Today Lisa from NHS D&G Quit your Way popped in to chat to us all about the negative , and very yucky, effects of smoking on your health. The pupils were involved in lots of experiments; from Dr Finlay and Dr Joshua investigating just some of the chemical concoctions that make up a cigarette ( in actual fact there are over 4000 chemicals!), to our fresh-faced and gorgeous Charlotte and Robin being transferred (by the powers of technology) to being ‘not so fresh faced looking ‘ after many years of smoking – you wouldn’t have recognised them!
The boys and girls tried out some fitness tests too. Not too healthy if you were a smoker and the cost?! So expensive – who would want to waste their money on something which is bad for you, affect your health and appearance? Crazy!
The class also considered the dangers involved in passive smoking – second-hand smoke. NHS Scotland has a bid to be smoke-free by 2034! Let’s work together to do this!!
P4-7 were lucky enough to meet Prof Lockhart from the University of the West of Scotland yesterday and hear all about COPD (and its links to smoking) in our area. This presentation is designed to teach primary pupils about the dangers associated with smoking and hopefully, completely put them off trying it out in the future!
The children learnt some shocking facts and got to work around 4 activity stations; the peak flow meter, identifying the healthy model lung, COPD keywords word search and re-creating a model lung using a bottle and balloons. Time was a little against us, but I know all would agree it was a fun afternoon tackling a very serious subject. The pupils will continue to do some work on the ‘No Smoking’ message this week.
On Monday the 24th of September P4-7 went on a bus with Kirkcolm to Wigtown Book Festival. We went to see an Author called Gareth P.Jones who sang us songs about Death or Ice-cream and The twins who kept on trying to kill each other! He also talked about his new book-The Daily Joker. The Daily Joker has a joke for every single day of the entire year! He also had some of his other books on sale like Class of the Robot, Beards from Outer Space and the Ninja Meerkat series. Everyone laughed very much at his jokes and songs – and we’re more than sure to say that everyone enjoyed their trip to Wigtown Book Festival!
Reporters – Millie and Eva
Last week primary 4/7 had Miss Creighton in to show them how to use the green screen.
Miss Creighton taught us how to use Serif Movie Plus a computer program and the green screen kit the school had received. We learnt how to build up the green screen then used Serif Movie Plus to do our slide show. The slide show was like magic because you were at the school but on the computer it looked as if you in Scotland somewhere else! We took each other’s photos, uploaded them to the computer and imported them into the program. Miss Creighton is a Stem advisor. A big thank you to Miss Creighton for coming in to show us how to use this cool piece of equipment!
Reporter – Kirstie P7
