Author: Miss Douglas

Today  Primary 4-7 took part in their first Sound Trap input and wow- what a fantastic digital learning experience! 💻Pupils were working in partners to develop their sound engineering skills, with the guidance and help from Mr John Dinning and I, for one, am truly in awe at their DJing skills already🎶. Children can access and share their music at home on www.soundtrap.com

Watch this space for the next Calvin Harris!😆

Today some  witches, clowns, vampires, cats and even Kevin the Minion took part in the Parent Council’s first ever Halloween Hike around the Wetlands – and what an un-boo-lievable time we had! 👻🧛‍♂️🦇🙀

Our walking trail started in the Wetland’s outdoor classroom and took us up over the bridges, down the Kirkland hill and back to school (a big walk for little feet)! Along the way, we stopped at 5 check points and completed some spooky challenges – dancing the Monster Mash, mixing a cauldron and climbing through a Spider’s Web! 🕸🧟

Back at school, we were treated to some hot chocolate (with cream and marshmallows of course) and some sweets from the Parent Council! 

A huge big thank you to Lauren Paton and the volunteers to gave up their morning! 🕷🎃

This term, Primary 4-7 have been learning about renewable energy sources and ways we can save energy and make eco-friendly choices! After the October break, we will be learning about Sustainability and what we can do day-to-day for a better future! To make this big topics seem relevant to us in little Leswalt we had asked to visit the new housing development to find out how they make sustainable choices in their new land development. 🏘

This morning, we buddied up with our friends from Kirkcolm as well as site manager Ross and his colleague Sophie from McTaggart Construction and made our way across to the building site in our snazzy hi-vis vests! We were given a tour of the plot, where Ross explained all the adaptations they make to their houses to ensure sustainable living; from foam insulations, to wood identification trails to make sure they know exactly where the timber frames were grown.🌲🏘 ♻️

Afterwards. we invited Ross and Sophie back to Leswalt to show us how the experts do it and build some houses of our own! 🏡 We used cardboard boxes and MakeDo kits to build a sustainable house of our own and absolutely loved using the bolts and tools to do it! So much so, that McTaggart Construction have kindly offered to purchase for us to use in school! 🎁📦

*Disclaimer, the Leswalt housing will be much sturdier, and will include roofs

We had an absolutely super morning, and love every opportunity for the upper classes to get together for fun projects! A big thank you to Sophie and Ross from McTaggart Construction for taking the time to show us around the housing development and their very generous donation of the MakeDo kits for us to keep working on our building skills in school 🙂!

On Thursday afternoon, the boys are girls made the wet and wild journey over to Leswalt Church with their tatties, beans and carrots to celebrate Harvest. Reverend Marlene led a fantastic service, we loved sharing with her our  crisps and sandwich picks! The boys and girls performed some beautiful songs; “Thank you for Almost Everything” was sang P4-7 and the little class gave a very cute rendition of “Big Red Combine Harvester” before everyone came together to sing “5 a day”   We finished off with another sing of The Big Red Combine from 1-3 (it was too cute not to!) 😊

On Friday morning, Mrs Kyle, Mrs Baillie and our brave P6’s and 7’s headed around the village to delivery some bags filled with our lovely harvesty foods to Leswalt’s community member! We thoroughly enjoyed our door hopping! The perfect way to brighten up a wet and wild weekend with some wholesome foods 🙂🍲

Thank you to everyone who joined our celebrations at Leswalt Church and the kind food donations. A big shout-out to the Baxters and their hens for the very generous egg donation,  Papa John and his committed green fingered gardening club (Leo) for their (giant!!)  carrots and onions!🥕🥔🌽

As James said ” The Leswalt community is so nice!” We definitely agree! 💕

Meta Skills

Creative Cassidy
Communicating Cate

Collaborating Cora

Article 14 – I have the right to have my own thoughts and beliefs and to choose my religion, with help from my parents

h

Monday – Launching into Maths Week with Richard!🎯

On Monday, we welcomed Richard Patchett back into school to do some outdoor maths with us! Richard had kindly collected some branches for us and we made sling-shots using elastic! Using the conkers we collected on Friday afternoon from the Wetlands and some kind conker donations, we (safely) launched conkers using our slingshots (Risk assessment assured😏). The aim was to launch the conkers to hit the target and use their adding strategies to tally up their scores! Such a fun, hands on opportunity for children to use their maths skills!

Tuesday – Big Maths with our Big People ✖️➕➖➗

On Tuesday afternoon, both classes welcomed their families into school to show off our Big Maths! Whether you’re Primary 2 or Primary 7, Big Maths is a big deal! We had a fantastic afternoon showing off our Clic Tests and the strategies we use to reinforce number operations and facts. We then tested our quick number fact recall with our Learn In Tests, with the added fun of our families joining in with the Primary 6-7 test! 😆Primary 1’s had fun with their big people in the hall, playing some fun games and showing off how we use Numicon to reinforce number recognition.🔢👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Photoshop Filter Fun 🔣🖼

On Tuesday afternoon, Primary 4-7’s captured some of Leswalt’s beautiful landscapes; from still waters to winding paths, rowed up fields and autumnal trees at the Wetlands🍂🌳🌿 Back at school, the pupils worked hard to edit their photographs using the iPads ‘edit’ function. We looked at percentages and how the increase and decrease in saturation, vibrancy or sharpness percentages can really alter the shot. We experimented with the percentage combinations on our own shots and feel very proud of the Instagram worthy shots we have created! 

Wednesday – On Wednesday both classes played some fun maths games indoors, Primary 4-7 played an all-time favourite – SPLAT! to practise their tables and number fact fluency! Miss Douglas had created a fun Kahoot Quiz to compete against each-other to solve maths word problems!✖️➕➖➗

Thursday –  Chasing Shadows: Maths Measurement 🌞

This term, P1-3 have been learning about the sun, moon and stars. Today’s mission was to explore the movement of the sun throughout the day, by measuring their shadows at different times. With the help of their P4-7 buddies, they headed out early this morning to measure their shadows in the morning sun – afterwards, they predicted what would happen later in the day, would they move? would they get bigger or smaller? ☀️

Later on, they tested out their predictions by re-measuring  their shadows, before and after lunchtime. 📏They were amazed to see that their shadows were not the same length as in the morning, and some were pointing in a different direction too. Some fun hands-on maths fun in the sunshine! 

Friday – Mandala Maths in the Mud! 🍂🌳⚪

This afternoon Primary 4-7 ventured up the Wetlands to create some Mandala Pattern Art, practising some of the symmetry and rotation we have been learning as part of our shape focus in Maths! We collected sticks, stones, conkers and feathers and used these to create unique mandala patterns!  

Phew! We’ve had a fantastic week and luckily some fantastic weather to celebrate Maths in Nature as Part of Scotland’s National Maths Week! 😆

UNCRC Articles 

Article 29 -Aims of Education

Article – Rest, Culture, Play, Art

Meta Skills

Focussing Fergus

Sense Making Samira

Creativity Cassidy

Curiosity Carlos