Author: Miss Douglas

Today, Leswalt school was filled with so many creative costumes and so much laughter🤭! Pupils were asked to dress as something beginning with the first letter of their name, and they certainly rose to the occasion! We had astronaut Arthur🧑‍🚀 , Emma the Elf 🧝, Leo the Leprechaun 🌈, Aria the Asda bag 🤭 and so many other hilarious costumes too! Staff couldn’t resist the chance to get stuck in with the fun too. We had Mrs Baillie as Batman, Mrs McKnight as a minion, Granny Gordon, Miss Dobbie Douglas and Mrs Kyle as Ken (beach Ken to be exact)..

After spending most of breakfast club time crying with laughter, we snapped some funny pictures to mark what we all agreed was “one of the best dress up days we’ve had” with some photos and celebrate all the amazing effort and hard work that has clearly went into planning and making the costumes. 😃

A huge big thank you to everyone for getting into the spirit and making such an effort with their costumes! We hope that all our fun, and red nose sales has raised awareness for the wonderful charity Comic Relief and the hard work they do for children living in poverty!

Well done Team Leswalt!❤️ Check out all our funny photos on our school’s YouTube;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrt5JJG6GYc

On Wednesday afternoon, P4-7 showcased their fantastic Ram Tam Music learning. With Helen, from Ram Tam musicians, P4-7 have been working hard this term to learn more about rhythm, beat, musical notes and how to play the tin whistle! 🪈P1-3 were invited along as a fantastic audience to listen to our super rendition of ‘Baby Shark’ and ‘Ally Bally’.🎶 Learning to play a musical instrument is such a super opportunity and we are super thankful to Helen from Ram and Tam for her time and patience, visiting us on a Monday afternoon. ☺️

Look out for tin whistles coming home in school bags this week for some practice at home! 😙🪈

Meta Skills

Creativity Cassidy

Focusing Fergus

Initiative Ivy

UNCRC Articles

Article 31 – Rest, Play, Culture and Arts

This afternoon P4-7 visited the Ryan Centre to enjoy a musical performance by a very talented clarinet choir. After taking our seats, the musicians entertained us with some music from the talented composter John Williams, which we managed to link to the Star Wars Movies!🌟

The 4 musicians challenged us to think of some tricky animal songs, which they replicated using their instrument. We watched in amazement as one of the musicians started taking apart her instrument while playing, the instrument got smaller and smaller and the pitch got higher and higher – we were very impressed. 😀

The performance finished with a super recitation of ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ which seemed to get the P4-7 crowd singing along to the music. 🤩

We had a lovely time in Stranraer learning more about wind instruments and enjoying a very special performance!🎵🎺

Meta Skills

Curiosity Carlos

Focusing Fergus

UNCRC Articles

Article 31 – Right to Play, Arts and Culture

Meta Skills:

Curiosity Carlos

Collaborating Cora

Communicating cate

Focusing Fergus

Articles:

Article 28 – Access to Education

Article 29 – Aims of Education

1. Fizzy exploding hands! 🧤 (because it wouldn’t be science week without some explosions.)An age-old crowd pleaser, where we saw vinegar and baking soda react to blow up a rubber glove!💥
2. Rapid Freeze Ice Cream 🍨Pupils observed how salt and ice reacted quickly to freeze their ice cream ingredients!
3. Boat Building – Pupils explored the concept of floating and sinking. They were challenged to build a boat, which held the most dinosaurs. They had to think carefully about the material they used, their water resistance and durability. ⚓
4. House Building with the digital leaders- Pupils set to work, using their mini saws and cardboard and MakeDo kits to design and build some houses to add to Leswalt’s Housing Development. 🏠

Today P4-7 welcomed back Niamh, the school’s Rugby Development Coach back to start a block of lessons to develop our Rugby skills. We started off with a game of ‘Capture the Flag’ which aimed to support our tactical thinking and ‘Switch’ to practise changing positions and avoiding opponents. 😄

Afterwards, we headed away from the comfort of the concrete to grass to practise some ‘contact’ activities on a soft surface. Pupils paired up to have a go at 4 different safe tackles. Niamh explained that being able to tackle and be tackled safely and effectively is an important priority in rugby and it’s important we can do this before we try a real game situation. 🏉

It was certainly lots of laughs and the mud only gave us a soft place to practise our new moves!😅

Meta-Skills 

Adapting Alexander

Initiative Ivy

Leading Li

Collaborating Cate

UNCRC Articles 

Article 31- Right to Play, Arts and Culture

Article 29 – Right to Education

Article 12 – Respect for Children’s Views

Today, P1-3 were very excited to welcome Ailsa Buchanan into school to talk us about her job as a Vet, especially given the number of aspiring vets we have in the school!🐾

Ailsa told us all about the skills and qualities she needed to become a vet. She explained that in order to be a vet,  you must have a kind and  caring personality and love animals! Which was great to hear for all our little animal lovers!😻

She brought with her some of her special vet equipment; stethoscope, thermometer etc. and explained how vets use them to help animals to feel better. Then, it was over to us to become vets, Ailsa brought with her some X-Rays from some attention needing animals and we had to work out what was wrong with the animals and why they needed help from the vet. We saw the X-Ray of a poorly pup who had swallowed a stone, some broken paws and a pregnant dog too!🐶🐱

A huge thank you to Ailsa from Academy Vets for taking the time to visit Primary 1-3. We absolutely loved hearing all about her job and the work she does to look after our furry friends! 🐮🐶🐱🐹🐰

Meta-Skills 

Collaborating Cora – Vets often work alongside other vets/farmers, to work out what is wrong with animals. Being able to work as part of a team is crucial. there is absolutely no way Ailsa could do what she does alone, it’s all about teamwork! 😀

Focussing Fergus – Concentrating is a big part of veterinary work. We want our animals to have the best care to get better so being able to give pets our full attention and get the job done right is so important for Ailsa and other vets🐩

Communicating Cate –Ailsa explained that one of the toughest parts about being a vet is not being able to speak the animal’s language. What people don’t always realise is that despite this, animals do often try to tell their owners and vets what is wrong through different communications. Vet’s have the challenging job of trying to work out what is wrong with the animal. Vets also need to be great at asking pet owners the right questions to get to the bottom of things too!😀

Critical Thinking Chris – Often vets have  big problems that they may not always know the answers or solutions to straight away!🤔

RRS Articles 

Article 13 – Freedom of expression

Yesterday, P1-3 welcomed some special visitors into school to get VERY hands on exploring their health and well-being topic – People Who Help Us!

Part of this was looking at people who can help us when we find ourselves in danger and need urgent assistance and thus… Emergency Services Afternoon was made! Big thank you to Mrs Warwick for her excellent work in co-coordinating all these kind volunteers to come to the school.

Pupils had inputs from;

Coastguard – Learning how in a seaside town like Stranraer they have an active role is making sure that people stay safe out on the Loch and further afield!🚣🏼‍♂️🚤

RNLI – Just like the Coastguard, they are another essential service to have this close to the water. They experience many call outs all across the area from people struggling in boats. 🏊🏼‍♀️⛵

Police – We learned about how our local police help us daily by keeping the place we live safe for us and are always quick to respond in an emergency should we ever need their help! 👮🏼‍♀️🚓

It’s always fantastic for the pupils to get hands on during these open afternoons and it really helps bring the topic to life for them! A huge thank you to the kind volunteers who gave up their time for this. I know when P1-3 were buzzing with chat from their afternoon.

Meta-Skills

Sense Making Samira

Curiosity Carlos

Focussing Fergus

Integrity Ivy

UNCRC Articles

Article 3 – Best interest of the child

Article 6 – Life, survival and development

Article 24 – Health, Water, Environment

This afternoon we had a lovely visit from a lovely lady, Jane from Creative Stranraer. Jane is involved in a project which adds some fun to the Southern Upland Way. Along the walking trail, they are hoping to add some kists filled with colourful ‘treasure’ stones for walkers to collect along the way. 🚶‍♂️

Jane brought along lots of stones and pens and tasked us with drawing a colourful picture on the stone. We had lots of minions, trees, patterns and animals, which Jane seemed super impressed with.🌳🐱🐶

Afterwards, in our groups, we were given a long sheet of paper to design a ‘Leswalk Mural’. We had a quick chat about the fanulous things we love most and special parts of Leswalt before starting to draw some pictures on our mural. These looked absolutely fantastic. Jane hopes to include 1 part from the murals in a collective primary school mural in Stranraer, which will be displayed along the beach. We can’t wait to see the finished project.🖌

We had a super fun afternoon, showing off our creativity and capturing all the fantastic parts of our wee community! 👨‍🎨👩‍🎨

Meta-Skills

Creative Cassidy

Collaborating Cora

Critical Thinking Chris

Focussing Fergus

UNCRC Articles 

Article 13 – Sharing Thoughts Freely

Article 28 – Access to Education

Article 12 – Respect for Children’s Views

Article 31 – Rest, Play Culture and Arts