Uncategorized – Leswalt Primary School

No Flaggin’ for us on Day 2!

What a fabulous Fri-YAY we had! This morning our super Primary 7’s buddied up with our new Primary 1’s to create their ‘all about me’ flags. We loved hearing about your hobbies, pets and families. We look forward to decorating our school hallway with these!🖍🚩

In keeping with this flag theme, we buddied back up and toddled along to the park for a fun in the sunshine and play a new game; ‘Capture the Flag.’ 🏴🏳We split into two teams, hid our flags, marked out a jails and enjoyed running around as attackers and defenders with the aim of capturing the opposing team’s flag. We finished off our FRESH AIR FRIDAY afternoon with an obligatory swing on the swings, slide on the slide and whirl on the roundabout. 😄

We hope that everyone comes home tonight having had a great first couple of days back at school – albeit a little tired and dishevelled – and that’s just the teachers!😏

Meta Skills – Creativity Carols, Collaborating Cate, Feeling Felix, Curiosity Carlos

UNCRC – Articles 13 The Right to Share Thoughts Freely

31 The Right to Rest, Play, Culture and Arts

8 The Right to have an Identity

First day back at school

The sun was shining. The uniform was crisp and clean. And, all the boys and girls were smiling as they arrived at Leswalt Primary for their first day back at school after the Summer holidays❤ .

All our new pupils – Jack, Noah, Leo, Ellis, Merida, Olivia and James tootled off into their new classes when the bell rang like they had always been here.

And, everyone was in for a treat, as the fabulous Mrs Ferguson had left a playtime snack for all – crisps and chocolate treats for all the boys and girls, as a thank you for her fond farewell at the end of last term.

All the boys and girls had brought a snack with them today. So, tomorrow for one week only we will forget fruity Friday and they can help themselves to something from the treat box!😋

It has been a great first day so far – here is hoping everyone come back to school tomorrow smiling too! 😁

Sports Day Fun with our Pals at Kirkcolm!

This afternoon, we had the pleasure of hopping aboard a bus and tootling around the shoreline to spend time with our friends at Kirkcolm Primary for our annual Inter-Schools Sports fun! 🏃🏻‍♀️☀️

Friends and family came to enjoy the sunshine and cheer us all on as we raced against one another on those traditional Sports Day races – flat race, egg and spoon, sack, skipping, distance and the relay! There were cheers a-plenty as we all gave the races our best. Stickers galore were handed out, water bottles guzzled and faces got pinker by the minute as everyone joined in together.

The loveliest aspect had to be the supportive atmosphere…how lovely to hear the chants of children as they cheered one another on. Just great to see such sportsmanship. 👏❤️

Well done each and every one of you! These pictures tell the story of a great afternoon…

Meta Skills – Integrity Imani, Adapting Aleksander, Feeling Felix

UNCRC – Articles 13 Sharing Thoughts Freely and 31 Rest, Play, Culture and Arts

Physiotherapy – a job that keeps us on our feet, literally! Lauren’s careers in the community assembly

This afternoon we were very fortunate indeed to have the lovely Lauren in to visit us at Leswalt to talk to us about her career as a physiotherapist.

Armed with lots of fun things for our wanna-be physio, nurses and doctors to play with Lauren spoke to us about her career as a Physiotherapist in Stranraer and her journey in becoming one. She explained that she went to university to learn how to do the job and during this time enjoyed her placements!

She spoke about how interesting her job is and the many different things she gets up to as no day looks quite the same as another. She said she loves worked with people in their houses and in care homes to make sure everyone keeps active and healthy to make sure their bones and muscles can move the way they are supposed to!💀🏃‍♀️

She was able to tell us how she uses her Meta Skills as part of her job:

Creativity Cassidy – As Lauren works with children she has to make sure that she makes their appointments as interesting and fun as she can so often has to make up fun games and activities to convince them to do the exercises she wants them to!

Communicating Cate – Lauren works with lots of different people, especially older people who love to tell stories, this is one of her favourite parts of her job!

Collaborating Cora – while working with the NHS Lauren explained that there is a lot of overlap and multi agency working to make sure everyone gets the best possible care, she explained that her job requires her to work with various health care workers including doctors, care workers and nurses!

Focussing Fergus – As well as working with people, Lauren also has to to do some paperwork to make sure that everyone has the right information that they need. 📝

A huge thank you to Lauren for her time this afternoon again, the boys and girls thoroughly enjoyed her visit and has plenty of interesting questions!

Looking after the Tracks in his Glenwilly Shack – Rhuri Paton’s Careers in the Community Assembly

On Friday afternoon we were very excited to have Rhuri Paton (Jorgie’s Daddy) join us in school for our careers in the community assembly! At our last assembly we had Lauren, Jorgie’s mummy in so Rhuri had a tough act to follow! 🙂

Rhuri explained that since leaving university he has been through more jobs than he could even count, but this time he thinks he has finally found his forever job as a signaller with Network Rail. He has recently qualified after a lengthy period of training in Glasgow and now works in the Glenwilly box on the Stranraer line. Unfortunately, on our recent jaunt from Ayr to Stranraer we didn’t see him but now understand what goes on in his little box and what’s inside! 🚂🛤🚝🚆

We have been learning all about the 12 meta skills as part of our assembly focus and Rhuri explained the key skills he needs to do his job including:

Adapting Aleksander – He explained that weather can interfere with the tarins, especially in the remote little area we live so you don’t know what problems you will have to deal with on the railway line so being adaptive is a skill that every signaller needs.

Collaborating Cora – Rhuri told us that usually he works alone, and often on his shifts is just him inside his little box but he has got to be good at teamwork when working with members of the public to help them to cross the track. He also must work with the train drivers, passing tokens to them during their journey when they pass the Glenwilly box.

Communicating Cate – One of the many interesting things Rhuri told us during his visit was the various ways that signaller and railway workers communicate with each other using bells and radios. Any miscommunications may lead to delays and safety incidents so it is important that he listens well to hear the sounds and be able to reply!🔔

The boys and girls also had a great time listening Jorgie’s Daddy explains his job as a signaller – Rhuri is a busy man and also works as a football coach on the weekends as well where he would use lot of different and perhaps some of the same Meta Skills!⚽

RRS Article 13 (freedom of expression) Every child must be free to express their thoughts and opinions and to access all kinds of information

Monday Mornings and Marshmallows!

As a finale to our fabulous Forest School experience, Richard joined us this morning and worked with us all to get a little fire going in the playground for us to toast marshmallows! Lucky us!

Recapping those all important safety rules first, every child had fun toasting at least 2 (some may have munched more!) marshmallows and dipping them in some melted chocolate too if they fancied! Staff felt it would be rude not to join in with such fun…

As Mondays go – this was a pretty fabulous one! Thank you Richard!

UNCRC Articles:

24 Health, Water, Food and Environment

29 Aims of Education

31 Rest, Play, Culture and Arts

Meta-Skills

Curiosity Carlos, Leading Li, Focusing Felix, Sense-making Samira, Integrity Imani, Collaborating Cora, Communicating Cate

Possibly the best day out ever!!

It is not an exaggeration to claim that Leswalt Primary enjoyed possibly the best day ever on their school trip today!

We travelled in style with a return trip to Ayr on the train (thank you to Mr James Neil for organising this for us!); scored SO many strikes whilst ten pin bowling; darted about the Laser Tag like ultraviolet ninjas; munched the tastiest lunches washed down with a welcome refreshment; bounced happily around the park; devoured ice lollies on the beach (HUGE thanks to Beathan’s mum and dad for treating us to these!) and had the MOST fun ever on the beach playing with our friends and splashing in the sea! 🚝🍟🍦☀️🌊🏖️

Thank you must also go to some very kind residents of Church Grove who donated money to the school for all boys and girls to get an ince cream !

The weather was perfect, the activities were such fun and the company was the best you could hope for.

The happy photos below speak for themselves…

Quite literally, the best day out with the best people! 🥰

Forest School Week 6 – Cooking!

To round off a very busy Monday, we had our final week of Forest School with Richard and today’s mission was to build, start and cook over a fire!

Both classes banded together this afternoon so it was all hands on deck. Whilst Richard and Mrs Warwick helped children to get the fire going, the rest got to work on our stir fry prep – chopping and peeling vegetables while we waited for the fire to get hot enough to cook the chicken 🔥🍗🥕🌶 As well as having the stir fry on offer, pupils also had stations where they could strip the bark from the wood and chop wood into kindling!🪓

We all had the best time – enjoying the outdoors, being with our friends and enjoying food!

Meta Skills

Initiative Ivy

Curiosity Carlos

Sense-Making Samira

Communicating Cate

Articles

Article 6 – Life, Survival & Development

Article 17 – Access to Information

Article 24 – Health, Food, Water & Environment

Musical Monday with Lighthouse Musicians!

What entertainment we all enjoyed this morning with Lighthouse Musicians superbly talented trio of John, Helen and Gillian and treating us to a fabulous musical medley! ❤️

Playing well-known tunes such as Disney favourites on the violin and piano plus some weel-kent Scottish tunes on the bagpipes; our Leswalt Primary audience sat enthralled! We were even treated to some Taylor Swift! 🎹🎻 🎶🎼

It was good to chat and ask them questions about how and when they started to play musical instruments and the range of instruments they played too! Some pupils were just itching to get up and dance and sing – feet were tapping away!

What a lovely start to the week… huge thanks to Lighthouse Musicians for joining us this morning!

UNCRC Article 31 Rest, Play, Culture, Arts

Meta-Skills Focusing Fergus, Curiosity Carlos, Integrity Imani, Feeling Felix

From Chills to Pills and Meta Skills; Lauren’s Nursing Careers in the Community Assembly

Today we were very excited to have Lauren, Jorgie’s mummy in to speak to the boys and girls about her job as a nurse! Armed with bandages, syringes and her glamorous assistant Ralphie she arrived to tell us all about her job as a nurse! 👩‍⚕️

Lauren explained how she got into nursing and the skills and qualities needed prior to her training, including compassion, kindness and good communication skills. She explained that there were lots of different types of nurses and she is a community nurse who travels all around Stranraer to look after people in their homes. She explained that changing bandages, administering medication and doing routine check ups on patients were the usual goings on in her everyday life, but said that because of the nature of the job every day is different and you must be prepared to deal with all emergencies! :💉🤕

Focussing Fergus – For obvious reasons. for a vet concentration is key! He has lots of technical and high pressure jobs on his hands from the moment he starts work to the moment he finishes so being able to focus and get the job done right is super important! 🐶🐱

Collaborating Cora – Working in the emergency services means that Lauren will work alongside lots of different people including; doctors, police officers, social work, school staff etc and will often make plans for patients to make sure they get better by working alongside others.

Communicating Cate – This one is absolutely key to being a top nurse, she has to make sure to pass on information and record paperwork properly to make sure that the best care is given to patients. She must also communicate with other members of her team, families, hospital staff as well as patients themselves to ensure that everyone knows the information they need.

Critical Thinking Chris – Often nurses have unexpected problems that they may not always know the answers or solutions to straight away! Lauren explained that sometimes she has to ask for help from others and take time to make sure she chooses the best option of how to help and the right tools and resources to do it!

Feeling Felix – Nurses are kind, caring people who want to help others through difficult times. To do this Lauren has to be empathetic, supportive and help to calm people down when they are distressed ❤️

A huge thank you to Lauren for coming in to speak to us this morning, the smiles on not just Jorgie’s face but the rest of the class said it all! We specially loved being hands on with all of the different bits and bobs in her nurses bag. Looking forward to having Jorgie’s daddy in at the next Careers Assembly, he’s got big boots to fill!😄

RRS Links

Article 13 (freedom of expression) Every child must be free to express their thoughts and opinions and to access all kinds of information.