Today is Odd Socks Day – a day when we remember it’s cool to be different, it’s ok not to be the same as everyone else and, in fact, life is much more interesting when we don’t all look the same, like the same, do the same and believe in the same things! We celebrated our differences by wearing odd socks to school – a clear sign that we are all different and that’s a good thing!
Odd Socks Day kicks off Anti-Bullying week when we take the time to emphasise what bullying is and strategies for how to deal with this. The theme this year is ‘Choose Respect’ so we had a chat about what this means to us. As we are proud holders of our Gold Rights Respecting Schools Award, we had lots of ideas as to how to show respect towards ourselves and others and ways in which we can help to overcome bullying! This all links into our UNCRC learning with a focus on Article 2 No Discrimination and Article 19 Protection from Violence. All explored through teamwork and co-operation within our happy wee Leswalt team!
Pupils of Leswalt Primary paid their respects today, on Armistice Day.
At 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month, all pupils visited the Memorial in Leswalt.
At the memorial, Daisy, house captain, read the poem “Flanders Fields”. The oldest and youngest pupils at school, Sean and Gregor, laid the wreath. This wreath was made by all at Leswalt Primary and was made by drawing round all of their hands.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
This term, P6/7 are finding out more about Democracy and Government. We started with a chat about this yesterday which tied in some interesting History and Current Affairs which both linked to politics and government – the story of Guy Fawkes and the US elections!
Today, we enjoyed an online session with the Scottish Parliament. We joined the Teams meeting and met Isabel who led us through a very interesting PowerPoint all about the Scottish Parliament building, how laws are made, the difference in powers between the UK and Scottish parliament and MSPs who represent us in the Scottish Parliament.
Isabel shared lots of information with us and we participated in a quiz which really got us thinking too.
FUN FACTS
Did you know?
Anyone can take an issue to the Petitions Committee who will listen to the viewpoints and this can then be taken forward. The youngest petitioner has been a 7yr old who raised a petition to make using renewable water bottles mandatory at school!
Every ‘bill’ is an issue which is brought forward. This is then discussed by committees. If it goes on to become a LAW (this usually takes about a year) it is finalised by the stamp of Royal Assent from the King. The wax used to seal the Royal Assent is made from the beehives at the Scottish Parliament!
The Scottish Parliament has 129 MSPs. There are 62 SNP members, 31 Conservatives, 22 Labour, 7 from the Green Party, 4 Liberal Democrats, 1 Alba representative and 1 independent member. The First Minister is John Swinney and the Presiding Officer (who takes on a role a bit like Mrs Baillie!) is Alison Johnstone.
We are really looking forward to finding out more about this topic – watch out for our own parties, campaigns and election!
Leswalt Primary all had some fabulous frightening fun at their Hallowe’en party today.
Some pupils came to school dressed in their spookiest best , and some had a costume change at lunchtime– we had a lot of zombified professions as well as some classics!
The party started with the best costume from each year group – this year Patricia the dinner lady had the very difficult task of judging . You can see from the photos everyone looked super spooky A big well done to the parents as well as the pupils – a lot of effort went into some of these costumes! 🧛♀️🦇🎃
Then we got stuck into some games. Pupils had a blast playing the games organised by the house captains. The games began with everyone strutting their stuff to prove who was the best dancer. Mrs Kyle was our own Craig Revel Horwood and judged the moves on the dancefloor. It was a win for the wee class with Beathan, Gregor , Jorgie and Hannah winning our glitterball ( or tubes of sweeties!)
Next was a very competitive game of creepy corners, which features a lot of strategising but our final winner was Cameron! Next up we played pass the pumpkin with two of the smallest pumpkins ever – our winners were Emma (P1-4) and Ela (P5-7). 👻💀
Zombie Arms was next on the agenda, when the music stopped arms would mysteriously disappear and pupils had to find somewhere to link up. Our winners for this were Hannah (p1-4) and Colin (p5-7)
After all that running around we were all feeling a bit hot and sweaty so we thought why not cool ourselves down by sticking our heads in a huge bowl of water, filled with apples!! 🍎 Both classes played Dookin’ for Apples, a fan favourite which was lots of fun! Those wearing face paint sadly had to sacrifice their carefully painted designs in attempt to retrieve an apple, which meant we had some very wet, soggy looking pandas leaving the playground at 3pm!! 🍎🐼
Everyone left after “the best party ever” ( quote from some soggy P7s!) and was given a toffee apple and sweet treat from Leswalt Community association – who also provided all the prizes and apples, many thanks must go to them for their generosity.
The planning and hard work of this party has to go to the House captains, Isla and Daisy who have been working hard from the very beginning to ensure everything was ready to go and they put on an excellent time for the whole school! ⭐🤩
P6/7 welcome Robert McCrorie, a Community Safety Advocate for the Fire and Rescue Community Safety Team who talked to the pupils about how to keep themselves and others safe around fireworks and Bonfire Night.
He talked about fireworks, sparklers and bonfires and the issues we might come across. Ellie demonstrated how to hold a sparkler safely – at arms length and not being waved about, and Colin showed us how to Stop, Drop and Roll if any clothing caught fire.
We also discussed items which definitely shouldn’t be added to a bonfire and why not, and some of the rules and regulations which surround buying and setting off fireworks.
This was a really useful safety input and we hope it helps everyone to look after themselves this November 5th.
It’s back to school and a spooky one at that! P6/7 have enjoyed exploring all things pumpkin this week..
The week kicked off with group work as they named their pumpkins and scooped them out in preparation for soup making.
Tuesday was a busy day as groups worked with Mrs Kyle to chop ingredients and cook their Spicy Pumpkin soup, roast the pumpkin seeds and use wholemeal bread to make croutons to add to their finished dish.
Wednesday was design and carving day as each group worked together to give their pumpkin’s some added character! The class also tried their soup and shared their cooking with P1-4 too.
Thursday led to experiment day – with a chemical reaction of Hydrogen Peroxide, washing up liquid, food colouring and yeast being used to make each pumpkin puke! Delightful!
This afternoon, P6/7 joined a live lesson working on the use of Adobe Express. Each pupil worked on an iPad to create a multi-media collage with a spooky theme. They selected a background, added design elements, assigned animations to each object and layered sound effects over the top! What fantastic results!
The pupils then screenshot their work and emailed them to me (another handy computing skill) for me to upload them to the blog. You can’t quite get the full multimedia effect of sound and movement – but it does give you a glimpse of just some of the super computing skills in use.
Today we had the pleasure of welcoming Jack and Linea from the Children’s Parliament back to talk about Sustainability.
Today’s focus was on our ‘campus’ and how we use our school building. This ties in with the Scottish Government’s aim that by 2030 they want to make sure that…
all schools are eco friendly in how they heat, power and use materials at school.
all spaces can be used to learn outdoors within,
all spaces respect children’s rights.
The pupils were set the task of re-creating the school campus using anything they could find in the classroom – not easy but they worked together and did so well! They then needed to write down how each area is used and how eco-friendly these areas are. We linked our school campus back to the UNCRC Children’s Rights Charter so that we could see these rights as they are put into action. This gave us lots of things to talk and think about.
We are doing lots already to make our local campus as sustainable as it can be, but we know there are lots of steps we could take to improve. Some of these things we would need to help to put into action – but Jack and Linea said that all our opinions are important and they’d take all ideas back to the Scottish Government.
Another great session! We are looking forward to our next session next month too 🙂
This morning, P6-7 learned a very important life skill – CPR. This annual initiative was led by Resuscitation Council UK which aims to increase the number of people surviving out-of-hospital cardiac arrests by helping more people learn CPR. We spent 5 minutes listening to a doctor explain about the importance of CPR, and how CPR and use of a Defibrillator hugely increases a person’s chance of survival.
We then learned what to do in the event of finding someone unconscious – we had to remember the acronym CCP. CHECK for danger and to see if the person responds/is breathing; CALL for help by phoning 999 and putting your phone on loud speaker to free up your hands; if they aren’t breathing, PUSH on their chest to start chest compressions.
We practised doing chest compressions on a cushion – we got up on our knees, interlocked our fingers and pushed down in the middle of the breastbone firmly (the video said approx. 6cm). We kept this going for the duration of the Baby Shark song – and quickly realised how tiring it was to keep up the same momentum!
We learned that it’s better to have a go and try to save someone’s life rather than standing by and not doing anything. CPR is such an important skill to have – although one we hope pupils will never have to use.
The Doctor telling us about the importance of CPR
Interlocking our fingers to prepare for chest compressions
P1-4 were delighted to welcome Megan Bark, Dental Health Officer, into school this afternoon to help them learn all about dental hygiene as part of their Health and Wellbeing topic. Megan gave the pupils some hints and tips to keep their teeth sparkling clean and pupils got the chance to put her advice into practise on some puppets.
Megan has set all of the pupils a challenge – to ensure that they brush their teeth morning and night, at least for the next month. They have all been provided with a toothbrushing diary that they need to tick to show when they brushed their teeth and should return it to school when finished. Those who return their successfully completed diary will receive a certificate! We are looking forward to seeing who is up to the challenge!
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