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P1-3’s Medieval Morning at Kirkcolm🏰👑

This morning P1-3 welcomed back one of our favourite visitors, Kathryn Purchase from History Alive in Schools for a workshop on Castles!🏰 We all love Kathryn’s visits into school, and today was no exception. Today’s session was made even more special with a bus trip to Kirkcolm to learn about castle building through the ages with our buddies from across the partnership!🧒🧒
Kathryn is a super knowledgeable historian and fascinating to listen to, for both the children and adults! She told us all about the different types of castles and where to find them and what life would be like to live in a castle. As exciting as it sounds, Kathryn explained that the reality would be pretty cold, dark and a little smelly too..
We learned about the different people who live in the castle, from knights and servants to kings and queens! Our lovely Primary 1 Albie was knighted and should forever be known as ‘Sir Albie of Leswalt’ 🤣. 
Sir Albie making his mark.. 🙂
As part of her visit, Kathryn always brings the coolest props, the boys and girls had the best time dressing up and role playing castle life as lords and ladies! 
We look forward to using what we have learned from today’s workshop into designing and building our very own castles next week! How exciting! Stay tuned for pictures! 
A huge thank you to Kathryn for travelling down to Kirkcolm to deliver such a super workshop this morning, we can’t wait to welcome her back for our next history topic in the future!⏲️😼
Meta Skills 
Focusing Fergus
Curiosity Carlos 
Sense-Making Samira 
UNCRC Articles
Article 17 – Access to Information 
Article 29 – Right to Education 
Article 28 – Access to Education

P7 Visit Stranraer Academy 🚌🏫🎒

Yesterday, Primary 7’s from Leswalt buddied up with their P7 friends from Kirkcolm for a visit to Stranraer Academy to help them get their bearings and feel prepared for their next step after the summer holidays. Their morning started with a trip to Art with Mrs Thompson, where they designed their own super heroes! How cool!🦸🏼Afterwards, their visited the Home Economics department and made a cheese toastie! 🧀

They enjoyed some lunch in the canteen, where they got to choose from lots of hot and cold options, but pasta king seemed to be super popular among our Primary 7’s! We look forward to our next visit to the Academy in June.

 

 UNCRC Articles

Article 28 – Right to Education

Meta Skills

Collaborating Cora

Communicating Cate

Operation Safety for Olivia!🚒

Yesterday, our fabulous Primary 6 Olivia buddied up with her friends for Kirkcolm for the annual P6 Operation Safety Input at Stair Park. This was a fantastic opportunity for our P6’s to show what they know and develop their understanding of our Term 3 topic ‘Risk Taking Behaviours’. The session aimed to support pupils to understand and manage risks. Leswalt and Kirkcolm worked their way around 7 stations; 
  1. 1. Fire safety – can they spot the fire hazards in a home and how to manage these! 🧯🔥🚒
  2. 2.The Coastguard! (very important for this time of year in this area…) what to do if they spot somebody drowning and how to keep themselves safe in water. 🥽🚣‍♀️
  3. 3. Drugs and Alcohol – linking our input from PC McGregor and PC Jack last week, what are the harmful effects of drugs and alcohol 👎?
  4. 4.Electricity with Scottish Power – spotting electrical hazards in the home and how to prevent these ⚡💡🔌
  5. 5.Community, Council & Criminal – looking at certain acts and who is responsible for preventing and managing these! Is it a criminal problem for the police? A problem for the community to manage themselves? Or something we should turn to the council to help prevent? 🧐🤔
  6. 6.Drugs and Alcohol – linking our input from PC McGregor and PC Jack last week, what are the harmful effects of drugs and alcohol 👎?
  7. 7. Internet Safety input with Youth Work, discussing the do’s and don’t’s online
A huge thank you to all involved and all the wonderful local emergency services for the time they have put into organising and delivering their inputs!😊
UNCRC Articles 

Article 6 – Right to Life and Survival

Article 12 – Respect for Children’s Views

Article 19 – Right to Protection From Harm

Article 24 – Health, Food, Water & Environment

 

Meta Skills 

Collaborating Cora

Integrity Imani

Initiative Ivy

Communicating Cate

 

Friday Night Football Fun!⚽

One of our favourite parts of  North Rhins Partnership is how both schools come together and the opportunities they have to be successful and make friends!😍

Our fabulous football team showed this off superbly on Friday Evening as they took part in Sheuchan Primary School’s football tournament! ⚽The boys have been working hard this term on Friday afternoons to practise and develop their skills with Miss Agnew at Kirkcolm and Friday afternoon was the perfect opportunity for the boys to put their skills to the test! We are super proud of how they boys played; their effort determination and teamwork! A super way to spend a Friday evening, playing football in the sunshine with your friends! 😀

 

Climate Smarter Sustainability Success for P4-7🥈⭐

The results are in.. drumroll please…🥁
Leswalt Primary are RUNNERS UP!🥈
 
Primary 4-7 wowed the judges with their creation of their ‘Sustainable School’ which we are super proud of! The project has encouraged us to think about ways we could make Leswalt Primary a more sustainable building. We worked with sustainability experts McTaggart Construction and D&G councils ‘Environmental Safety Officer’ Cailtin (AKA Beathan’s Mummy) to really think about what ‘sustainability’ means and things we could do to improve our school!😃 The judges loved how everyone came together to contribute to the model and also how much we learned from meeting with local people who work in STEM careers! Our model stood out to the judges because of our super ‘Estate Agents’ marketing pitch video clip, explaining the sustainable features of our school, filmed by our fabulous Hannah, Eilidh, Keira and Lily!⭐
UNCRC Articles 
Article 28 – Quality Education 
Meta Skills
Critical Thinking Chris
Communicating Cate
Collaborating Cora 
Focusing Fergus 
Initiative Ivy 
Sense Making Samira 

A Tree-mendous trip to Logan Botanic Gardens🌲☀️

The true sign of summer – a trip to Logan Botanic Gardens! A what wonderful weather for it!😊☀️This morning we joined our friends from Kirkcolm for a super fun morning of outdoor learning, exploring the lovely local landscape. When we arrived at the gardens, we enjoyed a little snack and chat with out friends out on the grass before splitting up into two groups for our workshops. 
Primary 1-4, ventured off to take part in the ‘Our Senses in the Garden’ workshops. Which encouraged us to think about how we use our sense to experience and enjoy the world around us😃We loved looking at all the beautiful plants up close with our special spying tube. Afterwards, it was smelly potion making – we foraged around the gardens for any leaves or flower petals on the floor to make up our own sweet smelling concoction. Afterwards, we picked up some cool looking leaves and plants on the floor to make our very own art-work!👨‍🎨
Primary 5-7’s workshop focused on the ‘Life of Plants’🪴. We started off with a very hands on drama experience, where children took on the role of parts of the plant (stem, stamen, pollen, stigma) and we reenacted pollination, with Cameron the bee!🐝 Afterwards, we ventured into the greenhouse to have a little look at some more exotic plants, Kate the ranger gave us special red and blue glasses. She explained that the red glasses allow us to see plants as a bird would, and the blue glasses allowed us to see plants as an insect would – How cool!👓 We then had a look at some outdoor plants using a small special magnifying glass! Afterwards, we practised the process of seed dispersal with a game of dizzy dollies, which was lots of fun! 🌱
A huge thank you to the staff at Logan Botanic Gardens for another super trip! We are so lucky to have such super experiences to develop our understanding of the beauty and importance of getting outside and enjoying nature!🌻🪴🌳
Meta Skills
Sense Making Samira 
Focusing Fergus
Leading Li 
Creativity Cassidy 
Collaborating Cora 
UNCRC Articles
Article 31 – Right to Relax, Play and Culture
Article 29 – Right to Education
Article 24 – Health, Water, Food & Environment 

PC MacGregor and PC Jack visit Leswalt!👮‍♀️🐕‍🦺

PC MacGregor and PC Jack joined P5-7 this morning to talk to us about the dangers of substance misuse. She explained that drugs are substances that alter our brain chemistry. She told us that some drugs are bad for us and others are good, we were very surprised to learn that chocolate is actually a drug?! (A delicious one of course)🍫

 

We spoke about the dangers of smoking and peer pressure, and all agreed that smoking is terrible! PC MacGregor showed us a very sad and serious video about a girl called Amy, who made a terrible mistake and taking a drug and the sad consequences of that.. We had a bit of fun trying on the ‘drunk goggles’ and having a wander around the classroom. After a couple of near collisions, we decided that it was a horrible feeling.👓

 

PC MacGregor and PC Jack, were joined by 2 very cute, fluffy and intelligent colleagues with them, Nancy and Poppy, the sniffer dogs.🐕‍🦺🐕‍🦺 Who, work and live with PC Baird and PC Thomson. The dogs were tasked with finding a small empty tin, which had once contained drugs. We were very impressed to see just how strong their sense of smell was!🐕

A big thank you to Stranraer Police Officers for visiting us in school and delivering such an important message to us!👮👮‍♀️

 

Eco Ideas with Caitlin♻️🌳

We absolutely love when parents come in to school to share their ideas and experiences with us.😍 This afternoon Environmental Safety Officer, Caitlin Wilson (AKA Beathan’s Mummy) visited P4-7 to talk to us about ‘sustainability’ and help us with our project; to design and build a sustainable school.💧🏫♻️
 
When it comes to ‘Sustainability’, Caitlin told us that the word can mean lots of different things to different people and for kids, it can be a tricky concept to understand.🤔 She explained that ‘sustainability’ should be best thought of in 3 ways; protect the environment, make it nice and make it resilient. We loved this definition!😍
Caitlin was just the perfect person to come in and help with our ‘sustainable school’ project because, as part of her University degree, she focussed on making Leswalt School more sustainable, and what practices and renewables could be installed. She gave us some super recommendations and sparked some new ideas!💡
Simple, yet effective, she suggested that our sustainable school should have lots of trees. Trees are of course important for producing oxygen, but also to help with wildlife and give home to animals. Caitlin also recommended that a ‘micro hydro’ would be a super renewable source for Leswalt School to make use of the burn, which runs along the back of the school. She showed us a super cool website, called Neso, which shows us the main sources of energy production in our local area.
We saw that today’s lovely sunny weather meant that it was the perfect day for solar panels!☀️She also suggested that if we were to install a windmill, up on a hill, wind power would be another option to power our school too!🌬️
The P4-7’s had some super questions for Caitlin and were very keen to find out more about her job and her interests in the environment. A HUGE big thank you to Caitlin for coming to visit us this afternoon and giving us some great ideas for our project! 🏫🙂
UNCRC Articles 
Article 12 – Respect for children’s views
Article 12 – Health and Health Services
Article 28 – Right to Education
Meta Skills
Curiosity Carlos
Sense-making  Samira
Focusing Fergus

Getting to the Root of It – Taking Maths Outside!☀️🌳

This afternoon, P4-7 visited the Wetlands to measure the height of some trees. As part of their angles work in maths this term, we have been learning how to use a protractor to measure angles. This afternoon, we created our own tree measuring protractors, which we were able to use to measure the height of a tree. 🙂

We used half a paper plate, a straw and string to build our own special protractors and marked on  0°, +45° and -45°, and there we had it a protractor fit to measure the height of any tree! 🌳

In the Wetlands, each pair chose one of the many super tall trees to measure, person 1 looked at the top of the tree through their straw and slowly took steps backwards until their string dangled in front of the 45° line. Person 2, then measured the length from where their friend was standing to the tree trunk. This told us the height that the tree is! Cool right?! 📏

A lovely way to end a week of sunshine and fun outside!☀️🕶️

 

Meta Skills

Sense-making Samira,

Collaborating Cora

Communicating Cate

Focusing Fergus

 

UNCRC Rights

Article 28 – Right to a good education

Article 21 – Right to rest, play and culture

 

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