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The boys and girls at Leswalt enjoyed a festive feast on Wednesday for their annual school Christmas lunch. After pulling their Christmas crackers, telling each other the cheesy jokes and donning their colourful paper hats, pupils tucked into a yummy Turkey dinner with all the trimmings followed by a delicious chocolate pudding, kindly served by Patricia. The Christmas tunes helped to get everyone into the festive spirit too!

As part of our work learning about the UNCRC and Rights of the Child, we  participated in a campaign to allow pupils to see that they can put their rights into action and make a difference in our local community. At our most recent Pupil Council meeting, we decided on 4 different campaigns that we’d like to run and then each school took a vote on their favourite. The campaign that had the most votes was the Police Scotland Youth Volunteer’s (PSYV) Christmas Shoebox Appeal. This campaign collects food and warm clothing for elderly residents in and around the Stranraer area.

We are asked our families if they could send in some donations to go towards the appeal. Items sent in included: tinned food , jars or jam,  sweets, biscuits , tea, coffee ,  gloves and hats .  Our families were very generous!

The photograph shows Erin Topping from the Police Young Scotland Volunteers uplifting boxes which had been collected by Kirkcolm, Leswalt and Portpatrick Primary schools.

After the disappointment of the Gaiety cancelling the pantomime performance for today late last night (due to cast illness) , Mrs Mc Knight made sure her class had a fun festive day at school today instead.  

Instead of being sad at missing out on Cinderella, the boys and girls had some fun making some mini “gingerbread” houses, doing some Christmas arts, crafts and puzzles and watching some  of Cinderella on the big screen in the classroom.

And thankfully Cinderella and Buttons hope to be better by next week so all can look forward to going to Ayr on Tuesday to enjoy the show!

P5 – 7 enjoyed  the first of a series of Sphero Bolt workshops today.

What is a Sphero, you ask? Well, Sphero robots have many different internal parts that make them work such as motors, LEDs, encoders, processors, a CPU and Bluetooth communication module for connecting to phones, and a gyroscope that keeps it oriented. A small, wheeled robot inside the shell climbs up the walls and pushes them forward, causing the ball to roll.

Sphero programmable robots help kids learn fundamental STEM concepts through play-based learning and educational STEAM activities. You can use Sphero robots to play games, create programs, or complete challenges.

Our first club activities focussed on using Bluetooth to pair our devices, orientating our Spheros and using direction and speed to control the travel of our devices.  The children quickly mastered the balance between speed and control and were then able to navigate obstacles with increasing accuracy.  There was some fun racing the Spheros in figures of eight round cones, and people too.  We had a play with adapting the colours of the led array so we could more easily identify our Sphero robot amongst everyone else’s.

Our next activity will bring in the skills of using a graphics Draw function to control the sphero’s travel path.  We will ‘draw’ 2D shapes.   As we are in the middle of Christmas mayhem, this will most likely be in the New Year.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 29 Aims of Education

Our local Community Safety Officer, Andrew Hay, visited the boys and girls this afternoon.  As part of our ongoing Eco Schools work, we are working on our target of managing litter and waste.  Andrew gave an informative and interactive talk to the children on our rights and responsibilities for our community and how best we can look after it.  We discussed the impact litter and dog fouling has on wildlife and the environment .

The children gave lots of suggestions on what we can do to improve the situation. We believe that everyone can do their part by not dropping litter and putting any litter in the bin when we find it.  We have agreed to create litter awareness posters.  We hope to display these prominently in our area.

UNRC Rights of the Child – Article 24 Health Water, Food & Environment

Leswalt Primary parent council organised the first ever Santa Dash round the streets of Leswalt today – all to raise funds for school based activities.  This event was supported by lots of Santas of all shapes and sizes from Leswalt, Kirkcolm, Stranraer – and even Drummore!  All were given a Santa hat and dashed round a route in the village to the Christmas tunes being played by Jacky Robinson and Jill Millar.  It was even snowing at the start too – just to add to the festive atmosphere!

On return to the hall, mulled wine, mince pies and cakes were provided to all the Santas.  Medals were given out to all and this kicked of the festive season in style for Leswalt community.

Many thanks to Leswalt Stores for sponsoring this event and providing all the hats and medals for competitors.

The final fundraising total will be calculated once all donations are in. 

Thank you to all who supported this!

All the boys and girls at Leswalt Primary were delighted to receive a treat of an advent calendar for them all to open every day in December.

Leswalt Community association kindly provided all pupils with a chocolate treat.  Many thanks to them for thinking of us all at school.

The photograph shows Primary 1 pupils happy with their gift!

On the first day of December, we opened our advent calendars and kicked off the  the festive season with some input from the Scripture  Union and “Christmas Unwrapped!”

Owain Evans joined our class to lead P5-7 through fun activities such as the Christmas Quiz, and and excerpt from “The Star” movie.  In groups we tried some code breaking activities to crack the Christmas code.

We all went on to “Shine a light on Christmas” by making our own beeswax Christmas candles.

It was a fun filled festive morning which reminded us all of the true meaning of Christmas.

Huge well done to our Leswalt Primary 5 pupil Murray Reid for winning this year’s Millennium Centre Light Switch-on poster competition – out of all our local primary schools!

He will be enjoying a trip on Santa’s Float and be part of Stranraer’s Light Switch-on this Saturday. Look out for his winning poster on display as part of the town’s Christmas celebrations too.
What a fantastic achievement Murray!

U

Update – here are some of his fabulous photos from Saturday!