Category: Uncategorized

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!

Lactalis Cheese Factory and McLelland Cheese Packing 

On Thursday 23rd of November, Leswalt P5-7 class went on a trip to Lactalis Stranraer. We started off in the meeting room, learning about the history of Lactalis (it’s owned by a French family), how it has grown over the years and the health and safety rules and guidelines which are really important to keep employees safe and produce top quality cheese. 

Then group 1 went to cheese packaging across the road from the main factory. Meanwhile group 2 went down into the cheese production factory to see how the cheese was made starting from the milk being delivered and through every stage (curds and whey and the use of ‘good’ bacteria) to the finished product of 20Kg blocks of cheese. This is all done in an area where there are HUGE machines. There is a lot of engineering and Science involved in making such tasty cheese. There was even a small museum there showing the ways in which cheese had been produced over the years. 

After that, the Groups came back to the meeting room and tasted different types of cheese. The types of cheese that we tried were mild, medium, mature and extra mature cheddar. That’s not something that we get to do every Thursday! 

Lastly, the two groups swapped over, and group 1 went to cheese production and group two went to cheese packaging. At cheese packaging is across the road at the McLelland Cheese Packaging plant and we watched the 20Kg blocks pass through on different lines to be unwrapped, then cut, sliced or grated, packaged up and sealed and then packed ready to go out for delivery. If the bits of cheese are too small, they get collected up and get sent off to be grated. 

Lactalis are working really hard on eco issues and recycle all their cardboard, are trialling some recyclable plastic packaging and are investing in producing their own power to run machinery. There are solar panels planned for next year. 

Do you know that Stranraer’s factory produces and packs cheese products to be sent all over the world?! And we learnt that there are so many different jobs at the factory – it was really interesting. 

Overall, we had a fabulous time at both factories, and we would all like to thank all the staff at Lactalis for giving up their time to show us around. 

Thank you! 

Report written by Faye Adams and Brandon Millar (P7) 

 

Report by Ela and Ellie…

Today, Aileen and Ross from the Glasgow Science Centre team came to our school with their roadshow called ‘Future Fuels’. Aileen told us about Fossil Fuels and why it is so important to find renewable energy sources. She showed us an experiment using methanol and demonstrated the Fire Triangle which  needs Oxygen, heat and fuel to work. The tiny amount of methanol made a huge bang when the Fire Triangle was completed but this is not something which can be easily controlled. It can be super dangerous (that’s why she demonstrated it wearing safety goggles and using safety equipment!)

She told us about research which is going into some amazing projects like the Solar Array in California, the Hydrogen Plant outside of Rome, Italy, the Solar Car Race which is held in Australia (Kaiden and Katie competed – the KGs!- competed in a mini version of this using a tiny car with a solar panel and a torch as the light source) and the Solar Impulse II which is an solar panelled plane! It took 505 days to travel all the way around the world so not handy for your summer holidays in the sunshine just yet, but maybe in the future!

Ross then demonstrated all ten exhibits which we were allowed to play with and investigate the different renewable power sources. The exhibits were called:

Directional Drilling        Nuclear Reactor        Solar Array        Windmill Kit

Million Watt Drop        Three Phase Generator        Crank Power        50 Hz

Hydrogen Launcher        Hand Crank Generator

We had a great morning finding out about Science of the Future! Thanks to Ross and Aileen for visiting us.

 

 

Following on from yesterday’s World Children’s Day, PC Walker visited Leswalt Primary this afternoon to talk about UNCRC Rights of a Child and the role the police play in keeping us all safe.

Working in our assembly groups, we all chatted about our rights and what each article meant for us day-to-day. There was lots of chat about the right to be safe, to learn, to be fed, to be warm and to be listened to. PC Walker talked about adults who are there to help make sure children’s rights are met. We also talked about the importance of respecting the rights of others.
There was time for a chat about the ‘day in the life of a police officer’ and how there is no typical day for them. She told us about the age at which you can be charged with a criminal offences – it’s 12! Some of us thought that was a bit too old… what do you think?

Many thanks to PC Walker for taking the time to come and speak to us.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 17 Access to Information