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What a fantastic week we’ve had at Leswalt Primary!

The P1-4 class enjoyed their party on Wednesday afternoon, with P5-7’s turn on Thursday afternoon. House Captains Andrew and Gregor had organised a fun-filled afternoon of dancing and games with a quick snack refuel as a mid-afternoon break! They played the ever-popular Snowman game, Christmas Corners, Musical Bells and Reindeer Relay  to name just a few. Some fabulous dancing moves were on display too! Happy smiley children made us all feel very Christmassy!

Unfortunately, Covid-19 restrictions meant that Santa wasn’t able to appear in person but he had communicated with the Parent Council who were able to carry out his wishes and have the presents delivered ready for the children to open as they took a quick break from their party fun! They LOVED their gifts and there were some very excited squeals as the paper was ripped off! A delicious party snack and the children were all ready for some more partying!

The Christmas parties were fabulous – full of lots of giggles and cheery faces! Thank you to all those who helped to make it special – including a big thank you to the Leswalt Community Association for supporting our Christmas parties and in-school festivities, by using the funding they received from the D&G Council Christmas grant 2020. Much appreciated!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

Normally at this time of year the staff and pupils would be rehearsing getting ready to put on a Christmas show in Leswalt village hall for the community to enjoy.

Unfortunately, COVID  prevented our usual Christmas concert.  However, even a World wide pandemic could not stop the creativity and sense of fun of Leswalt staff and pupils .

Click on the link here to see how Christmas 2020 will always be remember for being special. 

I hope it makes you smile! 

Huge thanks to Laura McClymont from Active Schools for popping by Leswalt and delivering Playmakers session 1 out of 2 to Primary 5-7.

The pupils discussed ‘what it means to be a good leader’ – offering up keywords such as sportsmanship, including everyone, encouragement, clear instructions and planning organised sessions.

Some of the older pupils have worked on some aspects of Playmakers before and are acting as mentors to the younger pupils, with then end result to be a planned activity session with groups of children from P1-4.

Laura will be back with us on Friday of our first week back in 2021 for session 2. The pupils have been tasked with writing up their lesson plan for then – time to get our thinking caps on!

It’s Christmaaaaas!!! Well… it’s definitely getting closer! There’s a definite festive feel  in the air at Leswalt as the staff and pupils wore their cheery Christmas jumpers and headwear to school today AND had the added bonus of tucking in to a tasty turkey lunch – complete with crackers and some Christmas tunes of course! Great fun!

 

Primary 5-7 pupils have transformed themselves into the next Steven Spielbergs! They have been working extremely hard with Mrs Copeland to produce short stop motion animations of our Learning Superheroes. The 5 learning superheroes tell us how to be a better learner and each one has a motto which spells out the word REACH – hence our school vision, values and aims statement is to ‘REACH for the Stars!’ There are 5 superheroes in total:

• Tough Tina – “Resilience and perseverance are key”
• Mike the Mistake Maker – “Every mistake is an opportunity to learn”
• Learning Lola – “Always try your best”
• Colin Concentration – “Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate!”
• Tim the Team Player – “Help others and be a team player”

Pupils worked in small groups to write and produce a short stop motion animation for one of the superheroes. All of the animations were then put together to produce 1 class film. Click on the link below to see their masterpiece for your self – enjoy!

https://glowscotland-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/gw12mchargshona_glow_sch_uk/EYWXjR2F7K1BvQbpBeDXENoBMoTVl5cceJmlVxsBcTqzbQ?e=82F7gB

Every year to help celebrate Book Week Scotland, P1-3 pupils are gifted with a Book Bug (P1) / Read, Write, Count (P2/3) bag as part of a government initiative to promote literacy and numeracy at home. And despite Covid ruining most things this year, thankfully it didn’t ruin this (albeit it was a bit late since Book Week was technically 2 weeks ago!!!).

This morning, pupils were presented with their gift bags and got the opportunity to explore the contents. They enjoyed reading the books and playing some of the games contained inside the bags. There was much hilarity with the ‘This is Dog’ book – if you have a P1 Bookbug bag, have a keek for yourself!!  Although this year we were missing the parents (who usually pop in to share in this wonderful event), the pupils were thrilled with their bags.

Please look out for your child bringing these bags home for you to enjoy together. If you’d like any further information or suggestions on how to use the bags at home, check out the Scottish Book Trust website:

P3 bag – https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning-resources/read-write-count-for-p3

P2 bag – https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning-resources/read-write-count-for-p2

P1 bag – https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning-resources/bookbug-picture-book-prize-2021-learning-activities

We hope you have fun using these with your child!

It was such a joy to be outside today for Fresh Air Friday, as we learnt about food chains, sustainability, recycling, eco-systems and the planting calendar  – whilst developing our teamwork, communication and listening skills in a real-life context which we can use outwith school too. A win:win situation! It has to be said, this could not be done without us having  Mrs Richardson working with us, as her knowledge about gardening far surpasses ours! We are extremely lucky!

As a group, we got chatting about what we would like to achieve in our playground and, collating the ideas of children and with some top tips of her own, Mrs Richardson was able to come up with an action plan! We’re ready, willing and, even more importantly, now have some guidance about what needs to be done to tidy up and prepare the soil for planting!

The pupils enthusiastically offered some suggestions and, working in a group of 8, set to work. Mrs Richardson will be working with us weekly – and will take groups of 8 pupils (a mix from P1-4 and P5-7) to help realise our plans.

Pupils will be encouraged to bring old clothes to school for their gardening stint – which will be on a Friday afternoon unless the weather forecast suggests another afternoon might be better! We will keep an eye on weather reports to see what suits best each week. We might also be looking for some assistance from the community, as our plans unfurl, in the form of cuttings, seeds, planters and tyres. We’ll be in touch…

This afternoon really had the feel-good factor!

We were delighted today to get a good news telephone call to say that a Leswalt Primary pupil is a runner up in the annual Alister Jack MP Christmas card competition.

This competition is open to all schools in Dumfries and Galloway.  Hundreds of pupils took part in it. And, our very own Chloe Kennedy is a runner up!  Chloe’s design will go inside the card, which will be sent out from Westminster.

As a prize, Chloe will receive a certificate and Amazon gift voucher to spend online.

Well done Chloe – we are all very proud of you!

Today was Outdoor Classroom Day, so the pupils and staff of Leswalt Primary headed out into the fresh November air. We weren’t quite expecting the great Scottish midges to be out in force – but they most definitely were!

Still, we all had a lot of fun!

P1-4 started with a morning walk up to the Wetlands. Along the way we said “Hi!” to Mr McHallum who is working hard replacing the walkway there. We gathered a selection of different coloured Autumn leaves for an art project later in the day, and twigs/sticks for out maths tasks. We managed to fit in a few games of ‘Scatter’ in the woods before returning back to school for break.

We used the twigs to solve some maths problems involving triangles. Isla and Ela were victorious, closely followed by Kaiden and Cara. We then had to work in teams to see who could build the biggest twig tower. The P3 group were worthy winners. They communicated well and everyone joined in. Top Team!

In the afternoon we used the leaves, twigs, berries and rashes we had gathered to make firework patterns. We think they look great! We then used out twigs and clay to build our own Guy Fawkes for the bonfire. A Stickman Guy Fawkes!

P5-7 headed out to do a village percentages quiz before returning to the playground and recapping their prior knowledge about the 4 and 8 point compass. They then used sticks and wool to create spider webs – using the 8 pt compass as inspiration. They look really cool! Some pupils even used protractors to check their angles were correct: was N- NE 45 degrees as it should be? This will now lead onto our angles and bearings work which we will be doing in class next week.

After break, the pupils headed to the Wetlands where they heard the historical tale of Guy Fawkes. Clues were hidden for the pupils to find and photograph with their ipads. They then used these to collate facts about the story surrounding the Gunpowder Plot and even used sticks and leaves to ‘ilustrate’ a bonfire on their piece of work too!

In the afternoon, they set up their rainfall collection experiment (which links to this term’s Science topic) and enjoyed P.E. brushing up on their basketball skills!

 

Zombies, witches and scary skeletons – there were all sorts of spooky goings-on at Leswalt Primary today! Our school of usually fresh-faced, smiling children were transformed for the day into a terrifying bunch of Halloween characters! Aaargh!

The morning started with the judging of the Fancy dress competition.

P1/2 – Colin (with a special prize for Lily!)

P3 – Ellie

P4 – Kaiden

P5 – Rose

P6 – Malcolm

P7 – Joshua

Our two House Captains Gregor and Andrew had organised Halloween afternoon fun in the hall for each class which involved some zombie dancing, creepy corners game, pumpkin race and musical spooky chairs.

p1-4 had great fun both pumpkin AND neep carving. Safe to say the neep required all their strength. There was even a broken knife to show for it! In the afternoon, after their Halloween party fun, the boys and girls created a delightful concoction to make their pumpkin and neep carvings puke – yes it was as yucky as it sounds! STEM fun at its finest!

P5-7 created some stunning spooky silhouettes and then planned and designed their very own paper bat to participate on the Bat Track – which bat design flew the furthest I wonder? And to top the afternoon off, the pupils designed catapults. The challenge? Plan, design and build a catapult to launch your mini chocolate pumpkin through the air – could they land in the pumpkin patch?  Lots of fun – but hidden in there was plenty of engineering and problem-solving too. Check out the photos below!