Leswalt Primary School

Many, many thanks to everyone who supported the Cream Teas event in any way; everyone who baked, donated raffle prizes/bottles  or helped in any way.  Thank you, to Mrs  Louise Jamieson for helping to co-ordinate and organise the Cream Teas and to each and every person who played their part this afternoon – all the parents, pupils and friends of the school.  You are all stars.🌟

Thanks to your combined effort you have raised over £1000 for your school!

£906 profit was made on the day and the silent auction for the Stena Line Trip made an incredible £295,  taking the  total to over £1200!

Great team work!  Well done little Leswalt! 😊

* *Quiz update**

Many thanks to all those who entered our quiz. Mrs Smith was the winner!

 

 

Don’t we all scrub up beautifully! Boys and girls came to school today dressed in their finery in honour of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s upcoming wedding. The girls had worked really hard in school this week to create the most gorgeous fascinators and hatinators and the boys had designed their very own funky ties. The children enjoyed a yummy picnic lunch outside too.

We were most honoured when Prince Harry and Meghan even managed to find some time to pop in to say ‘hi’! Wow!

 

What a fabulous day we had enjoying Outdoor Education Day in the glorious sunshine!

P1-4 had a blast of a morning working together to build their mega-sized 3d junk castles! They all looked fabulous – fit for a knight.

P5-7 headed to Aldouran Wetlands to do some 2d triangle shape work. They built their own triangles then completed their ‘Boast Sheet’ full of all the facts and knowledge they had about different types of triangles. They then were busy in the garden back at school; weeding, sprucing up tubs, planting, watering and collecting any litter that had missed the bin.

Active children were the order of the day in the afternoon, enjoying team-games and Bikeability activities.

How we wished the sun could shine every day like this! We all had great fun…

 

This morning we had seven very welcome visitors; Sophia, Sean, Ella, Ellie, Ewan, Hamish and Amelia came to spend an hour with us. They will be our new Primary one pupils in August and we are very much looking forward to having them. Their visits will build up over the next few weeks so they will get to know us, and we’ll get to know them! By all accounts, they seemed to enjoy themselves – look out for some photos to follow next week when they are not quite so camera shy!

P4 pupils made the BIG step through to the P5-7 classroom too. They all headed outside to take part in a Maths Treasure Hunt. Working in teams, they were all very busy 2d and 3d shape spotting, calculating area, finding angles and working with numbers found in the environment.

A very busy morning for all!

New P1 update – check out the snaps of our youngest visitors to Leswalt Primary. We are really enjoying their Tuesday visits! Hope they are too.

As part of their Money topic, P1 have been running their playtime tuck-shop every day this week. This will run for this week and next. They have lots of yummy goodies for sale and, with just a little help from Mrs Smith, the P1 pupils are taking turns each day in manning their shop, taking orders, calculating amounts and giving change. Real-life maths and no mistake!

P2-6 love visiting the P1 tuck-shop and P1 seem to be relishing their jobs! They will use their hard-earned cash to treat themselves later in the term.

 

P1-4 were thrilled to welcome back Kathryn Purchase with her History Alive presentation of ‘Knights and Castles’. This was a perfect way to launch our Castles topic and the children were fascinated with all the interesting facts and gory detail.  We can’t wait for the chance to have Kathryn back again!

 

“ I can see that when the Vikings were defeated, lots of castles were built.” Fraser

“It was interesting to find out about all the different parts in a castle.” Breagh

“ Early castles (motte and bailey) were made of wood and I didn’t know this.” Luke

“The church was overall ruler in medieval times.” Malcolm

“The walls of a castle could sometimes be as thick as our classroom!” Struan

“I liked finding out about the weapons used in a siege.” Murray

 

P1-4 are learning about babies and life cycles in HWB. We had some special little visitors into class to help us learn about how to care for a baby.  Kerr (4 months) and Olivia (13 weeks) popped in to see us with their mums, Alexa and Sarah.  The girls and boys had the chance to ask the mummies lots of questions and will now be taking on the challenge of caring for our own class baby, Baby Annabelle.

“I’m not looking forward to changing a nappy. I don’t really want to do it!”  Noah

“I now know how to hold a baby.” Brandon

“Washing the baby might be tricky!” Cara

“I’m not very keen on getting up in the middle of the night!” Malcolm

The whole school travelled to Logan Gardens today for a ‘Lost Word’ experience.  After enjoying a yummy picnic lunch in the gardens, the children joined Kate, our ranger from the Royal Botanical Society of Edinburgh, who used poetry as exploration of our local natural environment and biodiversity in different ways.

The focus was on the book, The Lost Words, which is a collaborative project between writer Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris.  The Lost Words celebrates the relationship between language and the living world, and of nature’s power to spark the imagination. Robert Macfarlane has created a series of spell-poems – one for each lost word – while Jackie Morris, inspired by her lifelong passion for Britain’s landscapes and wildlife, has painted  watercolours and used gold leaf to take the viewer on a visual journey of nature.  Every school in Scotland will receive a copy of this book as a result of a Crowd Funding project.

The children went for a poetry walk around the garden where Kate shared examples of work describing nature using figurative language.  They were then set the challenge of using their senses to discover the nature around them, creating a word bank to share with the group of what they found.  The boys and girls also created natural sculpture artwork using foraged materials to represent their particular plant of study.

Everyone enjoyed a lovely afternoon in the sunshine!

 

 

P1-4 jumped on a bus to go and visit a bus on Wednesday afternoon! The Wild about Scotland double decker bus has been parked up at Stranraer Academy this week, and children were invited to hop aboard and find out a bit more about Scotland’s biodiversity. The children got to look through microscopes to view tiny animals in more detail, match bones and skulls to animals, look at antlers and feel different animal skins. It looks, and sounds like a whole lot of fun! What a lovely way to spend a Wednesday afternoon.

 

 

Primary 1-4 had a blast of a time on Tuesday morning when the team from Generation Science came to visit to explain a bit more about the sun, moon and stars in a really fun way!

They used giant models of the Earth, sun and moon to show how they orbit and explain the concept of day, night and time (days, months and years) in child-friendly speak.

Judging from the giggling which could be heard coming from the hall, and the enthusiastic pupils who were full of interesting facts after the show; this was a tremendous success!

“The suitcases were from different countries and we learnt what people across the world are doing at the one time!” explained Malcolm.

“I had to stick the crocodile on Africa!” Isla said.

Aidan felt that it was a “really fun way to find out how the earth and moon orbit the sun.”

What a fabulous morning; full of fun and learning! The perfect combination. Take a look at the photos below…