Leswalt Primary School

World Children’s Day was on Wednesday 20th November and to celebrate this, both classes at Leswalt came together yesterday morning to take part in a live assembly.

This linked well with our work on Rights Respecting School work we have been doing over the past few years and continue to work on. The focus of World Children’s Day this year was looking at climate change and how we need to address issues with it in order to secure a safe future for the children of today.

We learned about initiatives that other schools have been implementing where pupils identified an issue that was causing environmental impact and how they made changes to address it, such as decorating the drains around the school to show that the ‘sea starts here.’ Hopefully this keeps our pupils inspired to continue being the sustainability superstars they have always been!

As part of Book Week Scotland, P1-3 parents and family members were invited into school yesterday to find out about the Bookbug (P1) and Read, Write, Count (P2-3) bags that are provided to children by the Scottish Government and Scottish Book Trust. We looked through the contents of the bags – each child received between 2 and 4 books, an activity booklet, and either a card game and maths resource, or a magnetic whiteboard and magnetic numbers to take home and keep. We also looked at all of the online resources that are available to support children’s learning at home using the bags.

We then went into the classroom and gifted the children with their bags – they were very excited to get everything out and have a go at some of the games. We had P2 pupils putting their problem solving skills to the test with a Tangram; P1 pupils practising their numbers and sums on the magnetic whiteboard; and P3 pupils enjoying the ‘act it out’ charades game using the pack of cards. And to top it off, there were biscuits on offer for everyone to enjoy while they looked through their bags. I’m, not sure what the pupils enjoyed more though – the bags or the biscuits!!

Thank-you to all of the parents and family members who were able to make yesterday’s session. If you were unable to make it, please look in your child’s school bag for their Bookbug/Read, Write, Count bag – there are lots of beautiful resources for you to enjoy together to support literacy and numeracy at home.

As part of our Democracy and Government topic, we enjoyed a chat with MSP Finlay Carson to find out more about his role in representing us in Dumfries and Galloway!

He joined us via Microsoft Teams from the car as he travelled through to Castle Douglas. He’d had a busy morning of meetings in Stranraer at the Millennium Centre about a proposed new site for the railway station, a visit to the Riverside Centre in Newton Stewart and was heading home to deal with about 70 emails before heading up to Edinburgh where he is based midweek!

Mr Carson told us about the teamwork involved in his job – he works with 4 others who help him with speeches, research and organisation of his week. He meets with people in his local area on a Monday and a Friday and works at the Scottish Parliament Tuesday to Thursday working on committees, discussing issues in the Debating Chamber and meeting with cross party groups. He is the Convener of the Rural Affairs Committee which ties in well with his farming background and they discuss agriculture, wildlife, the countryside and , more recently, have been involved in looking at dog welfare in relation to the puppy smuggling and puppy farm news reports. These committees are set up to make a difference – and they really do!

Ben G, Ben T, Roman and Ewan were our Confident Individuals who asked questions which were sensible and well thought-out. We learned lots about the life of an MSP. Perhaps one day, it might be one of us representing our area!

UNCRC Article 13 Sharing Thoughts Freely

Article 24 – Health, Water, Food, Environment

Article 29 – Aims of Education

Pupils arrived at school today looking as if they had just rolled out of bed! However that was not the case – today was Children in Need so we dressed in our PJs for Pudsey to help raise some money! The Pupil Council also organised some other activities to help raise fund for this very worthwhile cause, including: selling Children in Need merchandise, face painting and pancakes for Pudsey – baked by our Pupil Council reps and Mrs Kyle – where pupils got the opportunity to buy a pancake and decorate it with toppings.

P1-4 pupils also held a toy sale as part of their toys topic. The boys and girls brought in a selection of used books and toys from home that they no longer play with and sold them for a small donation.

We are delighted to reveal that we made a grand total of £232.19 for Children in Need! Thank-you to everyone who contributed and donated.

Today is Odd Socks Day – a day when we remember it’s cool to be different, it’s ok not to be the same as everyone else and, in fact, life is much more interesting when we don’t all look the same, like the same, do the same and believe in the same things! We celebrated our differences by wearing odd socks to school – a clear sign that we are all different and that’s a good thing!

Odd Socks Day kicks off Anti-Bullying week when we take the time to emphasise what bullying is and strategies for how to deal with this. The theme this year is ‘Choose Respect’ so we had a chat about what this means to us. As we are proud holders of our Gold Rights Respecting Schools Award, we had lots of ideas as to how to show respect towards ourselves and others and ways in which we can help to overcome bullying! This all links into our UNCRC learning with a focus on Article 2 No Discrimination and Article 19 Protection from Violence. All explored through teamwork and co-operation within our happy wee Leswalt team!

Pupils of Leswalt Primary paid their respects today, on Armistice Day.

At 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month, all pupils visited the Memorial in Leswalt.

At the memorial, Daisy, house captain, read the poem “Flanders Fields”.  The oldest and youngest pupils at school, Sean and Gregor, laid the wreath.  This wreath was made by all at Leswalt Primary and was made by drawing round all of their hands.

This term, P6/7 are finding out more about Democracy and Government. We started with a chat about this yesterday which tied in some interesting History and Current Affairs which both linked to politics and government – the story of Guy Fawkes and the US elections!

Today, we enjoyed an online session with the Scottish Parliament. We joined the Teams meeting and met Isabel who led us through a very interesting PowerPoint all about the Scottish Parliament building, how laws are made, the difference in powers between the UK and Scottish parliament and MSPs who represent us in the Scottish Parliament.

Isabel shared lots of information with us and we participated in a quiz which really got us thinking too.

FUN FACTS

Did you know?

Anyone can take an issue to the Petitions Committee who will listen to the viewpoints and this can then be taken forward. The youngest petitioner has been a 7yr old who raised a petition to make using renewable water bottles mandatory at school!

Every ‘bill’ is an issue which is brought forward. This is then discussed by committees. If it goes on to become a LAW (this usually takes about a year) it is finalised by the stamp of Royal Assent from the King. The wax used to seal the Royal Assent is made from the beehives at the Scottish Parliament!

The Scottish Parliament has 129 MSPs.  There are 62 SNP members, 31 Conservatives, 22 Labour, 7 from the Green Party, 4 Liberal Democrats, 1 Alba representative and 1 independent member. The First Minister is John Swinney and the Presiding Officer (who takes on a role a bit like Mrs Baillie!) is Alison Johnstone.

We are really looking forward to finding out more about this topic – watch out for our own parties, campaigns and election!

 

Leswalt Primary all had some fabulous frightening fun at their Hallowe’en party today.

Some pupils came to school dressed in their spookiest best , and some had a costume change at lunchtime– we had a lot of zombified professions as well as some classics!

The party started with the best costume from each year group – this year Patricia the dinner lady had the very difficult task of judging . You can see from the photos everyone looked super spooky A big well done to the parents as well as the pupils – a lot of effort went into some of these costumes! 🧛‍♀️🦇🎃

The fabulously spooky winners were:
P1 – Betty
P2 – Cameron
P3 – Eilidh
P4 – Lily
P6 – Murray 
P7 – Daisy

Then we got stuck into some games. Pupils had a blast playing the games organised by the house captains.  The games began with everyone strutting their stuff to prove who was the best dancer.  Mrs Kyle was our own Craig Revel Horwood and judged the moves on the dancefloor. It was a win for the wee class with Beathan, Gregor , Jorgie and Hannah winning our glitterball ( or tubes of sweeties!)

Next was  a very competitive game of creepy corners, which features a lot of strategising but our final winner was Cameron! Next up we played pass the pumpkin with two of the smallest pumpkins ever  – our winners were Emma (P1-4) and Ela (P5-7). 👻💀

Zombie Arms was next on the agenda, when the music stopped arms would mysteriously disappear and pupils had to find somewhere to link up.  Our winners for this were Hannah (p1-4) and Colin (p5-7)

After all that running around we were all feeling a bit hot and sweaty so we thought why not cool ourselves down by sticking our heads in a huge bowl of water, filled with apples!! 🍎 Both classes played Dookin’ for Apples, a fan favourite which was lots of fun! Those wearing face paint sadly had to sacrifice their carefully painted designs in attempt to retrieve an apple, which meant we had some very wet, soggy looking pandas leaving the playground at 3pm!! 🍎🐼

Everyone left after “the best party ever” ( quote from some soggy P7s!) and was given a toffee apple and sweet treat from Leswalt Community association – who also provided all the prizes and apples, many thanks must go to them for their generosity. 

The  planning and hard work of this party has to go to the House captains, Isla and Daisy who have been working hard from the very beginning to ensure everything was ready to go and they put on an excellent time for the whole school!  ⭐🤩

Well done team! 

#Article31 The right to rest relax and play

P6/7 welcome Robert McCrorie, a Community Safety Advocate for the Fire and Rescue Community Safety Team who talked to the pupils about how to keep themselves and others safe around fireworks and Bonfire Night.

He talked about fireworks, sparklers and bonfires and the issues we might come across. Ellie demonstrated how to hold a sparkler safely – at arms length and not being waved about, and Colin showed us how to Stop, Drop and Roll if any clothing caught fire.

We also discussed items which definitely shouldn’t be added to a bonfire and why not, and some of the rules and regulations which surround buying and setting off fireworks.

This was a really useful safety input and we hope it helps everyone to look after themselves this November 5th.

 

It’s back to school and a spooky one at that! P6/7 have enjoyed exploring all things pumpkin this week..

The week kicked off with group work as they named their pumpkins and scooped them out in preparation for soup making.

Tuesday was a busy day as groups worked with Mrs Kyle to chop ingredients and cook their Spicy Pumpkin soup, roast the pumpkin seeds and use wholemeal bread to make croutons to add to their finished dish.

Wednesday was design and carving day as each group worked together to give their pumpkin’s some added character! The class also tried their soup and shared their cooking with P1-4 too.

Thursday led to experiment day – with a chemical reaction of Hydrogen Peroxide, washing up liquid, food colouring and yeast being used to make each pumpkin puke! Delightful!

And that leads to tomorrow’s Halloween Party!