Month: June 2017

We had hoped for glorious sunshine but made do with a cloudy day with just a few showers for our annual Leswalt Primary Sports Day.

Mr Brawls and his band of helpers got all equipment moved over to the village park, the pupils got their sporty togs on and we were go, go, go!

The boys and girls enjoyed a fun afternoon of Sports, having their very best shot at every race and cheering on their friends. Not even the occasional shower was able to dampen their enthusiastic mood. True sportsmanship.

After participating in the flat race, sack, egg and spoon, skipping, obstacle, distance and a hotly contested throwing competition, the boys and girls encouraged their mummies and daddies to try out the obstacle course. Six brave daddies gave it a shot and so many mummies were keen to have a go that we needed to run this over two races! Much excitement from the children shouting their parents on! Finally, the pre-schoolers took part in the flat race.

Teamwork got every last piece of sports equipment back to school and the boys and girls rounded off a fun afternoon by enjoying a tub of ice-cream provided by Gillian from Leswalt Stores. Who needed the sun anyway?!

 

 

Well this trip destination was a new one to us – but we’ll most definitely be visiting here again in the future! P5-7 from Leswalt joined the staff and boys and girls of Portpatrick Primary for a day out to Dumfries House in Cumnock. Thankfully the weather was in much better fettle than it had been for intended sports day!

P5-7 headed to the Morphy Richards STEM Centre – a purpose built building which deals with all activities Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths related. Sounds a bit dry? It was a resounding hit with the pupils. Initially we got to assemble our compass keyring, before getting a Geo-caching kit and a Garmin GPS. Our activity leader explained how to use GPS and we were off. We had 8 way points to find and each had a hidden box there. Using our maps and GPS, we followed the route to the numbered way point, hunted for the ‘treasure’ and completed the Science based task which was in there. We also found a letter in each box which was unscrambled at the end to spell ‘NATURE’. Great fun and in such stunning surroundings too!

Back to the STEM centre for a bite of lunch, then waaay too much fun playing in water in the engineering waterpark – apologies parents as there may be quite a few bags with soggy socks in them! Our activity leader then led us up to the garden maze. After a few wrong turns and baffled faces, everyone found their way into the middle. To round of the fun, we headed to the adventure playground – you are never too old to enjoy a park! The boys and girls then enjoyed a yummy ice-cream from the cafe courtesy of the Parent Council (thank you Parent Council!).

All in all it was a great day out and everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. Check Dumfries house out for yourself – there’s something for everyone there!

On Wednesday the 31^st of May, P5-7 went along to Leswalt’s local wetlands at Aldouran. We were looking forward to finding out lots more about wild flowers, plants and trees. We headed up through the woodland paths, listening to the sounds of nature. Here are a few quotes from our class about the wetlands.

“You can learn a lot more when you’re not in a class room,” Jamie.

“It was an exciting adventure and I hope to go back soon,” Arden.

Cherry and Eve were our tour guides for the afternoon and they shared with us their vast knowledge about plants. Also we learned about how plants do not flower so much in woodland because the trees block the sun in Summer.

As we were walking down from the woods, we looked towards the pond and saw baby ducks. There was eleven ducks in the pond when we went to the wetlands. Also we saw the dinosaur’s nest but unfortunately no dinosaurs!

We enjoyed our visit and will return again very soon!

By Arden and Jamie

 

 

This morning we had the absolute pleasure of enjoying a morning with Rachel and Duncan from Pitch, Pulse and Magic. They both play string instruments – Rachel plays the violin and Duncan plays the cello. The instruments are related – they looked like little and large beside each other! We heard lots of pieces of classical music, some which we recognised and some which were new to us. The music really did sound so beautiful. We chatted about classical music, the role music plays in films and adverts and how the instruments actually create the notes. By enjoying this music session, we were also doing a little science as we were exploring vibration, some literacy when we looked at metaphors and HWB when we thought about how music makes us feel. Megan, Cameron and Boyd even played ‘Hot Cross Buns’ simply by tapping a glass of water with a pen – amazing eh?!

We enjoyed listening to the theme from Harry Potter – always a favourite! And there was lots of toes tapping along to ‘Under the Sea’ from The Little Mermaid. We listened to a slow, mournful melody and it made us feel much quieter, calmer and it seemed quite sad. It turned out that this was from the funeral scene of an opera – so we got the mood just right. We could almost hear the sound of people crying from the violin. There was even a piece of music that showed a real change of emotion – it started off quite light and jolly, the pitch was high and the bow of the violin and cello almost seemed to skip over the strings but then the tone became so much lower and the bow movements were harsh and stronger – we guessed that the music was telling us that something was not going at all well! This is called the musical structure of the piece.

Antonio Vivaldi was a very famous composer who wrote pieces of music to describe the seasons. We looked at the poem linked to this and worked with Rachel and Duncan to suggest ways in which the violin and cello could recreate this. The class were great at suggesting ways in which the instruments could be used to sound like lightning, the breeze and the murmuring rivers.

Everybody in our class thoroughly enjoyed the music session. How lucky are we to have this experience in our classroom to brighten up a rather damp and dreary Tuesday morning!

Many thanks to Rachel and Duncan from Pitch, Pulse and Magic for bringing this experience to us.