Month: March 2024

Our House Captains and Vice Captains have been busy over the last few weeks, organising an Easter egg-stravaganza for the final day of term!

Firstly, we had our decorate a hard-boiled egg competition. We had lots of wonderful entries which made the judging a tricky decision! So much so that the House Captains ended up awarding 2nd and 3rd place to each class (and Miss Gordon had to run up to the shop to buy extra prizes!!). Our winners were –

P1-4

• 1st = Eilidh Ramsay
• 2nd = Emma Shirley
• 3rd = Jorgie Paton

P5-7

• 1st – Colin McGregor
• 2nd = Isla Kirkpatrick
• 3rd = Amelia McHallum

A huge thank-you to everyone who participated – it was a fab effort from all!

In the afternoon, pupils paired up for an Easter scavenger hunt outside. Each pair were given a sheet of clues to help them find the next egg. They had to write down the colour of each egg that they found to prove that they had indeed completed the hunt! The final egg led them to a gigantic plastic egg full of chocolate!

Thank-you to our House Captains and Vice Captains for a final day full of fun!

UNCRC Article 14 (freedom of belief and religion) and article 31 (right to play and participate in art activities). 

As part of our Eco Schools work, the whole school headed out on Friday morning fully armed with gloves, biodegradable bags and litter pickers for our annual village Spring Clean!

We split into 5 groups and each group went to a different area of the village – Monument View, Church Grove, the main street up to the cemetery, the park and the Wetlands. We collected a whole array of things, including a golf club and ball, and 4 mini-wine bottles from the park!!

Our responsible citizens gathered 5 bags of litter in total, helping to make our village sparkly clean!

This week is Sign Language week and so Leswalt P5-7, always up for a challenge, signed up for a live lesson after Faye’s mum tipped us off about ti.

What a valuable session this was. In the first instance, the entire live lesson was presented without any speaking or sound – this got a discussion going within the class as to what daily life must be like if you suffer from hearing impairment. At times, the lady leading the lesson signed but we didn’t know what she was saying – the result? Frustration – and again this sparked discussion about situations in which the hearing impaired must often find themselves.

Following the BSL teacher’s lead, we learnt how to sign hello, how are you, Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening, please, thank you, lots of colours AND animals! It was an information-packed session. We also learnt to finger-spell the alphabet and each one of us managed to finger spell our name using this! What an achievement!

We really enjoyed this opportunity today. It is so important to have that awareness and be able to communicate with all.

UNCRC Article 2, 12, 13, 23 and 29.

No Discrimination, Respect for Children’s Views, Sharing Thoughts Freely, Children with Disabilities and Aims of Education.

UNCRC Article 29 AND 31 Aims of Education and Rest, Play, Culture and Arts

Today P5-7 headed to the Ryan Centre to join Kirkcolm, Sandhead, Drummore and Portpatrick Primaries to stage a performance of Vikings The Quest for the Dragon’s Treasure with the support of Scottish Opera!

What an amazing experience! For the last few weeks, we have been working on the songs and moves in class, using the fabulous online materials created by Scottish Opera, in readiness to come together this morning and pull the whole show together and present it to our audience of friends ad family this afternoon. The story told of the Quest for the Dragon’s Treasure with the villagers (Kirkcolm and Drummore pupils) and Vikings (Sandhead pupils) needing to show the sneaky sorcerors (us!) the right way to behave! To look after one another and the planet – no over-farming, ensuring animals are kept in their natural habitat and showing respect for Earth.

We LOVED being the evil sorcerors – you should have heard our spine-chilling chuckles! As a cast, we listened to the Scottish Opera members and followed their lead to sing and dance the story for all.

We even got to wear costumes which really helped us get into character!

What a fantastic experience. Huge thanks to the Scottish Opera staff, Creative Scotland and Dumfries and Galloway Council for supporting this venture for us all to enjoy!

The pupils dressed up in as much red clothing as they possibly could today, in return for a small donation towards Comic Relief. Our House Captains have been busy selling official merchandise all week and some of our families made a donation towards the worthy cause when they came in for our science afternoon.

We also held our assembly on Friday, where we explored how Comic Relief helps children to get their rights. We listened to how the charity helps homeless people, those with disabilities and those living in poverty. Everyone realised how much of a difference their pennies will make to people around the world.

We raised a fantastic grand total of £73.64! Thank-you to everyone who donated!

UNCRC article 26 – social and economic help

To celebrate British Science Week, we held an open afternoon today where several family members joined us for some science fun!

We had lots of science stations on offer to put our STEM skills to the test, including: making a hovercraft; building spaghetti bridge; designing a parachute to get the Lego man to safety; creating fireworks in a glass; growing a rainbow; and by far the 2 most popular/messiest experiments – making a volcano and cornflour slime! Mrs McKnight was having heart palpitations due to the mess on her carpet and was seen several times throughout the afternoon walking up and down the corridor with various cleaning supplies!!!

Pupils worked in small groups, accompanied by an adult or two, to work their way around the stations and enjoy the various challenges on offer. We had a brilliant afternoon, and thank you to all the adults who joined us!

UNCRC Articles 5 (family guidance as children develop) and 29 (aims of education).

Have a keek at the photos below, including one of a very young visitor for whom it was all too much for!!

Our team of Cara, Brandon, Mark and Carys recently took back to the ice to take part in the annual inter-school curling bonspiel at the Ice rink in Stranraer.  Every year a trophy is awarded in the memory of Mrs Baillie’s grandfather.

Leswalt were skipped by Cara Jamieson and did get to the play-offs.   Glenluce Primary were the eventual winners of the competition.  Our team thoroughly enjoyed their day at the North West Castle and mixing with all their friends from other schools.

UNCRC Rights of the Child- Article 15: Setting up and Joining Groups

Books are BIG news at Leswalt Primary – we LOVE to share stories together, curl up with a good book and use what we read to help us learn more about the world around us. Last Thursday was a chance to celebrate all of this 🙂

P5-7 signed up to join a World Book Day event with none other than the award-winning author Terry Deary – he of the Horrible Histories fame! This fitted in perfectly with our class project as we have been learning all about the Romans and Terry was holding a quiz about the Rotten Romans! Oh my, they truly were rotten!

Library Monitors Ben Gill and Ellie Bennewith led a lunchtime Book Club for P1-3 which was extremely popular! They used Bookflix to listen to some fabulous stories as pupils cuddled up on the blankets and cushions – staff quite liked the look of this club too! They wrote up this short report up too…

On World Book Day, we (Ellie and Ben) held a lunchtime reading club with P1-3.  We listened to and read stories like The Gingerbread Man. We brought through cosy blankets and cushions from the big class so that we could snuggle down. One of the stories had a song and a dance to go with it so we enjoyed a little dance too! It was lots of fun!

In the afternoon, P1-3 donned their jackets and, armed with a WBD scavenger sheet on a clipboard, headed out into the Spring sunshine on the hunt for some book-ish clues. P5-7 ended their afternoon with a ‘Book and a Biscuit’ session – taking the chance to enjoy some chilled out reading time whilst enjoying a tasty treat!

Hope you’ve all had a chance to use those WBD vouchers! These give a £1 off a book or can be used in exchange for any specially produced WBD £1 books.

Curl up with a good book and let your imagination grow!

Friday 8th March saw the start of British Science Week – a ten day celebration of all things Science-y!

Primary 5-7 headed off to the Ryan Centre this afternoon for a musical extravaganza, provided by the Stranraer Music for All team. House Captains Hamish and Carys provided a report of their time away –

This afternoon we went to the Music for All workshop at the Ryan Centre. When we got off the bus, we went into the theatre and sat down. There were two people playing instruments: Ron playing the guitar and Rachael playing the clarsach (a small harp).

They started with a few tunes then Rachael told us about her clarsach – she told us that it was made of Canadian wood and that the strings were made from cows guts. Then Ron and Rachael played some traditional Scottish songs while we played air harps along with them!

They finished off with some questions from the audience then a final song. We had a great afternoon!

UNCRC Article 31 – Right to take part in cultural and creative activities.

Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take any photos during the performance, but here is a photo of Rachael with her clarsach on the way out!