Month: February 2025

What a beautiful February afternoon we enjoyed with Jack and Linnea over at the Aldouran Wetlands! Our sessions with Children’s Parliament are nearing their end and we’ve all had such good fun discussing our community, climate, curriculum and campus and the important features of these.

We chatted about what makes a community strong and the ways in which we all work together to make the 4 Cs be the best they can possibly be!

This afternoon’s fun involved building a den using natural materials  –  using climate to build a campus, working together to create this – utilising our curriculum, and creating role-play scenarios to represent everyone who is involved in our school – community.

All good fun and giving us lots to think about. Looking forward to our next session with Jack and Linnea from the Children’s Parliament.

UNCRC 

Article 24- Health, Water, Food, Environment

Article 29 – Aims of Education

Article 31 – Rest, Play, Culture, Arts

Meta-Skills

Initiative Ivy        Integrity Imani      Adapting Aleksander

Primary 6 and 7 recently had 3 fun filled days of outdoor education at Lockerbie Manor.

Please see below for a link to just some of the adventures they had –

Lockerbie Manor ~ February 2025 – YouTube

This afternoon, we were delighted to welcome back Jack and Linnea from the Children’s Parliament with another interesting session about caring for our environment.

Each session so far we have focused on a different element – curriculum (how our learning helps us to explore and find out more about our area), campus (when we made models about what we would view as part of our environment), community (an online session when we talked about all the different people and organisations who are involved in the wellbeing of our school) and  today’s focus which was on culture.

We are always encouraged to share our views and opinions and got the chance to do this today again in lots of different ways; creating a podcast with Linnea about the environment and climate change, working as a group on a Scavenger Hunt finding evidence that our school showing that the environment and climate are important, using our creativity to make models of the ways in which people show they care for each other and their surroundings, chatting about ways in which we can share our ideas and suggestions for and taking the time to write and draw about things which make us happy at school. All of these activities offered us a chance to explore our school environment’s culture. Each activity was given a different environmental name – Vegetables of Voice, Cauliflowers of Care, Fruits of Feeling and Onions of Importance and ensured that we were looking at all the different aspects which ‘feed’ into caring about our climate.

Our pupil voices will be taken back to the Scottish Government to help shape the ways in which we learn about and look after our environment in years to come – and for younger children too.

Jack and Linnea always make these learning sessions fun! We are really grateful to them for coming to work with us

Meta Skills

Focusing Fergus, Adapting Aleksander, Integrity Imani and Initiative Ivy.

UNCRC Charter of Children’s Rights

Article 24 – Health, Water, Food and Environment

Article 29 – Aims of Education

Article 13 – Sharing Thoughts Freely

Have a look at some of the activities we have done today!

The troops arrived safely at their destination at Lockerbie Manor and got stuck straight in to axe throwing, fencing and the climbing wall.  They were having that much fun, not one pupil wanted to phone home!

Tea was either roast chicken or sausages with roast potatoes, and Yorkshire puddings, followed by ice cream.  Yum!

Lots of  fun was had in the bedrooms  with pyjama parties involving lots of toiletries for the girls and lots of snacks (and sugar!) for all.

It may be a long day though – some pupils were up and dressed today at 5am! 

The cooked breakfast and excitement for our two birthday boys, Murray and Ben, may keep them going!

Today, we participated in Safer Internet Day 2025 – an annual event which explores all the ways in which we can use the amazing source that is the internet in the safest  way possible!

This year’s theme is ‘Too Good to be True’ and gave us all a chance to consider all the offers which we might see online and how to keep ourselves protected from scams.

Our learning this morning was led by our Digital Leaders Rachael and Murray. They presented the whole school with an information powerpoint, held a quiz to check everyone had been listening and set a ‘Design an Cyber Superhero’ competition for all to get to involved in! Working as buddies, older and younger pupils worked together to create their best designs and what wonderful superheroes they all produced!

The Digital Leaders then had the unenviable task of judging the Cyber Superheroes!

And the winners are…

P1 – Gregor                                     Runner-up – Erin

P2 – Jorgie                                      Runner-up – Cameron

P3/4 – Hannah                             Runner-up – Keira

P6 – Rebecca                                 Runner-up – Roman

P7 – Ellie                                         Runner-up – Ela

We all joined the BBC Live lesson at 11am which was a fun 30 minutes of interactive games and top tips about how to stay safe online. P6/7 followed this up by using this theme for their Literacy Comprehension lesson.

A busy Safer Internet Day!

UNCRC

Article 17  – Access to Information

Article 29 – Aims of Education

Meta Skills

Initiative Ivy

Integrity Imani

As winners of our in-school K’Nex Challenge before Christmas, Rachael and Rebecca were chosen to represent Leswalt Primary at the Rhins Cluster Creating Engineers Challenge held yesterday at St Joseph’s Primary Stranraer. This exciting K’Nex Challenge is run annually by the Glasgow Science Festival.

The girls were set the task of designing an exercise bike using K’Nex. They needed to sketch their plan, work together and have a finished product ready to be judged – all within a one hour time-scale!

Rachael and Rebecca were super role-models for our school – they were polite and mannerly, listened well and worked together co-operatively. Mrs Kyle, who had accompanied them, was very proud of them.

Two judges took the time to look at all the K’Nex models before leaving the room to discuss their findings.

They then returned to tell the waiting competitors who had won and…drum roll please… Rachael and Rebecca WON!

Next stop…the regional K’Nex finals in Dumfries! Well done girls – you have done our wee school proud!

UNCRC

Article 29 Aims of Education

Article 31 Rest, Play, Culture, Arts

Meta-skills

Initiative Ivy,  Adapting Aleksander,  Focusing Fergus

Our Primary 7 pupils enjoyed a taster coaching session in curling today.  Under the expert guidance of Gail Munro MBE and all the coaching staff at Stranraer Ice rink our senior pupils were brushing and curling their way to victory!

All pupils have arrived back at school with certificates for their participation and details of how they can enjoy more curling at an after school club – please look school bags for details.

We could have the next Bobby Lammie or Vicky Wright ( Olympic gold medallists) in our schools again!

Today we enjoyed our annual Burns’ Lunch – a little later than we had initially planned due to the storms but it was worth the wait!

Daisy led the celebrations in her role as chairperson inviting Betty in P1 to carry in the haggis, our ‘Address to a Haggis’ P7s to recite the poem with gusto (thanks Ben G, Ela, Sean, Holly and Ewan!) and Sean to say the Selkirk Grace before we all tucked into our tasty lunch!

Following this we enjoyed listening to the toasts. Ben G and Ewan gave the Toast to the Lassies – with a little bit of teasing thrown in! Holly and Amelia gave the Reply to the Lads with an equal measure of joking. Isla and Ellie were invited to give their Toast to the School which celebrated all things good about our wee school. Ela rounded up our lunch with a Vote of Thanks before we all joined in with a rousing rendition of Auld Lang Syne.

A braw wee afternoon with the weans!