Author: Mrs Ferguson

Today we were delighted to welcome Mike from Bikeability to our P6/7 classroom to kick-off our practical cycle sessions!
This starts officially next week but today’s session dealt with an introduction, getting to know Mike and about his lifelong interest in bikes and safety checks on our bikes. What a fabulous opportunity for us 🚲

Our sessions will take place over 6weeks and we help us to become safe and responsible cyclists – lifelong skills! Mike has been cycling since he was young and has cycled in lots of countries! He used to be a primary school teacher in Coventry and used to cycle to work on VERY busy roads. He has also completed cycle challenges (a one day 161 mile ride from the Irish Sea to North Sea challenge!), cycled the Hebridean Way Ride 2023 from Barra to Lewis  and taken his bike on holidays camping on the way. He shared his love of cycling with us – a hobby which helps him to keep fit too!
Our Bikeability sessions will focus on building confidence, developing our safe cycling and road user skills and having fun! Roll on practical session 1 next week ♥️

The Cycling Code

♥️ Resilience ♥️ Respect ♥️ Kindness ♥️ Patience and a smile 😊

 

UNCRC

Meta Skills 👍

Initiative Ivy Communicating Cate Collaborating Cora

 

Thanks to funding from the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, Leswalt Primary’s playground is now the proud owners of two new, colourful playground markings!

A fabulous Snakes and Ladders game is ready and waiting for the pupils to enjoy at breaktimes – as well as a numbers to 10 rocket which they can use to play Hopscotch! Both games offer the perfect opportunity to have lots of fun with their friends whilst using their counting skills too. A win win I would say!

Many thanks to the EMS for their financial help – it is very much appreciated.

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

Meta Skills Communicating Cate, Collaborating Cora and Integrity Imani 🙂

 

Our future budding engineers Rebecca and Rachael travelled to  Dumfries yesterday to participate in the Glasgow Science Festival Creating Engineers Regional Final! The girls had won the local Rhins competition last term and we now competing on a bigger stage!

As expected, they were exemplary representatives of our wee school and they worked hard to complete the tough challenge of planning, designing and building a K’Nex digger complete with  a cab, steering wheel, arms and a bucket. We may be a little biased but we thought their finished product was FABULOUS!

Although the girls did not win the regional competition, they are winners in our eyes and we are very proud of them. Well done you two 🙂

UNCRC  Article 29 Aims of Education

Meta Skills –  Collaborating Cora   Communicating Cate    Adapting Aleksander

 

 

This week, the pupils of Leswalt have had an egg-citing time exploring the Easter story through arts and crafts, baking, finding out about cultural traditions and becoming quiz masters! 🐣

Working together, the older pupils buddied up with their younger friends as they planned, designed and decorated hard boiled eggs. 

Mrs Baillie had the unenviable task of judging the decorated eggs – tough decision as they had all been so creative!
The winners were…

P1-4 1st – Beathan and his Minion

2nd – Aria-Rose and her fluffy bunny

3rd equal – Eilidh with her Ninja Turtle and Cameron with his witch

P6/7

1st – Ewan with his couped ewe(!)

2nd – Ben G with Pikachu

3rd equal – Rachael with her butterfly and Isla with her Minecraft egg

 

They then had great fun rolling their eggs down ‘the burn’. We talked about the symbolism of the eggs being rolled too.

As P1-4 had learnt lots about the Easter Story before the holidays, they taught the older ones all they knew and then everyone worked in pairs to create quizzes for one another using Microsoft Forms! 💻✝️

P1-4 also baked a Simnel cake with the help of Mrs Kyle and James made some yummy chocolate crispy nests! Cameron could tell me that they had decorated the cake with 11 toppings representing the disciples – not 12 as Judas had betrayed Jesus. This cake is traditionally eaten at Easter time and the boys and girls enjoyed munching it up!
What a fun week we have had learning about Easter 🐣

UNCRC

Article 14 – Freedom of Thought and Religion

Article 31 Rest, Play, Culture, Arts

Article 29 Aims of Education

Meta-Skills

Collaborating Cora       Leading Li         Initiative Ivy          Communicating Cate

P6/7 headed to Green Valley this morning for the annual Rhins Primary Cross Country event.

All pupils ran/walked a mile and represented their school with exemplary behaviour – so proud of them!

Colin came 2nd in the P6 boys category and Rachael was 1st in the P6 girls – superb effort!

Well done all 🏃🏻‍♀️☀️🎉

This afternoon, Leswalt P6/7 welcomed back Jack, Linnea and Jill from the Children’s Parliament. We all worked together creating our 4 Cs board game – campus, culture, community and curriculum and sharing our ideas and opinions.

Our comments and illustrations will be collated to create a ‘ludo’ style game which can be shared in schools across Scotland! Jack, Linnea and Jill encourage us to talk about our Children’s Rights, our climate and what we see as priorities. We really enjoy this chat time!

Excitingly, they’re working on an event to be held in May – hopefully outside and with special visitors (and us of course!) Watch this space for more information to follow… 🌍🌳❤️

 

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What a lovely way to start a new week! P7 pupils from Leswalt and Kirkcolm headed into Stranraer Baptist Church (after dropping the P6s off at Kirkcolm with a lengthy to-do list!) to enjoy Easter code – an event offered by Owain from Scripture Union and the Stranraer Baptist Church Team.

Each day this week, P7 pupils have been invited to discover more about the Easter story through quizzes, craft, drama and other fun activities. Leswalt and Kirkcolm were their first visitors of the week.

Welcomed in, we started with a ‘Who Wants to be a Millionnaire’ style quiz with some tricky egg-scellent questions to get those brain cogs whirring…We had to select our multiple choice answer  – correct answers won an egg point for our teams! Did you know that the World’s most expensive Easter egg costs over £50 000! Could you even begin to guess how many Cadbury’s Creme Eggs are produced each year? Three hundred million in case you were wondering! That’s a LOT of chocolate!

Owain then explained the 5 activity gazebos which were ready and waiting for us. Each one took us through the Easter Story and explained the importance of them – Serving, Struggling, Sacrifice, Sharing and Seeking.

The first one was about foot washing – a ritual done at the Last Supper when Jesus washed the feet of his Disciples. Ben and Owen volunteered to have their feet washed!

The 2nd activity talked through the Passover Meal and the food traditionally eaten at this time. The children sat on cushions and tried the matzos (unleavened bread), bitter horseradish, saltwater and honey and apple. Each food type represented the slaves fleeing Egypt for the Promised Land.

The 3rd task invited children into a ‘Garden of Gethsemane’ where they watched a short film clip from Miracle Makers and talked about the arrest of Jesus.

Then it was on to the drama activity – the ‘trial’ of Jesus with everyone being invited to shout and heckle as Jesus faced the accusations.

Finally, the art activity involved the cross – when Jesus was crucified. Pupils decorated these to show it was a joyful time despite the sadness.

The fun morning session wrapped up with a round-up of the story and what happened in the days after the crucifixion. Pupils were invited up to dramatize this. A quick photo of everyone – a Cadbury’s Creme Egg for all (that’s 14 down from the 300 000 000 produced!) and we headed back to school a lot wiser about the Easter Story than we had been on arrival!

Thanks to Owain and the Stranraer Baptist Church Team for being so welcoming to us all. We had great fun!

UNCRC Article  13 Sharing Thoughts Freely, Article 14 Freedom of Thought and Religion, Article 29 Aims of Education

Meta Skills

Collaborating Cora       Communicating Cate      Integrity Imani

 

 

We have had great fun this over the last few days celebrating British Science Week with online Live Lessons, STEM activities and rounding off with a busy open afternoon today! 
Family and friends were invited in to share our learning as we worked with our buddies on a range of Science investigations.
We enjoyed…

* Exploding Monsters – exploring chemical reactions 💥

* Lava Lamps- looking at liquid density and mixing 💧

* Coding with Microbits and Spheros 💻

* Digital learning with online Science games 👾

Working together, we spent 10 minutes at each station and before we knew it, the afternoon had whizzed by! Lots of learning and lots of fun 🤩 

UNCRC Article 29 Aims of Education

Meta Skills Focusing Fergus, Collaborating Cora and Curiosity Carlos

Well done to our musical maestros – Rachael, Ela and Daisy for their fantastic performances this week at the Galloway Music Festival!

Rachael was up first, with her piano performance class being held on Monday. Competing in a very tough class, Miss Drummond only went and bagged first place! What an achievement… 🙂

Then, on Wednesday, our two fantastic singers Ela and Daisy participated in the Scots Solo class with both of them singing ‘The Skye Boat Song’. They both sang beautifully with Daisy being awarded 1st and Ela 2nd place. Well done girls and a HUGE thanks to Mrs Jane Sloan who has coached and accompanied the girls over the last few months, popping into school on a weekly basis to work with them. We are very lucky to have her expertise to support our pupils.

Well done to all three of you!

UNCRC Article 31 Rest, Play, Culture and Arts

Meta-Skills 

Initiative Ivy and Focusing Fergus

 

Today was the day of the Annual Primary Maths Challenge and who better to put forward to take up that challenge but our resident Number Ctunchers Ben, Colin and Roman!

Pupils had to create a poster themed around Codes & Ciphers, partake in problem solving challenges and play Head-to-Head – a game based around math logic and strategy. Our pupils worked hard to try and do the preparation beforehand with a tough task for the poster ahead of them!

The boys gave it their best shot and had a smashing time putting their brains to the test! They represented our wee school wonderfully and we are very proud of them!

Continue reading “Ben, Colin and Roman Enjoy a Maths-Fuelled Tuesday!”