Author: Mrs Ferguson

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.

Ethan headed off to New Galloway Golf Club last Thursday, accompanied by his dad, to represent Leswalt Primary at the Regional Primary Schools’ Golf Competition. He enjoyed a day of glorious sunshine on a stunning golf course. He demonstrated just what a responsible citizen he is by taking part and being a good ambassador for our school. Thanks Ethan! Glad you had a great day too!

On Thursday the 18^th of May, Leswalt Primary did so much outdoor learning – it was astounding! It was National Outdoor Education Day and it was a big hit with the pupils and teachers!

Firstly everyone headed outside and enjoyed  some maths work. P1 headed off to the Wetlands with Mrs Smith to do some 2D shape hunting, P2-4 went angle spotting in the playground and P5-7  We made 3D shapes like cubes, cuboids, triangular prisms, pyramids  etc using twigs, sticks and elastic bands then thinking about their properties. Everyone was so busy. Jack remarked ” It didn’t really feel like work – it was so fun!”

After break time, P2-4 worked on some Literacy activities with creative writing at its heart, P5-7 headed to the Wetlands to enjoy chill time with their books. Then they were mimed with sticks to explore metaphors and started writing poems about our surroundings using syllables. They are planning to go back to finish them next week. There they meth the P1 2D Shape Hunters who were just making their way back to school having found their ‘treasure’ – thanks Mrs Smith for the sweetie bags!

After lunch P1-4 worked on some athletics skills and P5-7 played netball.  AT 2pm  p6-7 headed inside to their final session of internet safety and p5 were painting  in the willow dome. P1-4 had some parachute fun, followed up by a quiz by the play trail.

“We think it was good because the fresh air made us all relax and it did not put us under pressure with anything” commented Charlotte and Iona when asked how they felt the day went.

Jack in P3 gave the day 5/5 stars – praise indeed!

We can’t wait to get outdoors again.We’re Leswalt Primary pupils and staff – get us outta here!

On Wednesday 10^th May we enjoyed a whole school event learning about the Buddhist celebration of Wesak. Boys and girls came to school wearing white (at least it was white at the start of the school day!) as this is something which Buddhists do to celebrate the Buddha’s birth at Wesak. Our whole school assembly taught us a little about the story behind the Buddha and Noah and Gregor came up to help ‘bathe the Buddha’ just as Buddhists would do on this special day. Luke, Iona and Logan also played the Blindfold Feeding Game – Iona and Luke had been told NOT to eat the marshmallows, Logan happily munched a few! This was to show that unless you are helped to see the truth, you cannot be expected to know it. Buddha searched for his truth. It is known as Enlightenment.

The whole day was filled with fun activities linked to Wesak; from symmetry and angles work to recreate the symbol of the Noble Eightfold Path, roleplay to explore greed, hatred and ignorance, meditation and yoga exercises to help calm the mind, research tasks to produce factfiles to lantern-making. The pupils took a little time to think about what they had learnt over the course of the day and write this as a Buddha bubble, with some pupils saying they would try to use some of the calming exercises next time they felt a bit on the grumpy side!

It was a busy, but fun-filled day!

On Sunday the 7/5/17 it was Leswalt Primary’s Cream Tea .So many people came to enjoy a fun afternoon in the glorious sunshine! There were many fun stalls to browse around: Guess how many sweeties in the jar, guess the teddy bear’s birthday, a book stall, bottle stall, fabulous face painting , gorgeous hairstyles , BBQ,  a delicious baking stall , the raffle with lots of great prizes , a 50-50 lottery, the ever-popular lollipop game and glitter tattoos. The winner of the teddy bear’s birthday was Jenna Calderwood – she got the right date- and Jamie Drennan successfully guessed the number of sweeties in the jar.

A fantastic £985 was raised! HUGE thanks to all the hard-working parents and pupils involved in the organisation of this very successful fund-raiser. Brilliant teamwork.

Report by Alistair Brown and Millie Smith

 

On Thursday 4th May, Leswalt Primary P5-7 headed off on the service bus to Soleburn to meet with Michael to get some expert advice about plants.

Firstly, we headed into the park and let off some steam playing on the slide, swings and roundabout – very cool fun even when you are 9-12 year olds! Michael popped out to get us and our tour of the Garden Centre started!

He told us about perennials, annuals, evergreens, shrubs and trees and so much more. We got some advice about which plants to put in our new planters for the front door and which compost type to use. This is a job for Friday afternoon! It was interesting to learn about the debate around using peat within compost – something we didn’t know anything about. Inside Soleburn, Michael pointed out the cacti, vegetable plants and lots of indoor plants. It really is amazing just how many different species of plant there are. In class, we have a large 3D display of the parts of a flower and some of us were able to spot these on the plants we saw.

After selecting our plants for the tubs, we paid and headed back over to the park to enjoy the glorious sunshine.

Finally we headed back along the road to wait for the bus. An elderly lady stopped to speak to us; her name is Janet Loch and she told us that she taught at Leswalt Primary for 6 years from 1959! She was delighted to see Leswalt pupils out and about in their local area!

All in all, it was a perfect way to spend a Thursday morning. Hope you like our new front door planters!

P1-4 enjoyed an excellent visit from Kathryn Purchase with her History Alive presentation! A whole morning was spent finding out all about Vikings and the children gained a real insight into what life was really like back then.  We found out who the Vikings actually were (the good and the bad ones!), where they came from and where they travelled to.  The children found out about what they wore, the types of food they ate, what their homes were like, how they travelled and the hierarchy within the Viking community.  This was a real hands-on experience for the children.  They got to try on costumes, weave on a loom and even re-enact a Viking battle.  A fun day was had by all!

“This was a really fun visit and I enjoyed acting out our battle scene!” Finlay P4

“My day at school was exciting and I liked getting the chance to dress as a Viking and hold all the weapons!” Jack P3

“It was really cool getting to see all the Viking stuff like the swords!” Breagh P2