Author: Mrs Ferguson

It didn’t rain!! To be honest, expectations for a dry day were pretty low as we headed off to the east of the region and the fabulous Mabie farm Park. Not that the weather really bothers children! But our luck was in – we had the most perfect day! No rain, no wind; just smiling children pedalling boats, laughing on trampolines and bouncy pillows, scooting downhill on grass sledges, hopping on-board the quad bike ‘Choo Choo train’, petting the farm animals, jumping in the hay barn, clambering on the adventure play area and eating ice cream! Sounds like a pretty perfect school trip to me.

The North Rhins trio schools were the only schools there and the staff at Mabie were on-hand to ensure they had the best day out possible. Take a look at the fun photos below. Wish you had been there too? It comes highly recommended by us all!

Last week, the Clark family headed up to the Royal Highland Showcase to show sheep – with great success!
Alexander showed and got 1st with a ewe lamb; then he, mum and Ewan achieved 1st again with a ewe and two lambs. Alexander was then awarded with a 1st and a Reserve Champion in the Young Handlers with the ewe lamb – and Ewan got 2nd!!
Well done Team Clark 😀

 

 

It was sports fun in the sun today for Leswalt pupils at their new temporary home at Kirkcolm Primary! To make things even more exciting, the Leswalt and Kirkcolm pupils got together and enjoyed a joint sports day (our lone P1 pupil got to run with buddies her age from Kirkcolm!) This was made possible as we are all operating in a bubble together – with pupils lunching and playing together at break times. Unfortunately, Covid-19 restrictions meant we weren’t able to invite parents to cheer along but our classmates and staff made lots of encouraging noise from the sidelines!

Pupils participated in everything from traditional egg and spoon races to the bean bag throw; sprints to the sack race; skipping to a challenging distance race! All done with good fun as a priority and top sportsmanship skills on display. Full sports results to follow later, but in the meantime please enjoy these happy snaps!

What a brilliant day out the North Rhins P7s enjoyed at Galloway Activity Centre on Friday! This was organised as a special treat as they had missed their last two residentials – and what a fabulous time they had together before they head off to S1 at Stranraer Academy.

Thankfully the high winds and rain of Thursday had abated and Friday dawned dry and reasonably bright. We met at Port Rodie and clambered upon the minibus to head down the road to Loch Ken.

Once there, we got kitted up with our laser guns and headsets for our first activity. Diving in and out of the wooden hides (and in Mrs F’s case headfirst over a tree trunk!) the teams worked to avoid being ‘killed’ by the opposition. Strategy meetings were held, tactics discussed and rounds of ‘ammo’ were fired… and yes the teachers were shot! All good fun. The teachers went from being quite cool and mature to being VERY into this game! Why had I never played this before? Highly recommended!

Next up, the children donned their wetsuits (many comedy moments were had with Mr Cloy!) and enjoyed a session of kayaking. They were naturals! Once they were kayaked-out, the suggested dare from Instructors Rob and Hannah to jump off the the end of the pontoon was met with great cheers all round. The phrase ‘drowned rats’ comes to mind as they all padded back up towards the centre to get changed into dry clothes.

A quick bite of lunch and it was time for the climbing wall and zipwire with instructors Rob and Ben. What a bunch of adrenaline seekers we have! Superb climbing and ‘zipping’! The offer was then there for those who wanted to have a 2nd,3rd and even 4th shot of the climbing wall.

We thanked Rob, Hannah and Ben for a great activity day and climbed aboard the bus to head to Castle Douglas for a bite to eat. Chip-shop dinners in hand, we stopped the bus by Carlingwark Loch and munched our tasty suppers, before heading back along the A75 towards home.

The kids were an absolute pleasure to be with, the activities were fantastic fun and the chip-shop tea rounded off a perfect day out! Just check out our pictures below to see for yourselves….

 

We had a fantastic time exploring our new Kirkcolm surroundings for Outdoor Classroom Day today!

The sun shone as we headed down Fisher’s Lane to the beach. P1-4 investigated symmetry in the natural environment, explored a measuring challenge and enjoyed creating messages using the Viking Rune alphabet.

P5-7 worked on some sand multiplication challenges, measure and writing about settings – and what a fabulous setting we have.

The older pupils had rugby training in the afternoon and then carried on the fun with a school rounders game. Great fun!

Take a look at the fantastic photos to see just how much fun we all  had! What a brilliant day!

It’s been a busy few weeks here at Leswalt as shelves have been cleared, boxes packed and containers filled in preparation for our temporary move to Kirkcolm whilst our wee school has a refresh! Huge thanks to our buddies at Kirkcolm for letting us come and share their building. Leswalt had its last full makeover in 1989 and we’re super excited about the sparkly shiny school which we will return to some months from now!

We’ve made so many happy memories here; but there are so many more to be made. Our location may be changing for a wee while but we’re still Leswalt pupils! It’s not goodbye but see you soon…

Check out the BEFORE pictures! We can not wait to show you the AFTER!

See you next week at Kirkcolm!

Thanks to today’s Leswalt Litter Picking heroes for all their hard work in keeping our school and community looking fabulous! Several bags of rubbish were collected using great teamwork – top job Leswalt!

Many thanks to Active Schools for their recent delivery of the letters of the alphabet for their upcoming initiative Alphabet Street!

Leswalt gladly took delivery of their letters – and promptly put them to good use spelling out their own message! See below…

As we are on the move to share Kirkcolm’s school and playground very soon whilst our exciting refurbishment gets under way, we will store out alphabet letters for the moment and plan some fun with them on our return! Meanwhile, we will enjoy using Kirkcolm’s letters to participate in the Active Schools Challenges. Thanks Active Schools Team!

P5-7 enjoyed Feis Rois with a difference last term – as their weekly lessons were delivered via Microsoft Teams to their own living rooms!

Jamie and Emily, who are multi-instrument musicians with Feis Rois, led our lessons which had us listening to and identifying different musical genres, participating in Scottish and Gaelic action songs and, rather excitingly, working collaboratively to create a sound postcard!

This involved the pupils who participated in the weekly meetings recording sound effects and an extract each of the spooky local story ‘The Phantom Piper of Dunskey’. Rose designed the artwork for the postcard which was then produced into a final piece incorporating the drawing plus a QR code which can be scanned to hear the story production! Very clever stuff.

Thanks to Malcolm, Aidan, Rose, Noah, Breagh, Murray, Thomas, Tristan and Struan for the story recordings.

Check us out below with the finished articles and our class ipads which we used to scan the QR codes and listen to our work.

Well done to Rose and Holly from completing the D&G Active Schools Miles for Smiles challenge! This was set during Lockdown to encourage people to stay active and the girls had great fun doing this! As a thank you, Laura McClymont popped out today with a water bottle for each of them.

Just look at those smiles! Well done girls.