Author: Mrs Baillie

The school and community came together for the Parent council organised Santa dash this afternoon, after school today.

To the festive tunes from the brass band, little Santas raced round the village to raise funds for the Parent council.

All entrants were provided with a Santa hat at the start and medal at the end – many thanks to Leswalt village stores for this sponsorship.

At the end, hot chocolate, mince pies and shortbread was on hand for all – many thanks to Lidl for donating this.

Thank you also to the musicians and members of the community association who also helped out.  It was a fun event that spread the Christmas cheer round the streets of Leswalt!  The fundraising total will be announced next week.

PC Mc Gregor paid a visit to Leswalt Primary today to collect all the donations from the children for their Police Scotland Youth volunteers Christmas appeal.

The boys and girls had brought in lots of items such as shower gel, biscuits, tins of soup, toothpaste and gloves.  These items will be made up into mini hampers and distributed amongst elderly people in the community.

The photograph shows the Eco Committee handing over the goodies to PC Mc Gregor.  Well done to all at Leswalt Primary for thinking of others at this time of year.

Our superstar singers of Leswalt Primary went on tour on Friday night and performed at Leswalt community concert.  Our little choir of volunteers opened the show with a sneak preview of two songs which they will all perform in their forthcoming Christmas show.

Fourteen of our pupils gave up their Friday night to entertain the local community in Leswalt Memorial hall.  Many thanks must go to the boys and girls, and their parents for this support. All the children have been rewarded with a merit for their efforts.  And, the feedback from the audience was that they were great!

Well done everyone!

Pupils of Leswalt Primary paid their respects today, on Armistice Day.

At 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month, all pupils visited the Memorial in Leswalt.

At the memorial, Daisy, house captain, read the poem “Flanders Fields”.  The oldest and youngest pupils at school, Sean and Gregor, laid the wreath.  This wreath was made by all at Leswalt Primary and was made by drawing round all of their hands.

Leswalt Primary all had some fabulous frightening fun at their Hallowe’en party today.

Some pupils came to school dressed in their spookiest best , and some had a costume change at lunchtime– we had a lot of zombified professions as well as some classics!

The party started with the best costume from each year group – this year Patricia the dinner lady had the very difficult task of judging . You can see from the photos everyone looked super spooky A big well done to the parents as well as the pupils – a lot of effort went into some of these costumes! 🧛‍♀️🦇🎃

The fabulously spooky winners were:
P1 – Betty
P2 – Cameron
P3 – Eilidh
P4 – Lily
P6 – Murray 
P7 – Daisy

Then we got stuck into some games. Pupils had a blast playing the games organised by the house captains.  The games began with everyone strutting their stuff to prove who was the best dancer.  Mrs Kyle was our own Craig Revel Horwood and judged the moves on the dancefloor. It was a win for the wee class with Beathan, Gregor , Jorgie and Hannah winning our glitterball ( or tubes of sweeties!)

Next was  a very competitive game of creepy corners, which features a lot of strategising but our final winner was Cameron! Next up we played pass the pumpkin with two of the smallest pumpkins ever  – our winners were Emma (P1-4) and Ela (P5-7). 👻💀

Zombie Arms was next on the agenda, when the music stopped arms would mysteriously disappear and pupils had to find somewhere to link up.  Our winners for this were Hannah (p1-4) and Colin (p5-7)

After all that running around we were all feeling a bit hot and sweaty so we thought why not cool ourselves down by sticking our heads in a huge bowl of water, filled with apples!! 🍎 Both classes played Dookin’ for Apples, a fan favourite which was lots of fun! Those wearing face paint sadly had to sacrifice their carefully painted designs in attempt to retrieve an apple, which meant we had some very wet, soggy looking pandas leaving the playground at 3pm!! 🍎🐼

Everyone left after “the best party ever” ( quote from some soggy P7s!) and was given a toffee apple and sweet treat from Leswalt Community association – who also provided all the prizes and apples, many thanks must go to them for their generosity. 

The  planning and hard work of this party has to go to the House captains, Isla and Daisy who have been working hard from the very beginning to ensure everything was ready to go and they put on an excellent time for the whole school!  ⭐🤩

Well done team! 

#Article31 The right to rest relax and play

• Had an introduction to gardening  – growing plants, veg, fruit, flowers, herbs
• Why we garden – look nice, medicine, cosmetics, dyes, food our mental health and keeping us fit
• We then had a walk and talk about the garden and they showed me all the nooks 

• Hang the bug hotels up donated by Lidl
• Start clipping back the willow dome and have a good sweep up
• Set up a night time camera to see what animals might appear!

  

  

  

This afternoon the school closed for the Summer holidays.  But first, the hard work of our pupils was celebrated and the following awards were handed out –

100% attendance award –  Colin Mc Gregor 

Excellent attendance   –   Ellie Bennewith, Lily Bennewith, Hamish Mc Gregor, Beathan Wright ,Daisy Doyle  

Accelerated reading star readers   

P2    Eilidh Ramsay (23 tests passed) 

P3    Lily Bennewith 22 tests passed 

P5   Colin Mc Gregor ( 30.4) and Rachael Drummond (most books – 17) 

P6    Isla Kirkpatrick  (most points 37) and Ela Chang (most books – 16) 

P7    Hamish Mc Gregor ( most points 87.4) and Cara Jamieson ( most  books 15) 

Responsible citizen
P1	Jorgie – never gives us a moment of trouble. Kind, caring, always includes everyone. Works hard and tries her best, setting a super example to others. Full of chat and will happily converse with both adults and pupils alike.
P2/3	Thea –  Always smiling.  Knows right from wrong and demonstrates this.  Grown in confidence.
P5	Ben T – kind, helpful, caring and honest. Respectful and cheery member of our wee team.
P6	Ellie B – hard-working, eager to please.
P7	Carys – super House Captain, responsible, fair and reliable.

 

Who has passed Platinum rainbow tables this year?  

Colin, Roman, Ela, Ewan, Ellie, Daisy, Isla, Katie, Ben G, Amelia, Carys, Kaiden, Mark, Sean and Holly 

Who has passed platinum rainbow spelling this year?  

Brandon, Ela, Daisy, 

Gold star awards –  James Hunter, Keira Richardson, Beathan Wright 

Intervention effort with Mrs Kyle – Aria Rose, Ellie and Sean Paul 

Excellence in effort in homework – Thea Fisher – both in class and with reading with Mrs Kyle 

Outdoor education award – Cameron Mc Donald – outstanding general knowledge about birds and very helpful at recent Wetlands work. 

Sports 

Sports champions certificates 

P1 – Beathan Wright 

P2/3-  Hannah Drummond   

P5 –   Murray Reid  

P6 –    Sean Mc Credie 

P7 – Mark Drummond 

House points shield 

Most merits in p1-4  =   Keira Richardson 

Most merits in p5-7   =  Colin Mc Gregor 

Soleburn –      153   (sports) +  505     =  658 

Lochnaw –       100   (sports) +   599    =  699 

Winning house captain –  Lochnaw – Hamish Mc Gregor 

Runner up house captain  – Soleburn – Carys Mc Hallum 

 

	P1-4	P5-7
Literacy award	Keira – Sets herself high standards and strives in ever task to meet them. Work is beautifully presented, neat and tidy. Her progress in reading is of particular note.	Cara – great progress! Spelling, presentation, maturity of writing. AR – passed an incredible 15 tests and read over ½ million words!
Numeracy award	James – what can we say! Awesome progress, thrives on a challenge.	Brandon – lightning quick mental maths king! Raised his game considerably this year – working with peers on challenging tasks, Beat That maths 72/72  in an unbelievable 1 min 17secs and powering through Platinum CLIC challenges!
HWB award	HWB award Emma – always arrives at school smiling and happy, even though she may be feeling tired and under the weather. Joins in tasks fully and tackles them happily. Not afraid to stand up for herself when she needs to! Mother hen to the P1 boys	Ewan – need a problem solve? Mr C. Need a job done? Mr C. Need a level-headed (mostly) perspective? Mr C! Always has valid points to add to discussion, enjoys sports and being active and is always keen to lend a hand for PE organisation. One of life’s do-ers J
NRP award	Beathan – over the year he has developed a real ‘can-do’ attitude (this is huge progress from the moany boy in term 1!). His progress across all curriculum areas is impressive and he thrives on challenge and new learning	Faye – caring and thoughtful, hard-working and self-motivated, reliable and sensible – possibly more so than me! Faye embodies every thread of the NRP values.

 

Nina Agnew Creativity award – Ela Chang  – First in Scots poetry. Drama club member.   Singing, representing the school at Leswalt concert and Burns Club new tattie night. Baking cookies for all!

P5-7 Award for endeavour –    Hamish Mc Gregor – for trying his hardest in every curricular area over his 7 years at Primary school.  A great role model to all.

Leswalt primary slideshow June 24 (youtube.com)

Leswalt Primary 7 leavers – June 2024 (youtube.com)

We are very much looking forward to having our new Primary 1 pupils starting in school . 

And, thanks to the digital skills of Mrs Mc Harg and the House captains we have an amazing  electronic book that will help explain more about Leswalt Primary.  It is just so good we had to share it with all of our parents. 

Click on the link here and I am sure you will be impressed with the information, photographs and videos – all about life at Leswalt Primary.

 

 

After a night of very heavy rain , it did finally dry up to allow us to have our Sports day at Leswalt. Cheered on by classmates, friends and family everyone tried their hardest and displayed a very sporting attitude.

Many thanks must go to David Kirkpatrick and Angus Brown who helped transport all the equipment across to the park. Thank you also to Natasha for the kind gesture of a sweetie mixture which every child got at 3pm, and the Parent council for the ice lollies at the end to cool everyone down.

Results will follow soon – with the winning house announced in the last week of term. It was a successful sporting afternoon – have a look at all the athletes in action!

After taking part in a verification assessment yesterday, we are delighted to announce we have been awarded the new Digital Schools Scotland Accreditation.

Portpatrick, Kirkcolm and Leswalt are the first schools in Dumfries and Galloway to achieve this recognition for our ongoing commitment to digital technology learning and teaching.

Have a read of the report to see for yourself all the excellent work which has been recognised –

Dumfries & Galloway – Kirkcolm, Leswalt and Portpatrick Schools Validation Report 11.06.24 (1).pdf

UNCRC Rights of the Child – 28 Access to Education, 29 – Aims of Education