Author: Mrs Baillie

All the children enjoyed a turkey dinner in school last week.  With the Christmas music playing in the background they sat down together, with staff to enjoy the traditional Christmas meal with all the trimmings. 

And the verdict – “it was yummy!”

 

On Friday 11th of December the whole school went a trip to see the pantomime “Jack and the Beanstalk” at Ayr Gaeity theatre.  Having left Leswalt in the morning, they enjoyed a delicious lunch at the Stage Door Café in Ayr, before a wee wander round the shops and the performance.  At half time, ice creams were provided and Phoebe was lucky enough to find a golden ticket – which allowed her the chance to go up on the stage and take part in some juggling!

The children all enjoyed the pantomime, accompanied by staff and some of their parents.  The tickets and transport for the school children was very kindly paid for by the Parent council fundraising group, as a Christmas treat to all the pupils.  And, Gillian from Leswalt Stores kindly donated a huge bag of sweets to enable every child to have a treat while they watched the pantomime.

Did they all have a good time? – “oh yes they did!!!”

 

Mrs Smith recently took Primary 1 a walk round Aldouran Wetlands.  AS part of their STAR awards in wider achievement the children are expected to be able to say where the Wetlands are.  So, one crisp December morning Mrs Smith and her happy little gang of p1 pupils went a walk to see for themselves.  Have a look at the happy wee faces!

Stewart Fisher from Dunskey golf club has just finished a 4 week slot of Tri golf as an after school club.  Every Thursday, younger pupils stayed after school to pick up some top golfing tips from the professional.  They worked hard on their swing and got some target practise in, in our gym hall.

Rory McIlroy – watch out!  Our little golfers are shouting “Fore!”

P1-4 have been cooking up a storm at Leswalt Primary raising money for Children in Need. This terms topic is Citizenship and the class were given responsibility for planning, organising and running this year’s fundraising activities.

Iona from P4 explained that their first task was to brainstorm different ideas of how they could raise as much money as possible. “We then had to vote for our favourite ones and the ones we chose were selling wristbands, quizzes, Pudsey buns and a teacher’s Big Maths Challenge!  We also chose a ‘Champion’ themed come as you are day.”

The children then spilt into groups and were given responsibility for one activity.“We had to create posters, make quizzes, calculate costs and a daily timetable to keep ourselves organised.” Jenna P4The class then had to share their plans with the whole school, so chose to launch Children in Need 2015 at assembly.

 The children worked extremely hard over the next few weeks, selling out of wristbands and received an amazing amount of orders for their Pudsey buns. One pupil in particular (Logan P4), gave up his Saturday morning to help boost the sales of quizzes in Leswalt shop!

On the day, over 250 buns were made and delivered home to customers. Nearly 100 wristbands were sold and over 100 quizzes were marked and a winner chosen. 

The teachers also had to test their brains with a Big Maths challenge and the losers – Mrs Baillie and Miss Cambridge- received a cream pie in the face courtesy of Gregor Reid, and Logan Wilson.  Mrs Mc Knight the organiser of all events sat smugly in the corner, as the winner of the Big Maths test.

 The grand total raised on the day was £246.01 which is a fantastic amount for such a small school. Mrs McKnight would like to give thanks for the support from parents, Soleburn and Gillian and all the girls at Leswalt Store for their efforts but a special mention must go to the girls and boys in P1-4 who have worked their little socks off and proven themselves to be very responsible citizens!

Both classes has a visit from the SSPCA on Friday.  Tracey came along and spoke to the younger class about her role in helping care for animals in Scotland, before moving to P5-7 and have a workshop session on Scotland’s wildlife.

All the children enjoyed this visit and had plenty of questions for our visitor.

The children of Leswalt Primary had a fun Hallowe’en party in school.  This was organised by Primary 7 pupils as part of their STAR awards programme.

 

Everyone looked really fantastic and spooky – have a look at our photographs!

 

 

 

Primary 1-4 have been learning all about their local community this term.  As part of their learning, Richard Arkless MP was invited in to explain more about his role in helping the local community develop.  He was asked lots of very thoughtful questions by the pupils including;

“What is the best/worst part about your job?”

“What would you really like to see changes in Stranraer?”

“Do you ever argue with anyone?” and

“Do you get to sit in David Cameron’s seat?”

The children were really interested in how Parliament worked and learned a lot from their visitor. 

Mr Arkless was impressed with how engaged the children were and said that if they needed any assistance in anything they were just to get in touch.  Logan did raise the point that he thought there should be a Formula One track built in Stranraer.  Mr Arkless also liked that suggestion………..we will need to wait and see if he raises that at Prime Minister’s questions time, in Westminster!

A few weeks ago a visitor to the school asked the children what was the monument on their school jumpers and at the top of the hill.  Answers included “the Queen used to live up there” and “the Nazis landed there”.  Mrs Baillie thought it was important all the boys and girls knew the significance of the monument which has been adopted as the school logo, and felt they should all know more. 

So, this afternoon the whole school walked one mile up to the Leswalt monument.  It tied in well with the p1-4 project on their community and responded to the needs and requests from children for more information.  The children learned it was built in 1850 in memorial to Andrew Agnew, who represented the community in Parliament. 

The school admired the stunning views from the top of the hill, looking at how calm Loch Ryan was, picking out Stranraer, spotting the school and even a few houses they recognised.  They were disappointed to learn you could not go inside the monument as it does not have any windows or doors.

The children all enjoyed the Friday afternoon walk – with Phoebe asking “I love this, can we go a walk every Friday afternoon?”.  It was one mile up to the monument and one mile back down.  Mrs Baillie said she felt like the “Grand Old Duke of York”  marching them all to the top of the hill, and then they marched back down again!

 

Primary 1-4 at Leswalt Primary have been learning all about community development this term.  As part of that work they have been looking at the process of building development.  In class the pupils were asked to design and plan out their dream house.  The tricky part came next – as Mrs Mc Knight, the class teacher, then asked the pupils to take their plans home and actually build the house, with help from parents.  The houses that were built were amazing – as support from parents was phenomenal.  

Design features that were incorporated into pupils’ plans included garages, conservatories, solar panels, flues for log burners, drain pipes and even Santa going down a chimney.A wide range of materials was used by children at home to build their model houses – including clay, wood, card, gravel, gingerbread and even a rough cast of sand, paint and glue. 

The learning of the process of building was reinforced when Ian Mac Fadzean (architect), Tommy Currie and Iona Brooke (planning department) and Ian Marshall (Luce Bay construction) were invited into school to come and tell the children more about their role.  They came in with tools and plans to illustrate to the class how they went about their job.  The pupils asked lots of questions and learned more about the process of building a house and possible careers in the future.

At the end of the question and answer session, Mr Currie, Mr Marshall and Mr Mac Fadzean were set their own challenge – they had to pick their favourite house.  All agreed it was a very difficult job before opting for Aidan (p1) and his gingerbread house which he baked with Mum, Chloe (p2) and her cottage which she rough casted with mum and Auryn (p3) and Breagh (p1) who worked with Mum to make a mansion complete with drain pipes, hanging baskets and window boxes.

The children learned a tremendous amount through this active learning and community involvement and the professionals left Leswalt Primary that day fearing for their jobs, after seeing the skills and knowledge demonstrated by the children!