Primary 7 at Leswalt continued the long standing tradition of going for a Christmas meal out together. This year the children went to enjoy the hospitality of the Craignelder Hotel, in Stranraer. The group enjoyed a delicious 3 course meal in the company of some school staff and Mrs Buchanan, who was the Primary 1 teacher of this year group. The evening was partly funded by a donation from Leswalt Parent council. After the last cracker was pulled and all turkey was finished, the children received a Chrsitmas present – which Mrs Buchanan handed out. Kathryn Topping wrote a thank you letter to Mr Mc Millan of The Craignelder Hotel, thanking him for the wonderful evening and said “if I was to rate this night on Trip Advisor, I would give it 5 out of 5 stars!”.
Leswalt Primary opened it’s door to Parents and friends of the school this week and had a Christmas Open afternoon. Everyone was able to make a wide variety of Christmas crafts and artwork with the pupils in classrooms. The Christmas music was playing, and the glitter was out in force. The afternoon concluded with a performance by Arden, Kayleigh and Kathryn of Christmas Carols played on the cornet. The whole school then came together to entertain by singing a variety of Christmas songs to the assembled audience. Everyone left Leswalt school at 3pm that day, with a real sense of Christmas – and their arms full of decorations they had made!
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.
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!
The champions of Leswalt Primary
Rory Mc Illroy and Rugby World Cup champions
Rory Mc and his golfing girlies
Lewis Hamilton and co
Helmets off for the podium
Sporting champs
Cute champs
Busy baking
what a team!
euan literally “put an egg” into the cake mixture!!
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.
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!
