Leswalt Primary schoolchildren will be taking centre stage at next week’s Royal Highland Show when they present “Scotland’s Larder Showcase”. Leswalt Primary School has been selected to represent Dumfries and Galloway, and potato farming. The whole school will travel to The Royal Highland Show next Friday to perform in front of a crowd of an estimated 30, 000 visitors.
Organised by the Royal Highland Education Trust, the main ring event – at 2.00 pm on the Friday of the show – sees pupils from schools throughout Scotland featuring a range of Scottish produce including beef, lamb, pigs, eggs, milk, soft fruit, fish, poultry, game, potatoes and vegetables. Each of the school groups was chosen by the local RHET Project Co-ordinator and allocated an item of produce. They were given a brief to prepare in class, interpreting the produce in the context of Scottish food production, branding and the journey from farm gate to plate.
At the show, a pipe band will lead the groups, “colour-coded” in different T-shirts, into the main ring. One pupil from each group will then introduce the school while another recites a rhyme about the produce. Mairi Lammie (p7 ) will take the microphone to introduce Leswalt Primary before Andrew Mc Millan (p7) will recite the verse composed by Mrs Buchanan, p1-4 teacher. All schools will then dance their specially choreographed routine in the ring to the rousing sound of The Proclaimers’ (I’m Gonna Be) 500 miles.
Not only will Leswalt Primary be representing potatoes, they will also be dressed up as potatoes! Pupils will wear customised tattie bunnets which parents have been busy helping create. Pupils will also be strutting their stuff in customised kilts. Local potato producer Fergus Little has supplied the school with potato sacks which have been creatively turned into kilts for the pupils!
Other schools participating are as follows: Fife Countryside Initiative – Pittenweem (vegetables); Lothians CI – Newtongrange (pigs); Borders CI – Broughton (eggs); Perth & Kinross CI – Glendelvine (game/venison); Ayrshire CI – Dreghorn (milk); Clyde CI and Dumbarton, Lomond & Renfrew CI – Bridge of Weir (poultry and lamb); Highland CI – Alvie (fish); Royal Northern CI – Milltimber (beef); and Angus CI – Southmuir (soft fruit).
“Scotland’s Larder Showcase” is one of a number of RHET activities at the show with the main focus at the Dobbies Children’s Discovery Centre where the theme will be “From Past To Present”, encouraging interest in farming, food and rural life through the ages.
RHET Manager Alison Motion said: “The Royal Highland Show is a highlight of our year-round programme of taking children onto farms and estates or having farmer speakers in the classroom. Although it’s all about enjoyment, we want to make sure our visiting children go away with more understanding of farming and food production. We are also thrilled to have a main ring spot as this will demonstrate to show visitors just how RHET connects with schools in Scotland.”
Mrs Sheila Baillie, Headteacher at Leswalt Primary, adds “This will be a fantastic experience for all of our pupils. It will be a day that they will remember for the rest of their life; the day they went to the Highland Show with the school, and danced like a tattie in the main ring in front of thousands of people! We are all very excited!”
The Royal Highland Show takes place on June 23-26 at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Edinburgh.
Leswalt Primary School have continued their study of “Farming” by a trip to Glenhead poultry unit, near Leswalt.
The whole school set off on a sunny afternoon for a hike up to Glenhead Farm. Pupils passed through Aldouran Wetland Gardens before the scenic and sensory experience of the Glen walk, which was alive with the smell of wild garlic.
On arriving at the top of the Glen pupils were met by Mr James Baxter at his recently purpose built unit. Pupils were just in time to see the hens coming out to play. The unit is home to 32,000 hens – which did get very noisy!
Once inside the shed pupils learned about the conditions “Happy Eggs” are produced in. The children saw the range of egg yolk colours and were fascinated to hear how different countries like Japan and America all had a preference for different coloured yolk.
Pupils saw thousands of hens- both inside and outside before the conveyor belt was started up and thousands of eggs moved along the line. After cleaning and checking all the eggs were stamped with the Baxter’s special code before being placed in trays and sent away.
It was a very interesting visit for all the staff and pupils of Leswalt. The walk back down to school was a time to reflect on what they learned and how they would cook the half dozen eggs that the Baxter’s generously gave everyone. As well as receiving 6 eggs to cook, children also got one hard boiled white egg. This egg is to be decorated with a farmyard theme (it could turn into a pig, cow, Old MacDonald or even a tractor) and be returned to school as a homework challenge. Mrs Baillie is looking forward to seeing the eggs-cellant, imaginative eggs returning to school next week.
On Friday 27th May a choreographer travelled all the way from Fife to teach the pupils of Leswalt Primary school a very special dance. The school will be travelling to The Royal Highland Show on Friday 24th June, to represent Dumfries and Galloway in unique main ring event.
Nine schools from different regions in Scotland will perform in the main ring and represent 9 different types of Farming. Leswalt Primary will represent potato farming.
At 2pm, after taking the microphone to say a few words the boys and girls will strut their stuff to The Proclaimers “500 Miles”, dressed like tatties! It is a fast paced routine, but hopefully the boys and girls can pull it off with pride!
Will you be there to see us?!
This term the whole school topic focus at Leswalt Primary is “Farming”. The school has linked up with RHET, The Royal Highland Education Trust, to further develop this work. As part of this partnership all the pupils at Leswalt Primary went a trip to West Galdenoch Farm to learn more about Dairy Farming. Garry Mitchell is a RHET linked farmer and he spent an afternoon with the boys and girls from Leswalt. Fiona Jamieson the RHEt co-ordinator for Dumfries and Galloway was also on hand to meet the pupils and explain more.
The pupils learned how the milk from West Galdenoch helps make Kit Kats, as milk is sold to Nestle. Pupils helped feed the calves, learned more about stock welfare and paid a visit into the state of the art Rotary milking parlour.
This visit to West Galdenoch really brought alive prior learning in the classroom. Mr Mitchell said he would welcom back Leswalt Primary pupils in a few years time to help him milk his cows and gave everyone a Kit Kat biscuit to reinforce where the milk went once it left the farm.
“I enjoyed feeding his calves” said James Murray in P4
“It was funny when the wee calf was trying to lick me” Craig Anderson p4
“I liked seeing all the cows going round and round in the parlour. I enjoyed my Kit Kat!” Rhona Baillie p3
“It was interesting learning about the difference between a heifer and a cow – I could tell by the size of their bags. A heifer has not had any calves” Mark Mc Colm p7
The whole school recently enjoyed the sunshine at Logan Gardens, in conclusion to their “James and the Giant peach”/Minibeasts topic. Pupils were actively involved in creating little “Bug Hotels”, using resources in and around the grounds.
