Author: Mrs McHarg

As part of our Book Week Scotland celebrations, P1-3 pupils all received a Bookbug (P1) or a Read, Write, Count (P2-3) bag this afternoon, as part of the Scottish Government and Scottish Book Trust initiative. Parents/carers popped into school to learn how to use the bags at home to make the most of the learning opportunities that they offer.

After pupils were gifted with their bags, everyone then spent the final 20-minutes of the day exploring and enjoying the contents of the bags. Pupils cosied up and read their new books, some played the dominoes card game, P1 pupils practised writing words on their new whiteboards, and others got their thinking caps on to have a go at the tricky tangram puzzles!

Please check school bags tonight for the wonderful resources that P1-3 pupils have brought home with them. And thank-you to everyone who took the time to come into school today. Have a keek at the photos below to see the fun that everyone had!

Mrs Dinsmore popped into school on Wednesday to say a fond farewell to her time as Clerical Assistant at Leswalt Primary – a post which she has been in for 23 years!

Staff celebrated Mrs Dinsmore’s well-deserved retirement with some tea and cake (kindly made by Michelle, Daisy’s mum) and presented her with some gifts and cards from all in the school community.

Thank you for all of your hard work at Leswalt Primary – we’ll miss you and hope you’ll pop back into school from time to time to visit!

Blog Post by Hamish & Isla –

Yesterday morning the P1-4 class made some delicious salsa using their home-grown tomatoes! 

In the middle of June, pupils planted some tomato plants and when we came back from the summer holidays, they were fully grown and had lots of tomatoes on them! So, Mrs Warwick decided to make some yummy salsa with the class! Everyone helped to make it and most of them enjoyed it when they tried some. They even gave some to the big class to taste test. If you’d like to make some salsa of your own here’s the link to the website they used – How to make salsa | BBC Good Food 

See below for some photos of p1-4 with the salsa!

At our most recent Pupil Council meeting, it was highlighted that we don’t have many non-fiction books in the school library. So our responsible pupils wrote to the Community Reuse Shop to enquire about donations of books. They very kindly invited us to pop into the shop to look through the books and pick a selection for our school.

 

Olivia from Kirkcolm, Alexander from Leswalt and Jack from Portpatrick all went on Wednesday morning to browse the huge range of books available. After an hour of hunting (some were hunting more than others – there were times where pupils were lounging on the floor engrossed in a book they found!!), they each left with a bag of books for their school.

 

Thank-you to the Community Reuse Shop for your generosity. We are looking forward to getting our new books into our school library for pupils to enjoy.

Report by Kaiden & Faye –

On Thursday 25th May all of the P6 pupils went to Operation Safety . The event took place at Stair Park football grounds in Stranraer. There were lots of workshops that we visited. This is a list of the workshops:

• Fire brigade to spot the different hazards to make them safe, like a knife in a toaster or too many plugs in a lead.
• Scottish Power workshop where we spotted electrical hazards outside.
• Stranraer Coastguard for water safety and how to save someone if they are drowning.
• Alcohol and drugs presented by PC McCutcheon where we got to try on beer goggles.

We then had our lunch in the stadium seat and afterwards we visited our last few workshops:

• Anti-social behaviour where we played a song really loudly and the council came and said he was going to fine us £20.
• Ambulance where we learned how to do CPR.

Our favourite workshop was the drugs and alcohol one because the drunk glasses were fun and felt weird.

To make the most of the glorious sunshine and work on some of our Eco targets, the pupils all headed over to the Wetlands on Tuesday afternoon to offer up their services as community volunteers.

The children split into three groups – one group helped with general tidying by raking and weeding; another group were identifying flowers; and the final group were painting stones for the ladybird noughts & crosses game in the willow dome. Pupils also went to see the goose sitting on her eggs in the nest – see if you can spot her in the picture below!

Huge thanks to the adult Wetland volunteers who gave up their time to assist the pupils and set up these activities. We love being able to help out in our community!

Pupils in P5-7 at Kirkcolm, Leswalt and Portpatrick Primary Schools headed off to Abernethy Barcaple Outdoor Centre on Monday for an overnight residential stay.

The boys and girls participated in a range of activities whilst there including archery, abseiling, a challenge course, climbing wall, and team problem solving challenges. Pupils overcame fears and developed their team-working skills throughout the course of our trip. 

After a fun-filled day of activities, everyone enjoyed an evening game of hide and seek in the dark – at which point the staff watched as 50 children ran off into the darkness at a location they had never been before; cue panicking teachers! But thankfully all returned safe and sound, and no one was left to spend the night in the great outdoors! 

We then headed to our rooms to settle down for the night – and despite a lot of sugar being consumed, everyone was asleep by midnight much to the staff’s relief! 

The next day started bright and early with some pupils rising at 6.30am. After breakfast, we finished our final group activities and hopped onto the bus just after lunch time. It was a very quiet journey home with lots of tired little people catching 40 winks to make up for the lack of sleep the night before! 

Everyone had a brilliant time away and enjoyed mixing with pupils from all of our trio schools. 

Can you believe it’s been 3 whole years since our pupils last took to the stage to perform at Christmas time?! Today they were back with a vengeance with their Christmas play ‘Who Took all the Loo Roll?’ The show tells the story of a group of aliens who have been watching us humans from a distant planet and are intrigued by our Christmas traditions, so they decide to visit to learn more.

They are baffled by: the gifting of loo roll (having panic-bought it during covid!); mistletoe (a feeling that is only enhanced when they see great-granny trying to land a smackeroonie on everyone – quite literally as Alexander Clark ran around the audience with some mistletoe!!!) and the most hated vegetable – brussel sprouts! The story culminates in the aliens finding out about why humans celebrate Christmas, with everyone learning that the real hero is actually the donkey – how else would Mary have got to Bethlehem?!

Pupils have been working really hard this term to learn their lines and lyrics and I think anyone who came to watch the show can agree, it definitely paid off! It was lovely to see everyone back together again sharing in the children’s achievements!

As part of our Book Week Scotland celebrations, parents/grandparents were invited into school today to see P1-3 pupils being presented with their Bookbug (P1) and Read, Write, Count (P2-3) bags.

This initiative, ran by the Scottish Book Trust and Scottish Government, sees every P1-3 child receive a free bag which contains beautiful books, educational games and writing materials. The bags are designed to help build parents’ confidence and encourage families to include easy and fun reading, writing and counting activities into their everyday lives.

After being gifted with their bags, pupils then spent some time in class exploring the contents with parents, grandparents and P4 buddies: P1s curled up to listen to some stories; some pupils played snap using their card games; and P2s had fun trying to create various tangram shapes – although it seemed to be more of a challenge to get the tangram pieces back into the holder at the end than it was to create the shapes!!

We hope you all enjoy exploring the contents of the bag with your child at home!

 

Mrs Buchanan popped into the playground today, to see the boys and girls on their first day back at school – and was welcomed by lots of smiling faces who were super happy to be reunited with all their friends. She visited for another very special reason too – to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of the Dunblane tragedy.

Just before the end of the day, we all stood around the Dunblane memorial in the playground, and Mrs McHarg said a few words about how lucky we are to all be back at school together. Our oldest and youngest pupils, Lily and Andrew, then laid some flowers that Mrs Buchanan brought on the memorial and we stood in silence for a few moments. Pupils then took it in turns to say why they are glad to be back at school or, for those younger pupils who have already been back for a few weeks, what they’ve enjoyed about being back so far.

The moment certainly helped us to reflect and appreciate how lucky we are to be able to come to school safely together.