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All three school communities came together on Saturday for our annual Kirkcolm Mini Walk to raise funds for our schools and to enjoy a social fitness activity together.

Despite the threat of rain, the weather stayed dry enough to allow our walkers to enjoy a run or a stroll around the beautiful scenery of our Kirkcolm coastal area.

First, second and third places are awarded for the boys and girls completing the course in the quickest time.  The first boy and girl tied, crossing the line together. The results are as follows:

Boys:

1. George Keith – Kirkcolm P6
2. Danny Dougan – Kirkcolm P5
3. James Turtle – Kirkcolm P6

Girls:

1. Olivia Turtle – Kirkcolm P7
2. Izzy White – Portpatrick P7
3. Miley Adams – Kirkcolm P7

Our Winners: Olivia & George

 

 

 

 

 

 

The route followed along the Corsewall Estate Coastal Path. A very well done to everyone who walked or ran the course.  There was great camaraderie and high spirits as everyone progressed around the route.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are very grateful to those who were sponsored to take part in the event.  Each school has raised their own total, which will be announced shorty.   The money will be put to very good use for the children.

Our schools would like to thank:

• Our parents and families who planned and organised the mini-walk
• The Carrick-Buchanan and Milroy family for their kind  permission to walk on their land
• The volunteer  marshals & photographers
• Lidl and Tesco  for the donation of refreshment
• and to ALL the children and families who fundraised and participated to raise money for our three fantastic wee schools!  We applaud each and every one of you who took part.

Enjoy these photographs from the event:

Having received 20 fantastic free Microbits for our school, Mrs McKnight’s P1-4 and Mrs Ferguson’s P5-6 decided to join a Code Along Live Lesson today hosted by Education Scotland! What better way to learn than by working together, learning by doing and being guided step-by-step?!

As the P7 pupils were enjoying their S1 Stranraer Academy transition day, P1-6 decided to buddy up and find out more together.

The Digital Leaders , Rose and Thomas (along with their helpers Breagh and Hamish) got busy setting up the microbits so that we were ready to go at 11am! This involved inserting battery packs, connecting them to the laptops and logging on to the makecode website.

Microsoft MakeCode for micro:bit (microbit.org)

Joining up in the P1-4 classroom, the eager coders followed the live lesson by programming their Microbit to guide them through calming breathing exercises – all very cool stuff!

Following this, our intrepid teams explored the coding tools and created a range of different programmes: from their microbit displaying their names to playing music and all sorts in between! Some pupils were able to share their tips with their classmates too!

Hands-on learning together and lots of fun!

As part of younger pupils learning all about caring for babies, our younger pupils enjoyed the company of Miss Maeva Mc Harg.  Mrs Mc Harg brought in her baby daughter, who has just turned one, to allow all to appreciate all the more, what caring for a baby involves.  This is part of the health and well being teaching planned for p1-4 this term.

There was lots of questions for Mummy Mc Harg and lots of happy little faces enthralled by the cute Miss Maeva who enjoyed crawling about the gym hall.

Many thanks to Mrs Mc Harg and Maeva for coming in – the cute little visitor brightened up the day for all in school!

After a long delay due to Covid, the annual Primary 7 Rotary Lunch event recommenced today.

Breagh and Aidan represented Leswalt Primary  at this year’s event where the guest speakers were Bejing Olympic Gold and Silver Curling Medallists Vicky Wright (Gold), Bobby Lammie (Silver) and Hammy McMillan (Silver).

They enjoyed a tasty lunch of Tomato soup or fruit juice, followed by fish and chips.  This was followed by a Q & A session with our Olympians.  They talked about practicing for about 7 hours a day, five days a week and travelling a lot for competitions. The curling sports heroes said that they were first introduced to curling by attending the curling club at the North West Castle in Primary 7. So, now is about the time for anyone interested in curling as a sport to think about joining.

Our Leswalt team rocked up at the North West Castle wearing Scotland tops that once belonged to Vicky Wright, who also went to our school.

 Both represented our school well, chatting easily with a member of the Rotary Club, who joined us at our table throughout the event.

#confident individuals

Today, P5-7 recapped on their term 3 French Food and Drink topic by hosting their own mini cafe for their classmates!

Having created some French themed table decorations, designed menu cards and created handy phrase cards to be placed on the tables – the pupils were all ready to say Bonjour!

With some background French cafe style jazz music playing, the pupils took it in turns to role-play as the waiter/customer and order from the delicious menu including pain au chocolat, croissant avec buerre ou fromage ou confiture, brioche et crepes au chocolat. There was also jus d’orange and jus de pomme to wash the tasty snacks down!

A fun way to reinforce our French learning.

Merci beaucoup!

Tattie Report – By Aidan and Rose 

On the Thursday the 12th of May, we planted potatoes with Mrs Richardson. We planted the potato seeds in tyres that used to have flowers in them – reusing and recycling! We needed to make sure that we covered them up in soil. We also watered them so they didn’t dry out. We really enjoyed it and it will be great to help in our mission to be more eco-friendly. Hopefully we get a great crop of tatties to enjoy when we harvest them! 

 

 

It is Schools’ Week at Logan Botanic Gardens! Leswalt Primary ventured there today. Read the fabulous blog reports below to find out more…

Logan Gardens Trip by P1-4

P1-4 enjoyed a fun morning at Logan Gardens with ranger Kate.  Our activity was called The Teddy Bear’s Picnic and we had to take along with us our favourite stuffed toys.  We learned about something called S.W.A.F.  This stood for Shelter, Water, Air and Food, all the things our bears needed for survival.  We then enjoyed some fun activities using our senses including Musical Trees, a Rainbow Nature Search and building an island for our bears to live on.  

Logan Gardens Trip by Hamish McGregor

This morning, the whole of Leswalt Primary went to Logan Botanic Gardens. The P5-7 class found out about the Science of Plants (Botany). We started by learning about the different parts of a flower (stem, stamen, pollen, stigma) and the class did a roleplay of the lifecycle of a plant – I dressed up as a bee! After this, we were handed out hand lenses and we looked really closely at plants, petals, flowers and leaves. The lenses made each thing 10x bigger! We did lots of other fun activities too like; wearing blue or red lens glasses to see the plants as birds or bees do; hiding raisins as a squirrel would and pretending to be flying seeds for seed dispersal. It was a really fun and enjoyable trip!

Logan Gardens Trip by Alfie Baker

Today our whole school went on a bus to Logan Gardens. When we got there, we lined up and a leader took us to find out about the life cycle of a plant. The wee ones had a teddy bear’s picnic. We got to use hand lenses to magnify plants and bugs – we could even see the tiny hairs on flowers! We saw two geese (the mum and dad) and seven goslings walking about the gardens and swimming on the pond. For lunch, we sat on a big tarpaulin and ate our packed lunches and chatted. We headed back to school after a lovely morning.

 

 

As part of our Eco work this term, Mrs Richardson suggested we grow cress and then use what we’d grown! A great lesson in sustainability.

Over to…. our three intrepid Blog reporters; Faye Adams, Rose Santangeli and Carys McHallum  for more information!

We started growing cress with our class. Mrs Richardson helped us. We grew the cress on a paper towel on a plate in the portacabin. We did this on the 21st April and, on the 5th May, we harvested it and ate it in egg and cress sandwiches. I’m not keen on egg so I tried just cress but I wasn’t too sure of it! By Faye

Two weeks ago, we started growing cress in our classroom. We put the tiny seeds on a paper towel on a plate and kept them wet. The cress was kept in the classroom, in the middle of our desk. Mrs Richardson guided us on what to do, how to look after them and how not to drown them! Our table was doing really well with their cress growing – though on the 12th day it did look a bit squashed! We tried to revive the cress with more water and this did help to bring it back to life. We cut it up (harvested it) on the 5th May and added it to egg mayo (eggs brought in by Hamish and Malcolm) to make egg and cress sandwiches. I enjoyed the cress; it had a peppery flavour. This taught me that I could easily grow cress at home!  By Rose

We started growing cress on the 21st April. At first it grew the tiniest bit but it was still growing! Don’t worry we did water it and that helped it to really grow! Because we weren’t at school last Monday, it went an extra day without water and so it looked as if it had died. But a good water really helped it. We mixed it in with egg mayo from eggs from the McGregor’s chickens. Everybody helped to make sandwiches and tried the egg and cress – or just cress sandwiches. I LOVED it! Thank you Mrs Richardson! By Carys

 

The sun shone, the pupils listened and the presentations were informative and fun – safe to say the North Rhins Partnership Safety morning was the most resounding success!

This term’s Health and Well-Being focus for the upper primaries was centred on Risk-Taking Behaviour; in short, what to do if faced with an emergency situation. Having discussed this as a staff, it was felt there was no better plan than to get as many local emergency services as possible together to offer the pupils a first-hand experience directly from those who dealt with such situations. And what a response we got from the community! No less than seven presenters offered their time covering RNLI, Police, Ambulance, Fire Service, Coastguard, Scottish Power and Farming!

Working in small groups and armed with a clipboard for note-taking; the pupils moved round each station in 15 minute slots. Listening to the presentations, finding out about the kits carried by each service and asking their pre-prepared questions – the groups collected a wealth of information.

Summing up the morning, Mrs Baillie led the group in talking about these jobs based in their local community, considering the many employability skills required and discussing whether the jobs were paid careers or voluntary. It was interesting for the children to understand the value of volunteer work and giving back to their community.

All in all, it was an excellent morning of learning in the sunshine with friends. And, they are all a great deal more safety savvy now too!

A huge thank you must go to all of the services for giving up their time – one having come of their fourth night shift! Their input was most welcome by us all.

Enjoy flicking through the photos below to see for yourselves.

Alexander Clark  – our term 3 reading raffle winner was presented with an Easter egg by our House Captains Malcolm and Breagh.

To be in with a chance of winning the reading raffle, you need to read a book, take a test on the book and score 100%! Your name is recorded on  the 100% Readers wall and then it is entered into a raffle at the end of term. So the more books you read, the more chance you have to win and today that very winner was Alexander Clark!

Alexander said “I really enjoy reading lots of books. I school, I choose books from the library and read them in Chill n’ Read time. At home, I read the Oor Wullie books  and the Scottish Farmer to check  the prices of the livestock!”

Reading is a great skill to have! Who will be the Reading Raffle Champion in term 4!