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Primary 7 from Portpatrick, Leswalt and Kirkcolm were treated to a curling experience at the North West Castle today.

The children were split into teams of 5 with each member allocated aged a role as either sweepers, throwers or a skip skip.

Gail gave a motivating speech, sharing the great Olympic success we have in our community. She explained the format of the day and the terminology of curling such as weight line, handle, stabiliser, slider and stone. Everyone enthusiastically got started with a warm up.

After a practice, the boys and girls were placed in teams. The winners were judged on the best performance out of eight tries of getting a stone as close to the target as possible.

There was a break for juice and biscuits kindly provided by the North West Castle. Our thanks to all the coaches and to the Castle for their kind hosting.
Our groups did very well in their teams and were praised for their strong results.  Each participant received a certificate and an invitation to return for the curling club sessions.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 15 Setting Up & Joining Groups.

Today the pupils of Leswalt Primary headed to the war memorial to pay their respects ahead of Remembrance Day tomorrow.

Before we left, we watched a short video clip from PoppyScotland and talked about the reasons behind the poppies which the House Captains Hamish and Carys had been visiting each class with over the last week. We took some time to think about how their donations would be used and why they were needed. We also found out a little about the history of the poppy and then, taking our own home-crafted willow wreath, we set off for Leswalt’s war memorial.

There we read the inscriptions on the memorial, the House Captains laid our wreath and we held our own two minute silence as pupils showed their respect to all those past and present who have served their country.

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!

This week is Computing Science Week – a chance for us all to investigate, discuss and explore different aspects of the Computing Science world.

From chatting about the HUGE variety of jobs under the Computing Science umbrella, watching and talking about women in engineering (hopefully we have a few budding male and female engineers of the future in our class!), exploring coding using Spheros at our college campus day and using ipads, laptops and PC.s to create video games through the Microsoft MakeCode website ( a session led by Morna Fisken from My World of Work) we have enjoyed a very busy few days!

Today, Morna joined us in-person (we have already enjoyed two online sessions in previous weeks). She led the pupils step-by-step through the Microsoft aracde.makecode.com website. Using a wide range of employability skills; problem-solving, working to deadlines, learning to adapt and self-evaluate and following instructions – the pupils were then able to create their own interactive video game creating backgrounds, sprites as their main character and coding instructions to design projectiles to be fired at in their game! They also set up a number of lives for their sprite and the ability for it to ‘fight back’ and destroy the projectile!

All good fun but learning too as the class were reading, listening, using their numeracy and maths positional skills to name just a few – I just don’t think they realised they were actually working! Computing Science week has been a huge hit at Leswalt Primary!

@mywowscotland

 

 

Well, just take a look at those photographs… what a fabulous day! Huge thanks to Ms Whorlow, Fiona Herron Stranraer Campus manager, Susan Boland  Early Education and Childcare Lecturer and Mrs Hall and Miss Creighton from DG STEM Team for organising this fantastic DYW/STEM day at Dumfries and Galloway College Stranraer Campus.

The pupils enjoyed an action-packed day of activities from Childcare games and art and craft activities to Technology Sphero coding (mini robots controlled using instructions coded by the pupils) to Construction work planning, designing and creating a marble run in small groups by measuring and sawing wood. Phew!

Whether the pupils believe it or not, they were actually using SO many employability, Literacy and Numeracy skills today – co-operating, negotiating, measuring, working within deadlines, problem-solving, communicating, listening and respecting to name just a few!

Furthermore, by enjoying these wonderful new experiences, we were also using our North Rhins Partnership school values – Norah Nurture, Ronnie Respect and Percy Perseverance as well as ensuring the children were experiencing UNCRC Article 4,13 and 28 (Making Rights Real, Sharing Thoughts Freely and Access to Education). Brilliant!

Many thanks must also go to Kaiden’s mum Natasha for coming along with us and, of course, thanks to DGC Stranraer Campus for having us! The pupils thoroughly enjoyed their day with exclamations of…

” That was brilliant!”    “Can we do that every Thursday?”

“It wasn’t like school work at all!”

” I really love going to the campus to learn”

…to paraphrase just a few pupils!

A jam-packed day of fun learning!

 

 

Where had all the smiling, fresh-faced children of Leswalt Primary gone? The bell rang at 9am and staff opened the door to be faced with…. a frightening array of Halloween characters!
After a busy morning’s work (ever witnessed a zombie doing their subtraction task?!) – the House Captains and Vice House Captain put their party plans into action for an afternoon of frighteningly fabulous fun!
The action kicked off with a Petrifying Parade to judge the most creative costumes for each year group, Creepy Corners followed this with much excitement! The Really Scary Relay saw groups working together and having a blast as they dodged the cone markers. Hamish supervised the traditional ‘Dooking for apples’ whilst Carys and Faye judged ‘Pin the Wart on the Witch’! The party finished with a Best Dancer competition. Such a lot of spooky shenanigans and freakishly fabulous fun for a Happy Halloween!

Looking forward to seeing our usual smiley Leswalt Primary crew back tomorrow though!

 

 

 

This afternoon, we were delighted to welcome Mrs Hall from the D&G STEM  learning team with the Fun Maths Roadshow!

We got the chance to work on some mind-boggling puzzles which encouraged us to solve problems, use trial and error, look for patterns and show determination to crack those number and shape conundrums. We could choose whether to work alone or with a buddy and enjoyed a great afternoon of puzzle-tastic maths!

Want to save some pennies and do your bit for the planet?

Well, our Leswalt Primary Halloween Swap Shop is for you!

Our Eco Committee have organised a costume reuse initiative.  Browse our Sway and see what’s on offer. 🙂

If you have any outfits you’d like to donate, please send them in and our committee will do the rest!

Click on ‘Go to this Sway’ link below and press play in the top right corner to look at our shop.

UNCRC Rights of the Child  – Article 26 Social & Economic Help

Sustainable Development Goal 12 – Responsible Consumption & Production

Halloween Costume Swap Shop

Thanks to kind donations from our lovely families, we are able to offer a Halloween costume swap shop. We hope to reduce waste and save money for our families by reusing pre-loved costumes…

Go to this Sway

Using the vegetables kindly gifted by Barsolus to P7 on their trip there yesterday, P5/6 made a pan of delicious soup.

Mrs Kyle took them in small groups to prepare the vegetables by washing, peeling, chopping and grating and adding them to the big pot of lentils, bacon, stock and water. The smell wafting down the corridor was amazing!

In the afternoon, everyone sat down to enjoy a mug of warming soup – the perfect snack on a dreich Friday afternoon! What a lovely way to investigate growing vegetables to using them to make a delicious meal. Thumbs up from everyone all round!

What a great trip we had to Barsolus today! Primary 7 were kindly invited to visit Gillian and the crew to learn how plants benefit humans and how farming practices work from field to fork.

Gillian explained about the seasonality of different crops and how Barsolus need to time planting of vegetables such as Brussel Sprouts perfectly so they are ready to harvest for our Christmas dinners!

Our pupils also found out how different varieties of vegetables impacts on soil health over time. As a result farmers are required to rotate crop growing on field every three years or so. We also talked about taking care not to release too much carbon from soil through the use of NPK fertilisers.

We learned about cooperative arrangements with Girvan Early Growers who rent fields from Barsolus for carrot growing.  They don’t have enough land around Girvan, so hire fields to grow and harvest their own crops.

Barsolus talked about working in more environmentally sustainable ways through the Government’s ‘greening policy’. Barsolus have chosen to interpret their green action by leaving areas to grow and develop naturally. Farmers have options on what solution they choose. Gillian also chatted about reducing the chemicals added to soil through the need to change to using less damaging types of fertiliser.

We had a game of ‘identify the veg’. The children were very knowledgeable. We then had a carrot pulling competition to see who could pick the biggest carrot. Scott chose three category winners:

Biggest carrot – Cara
Fattest carrot – Atticus
Longest carrot – Stephen

Cara was declared the supreme carrot champion.

Gillian very generously let the children fill a bag of veggie goodness to take home. There’ll be a few pots of soup on the go tonight. 🙂

Our thanks go to Wilma Benson for very ably escorting Leswalt and helping out our group.

We can’t thank Barosolus enough for a fabulous learning experience right on our doorstep!

 

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 24 Health, Food & The Environment