What a lovely get-together Leswalt pupils enjoyed this afternoon when we all headed down Fisher’s Lane to the beach. Older and younger pupils buddied up and chatted on the walk down to the shore where they were put into teams of 4 and given the design task of creating the school name using natural materials! Well, what an imaginative bunch we have; from sandcastle letters to shells, driftwood to razor shells depicting the school badge – our team of intrepid designers came up trumps! Have a look at our beach fun below… A top afternoon of Eco art and design with friends!
Leswalt Primary are delighted to welcome our new additions to the Leswalt school team. We are joined by two little ladies and and a young gentleman : Emma, Ellie & Bobby who had their very first day in Primary 1 today.
They looked very smart in their school uniform, as you can see from the photographs:
Our P1’s enjoyed getting to know their new teacher, Mrs McKnight, and they had plenty of opportunities to make lots of new friends.
Emma, Ellie and Bobby have a had a busy time enjoying stories, art, P.E., yoga and more. We think they may be tired tonight!
It was a sad farewell we said today to our 6 Primary 7s – Andrew, Chloe, Gregor, Jack, Joshua and Luke.
But we sent them away with lots of happy memories of their years at Leswalt Primary. My my – did we have a plethora of photos to choose from for their P7 slideshow! Look out for its premier on Youtube as it is well worth a watch!
We also celebrated all pupils at our end-of-term celebration today. Unfortunately Covid-19 restrictions meant we couldn’t invite parents along to this, however we all made sure that the pupils had a great morning reminiscing over the fun learning experiences they have enjoyed this slightly unusual year; celebrating success and sharing memories.
Such fabulous celebration stories!
End of term awards Leswalt 2021
100% attendance awards
Ellie Bennewith, Rachael Drummond, Cara Jamieson, Chloe Kennedy, Struan Scott
Accelerated reading star readers
P2 Colin Mc Gregor
P3 Ela Chang
P4 Cara Jamieson
P5 Struan Scott
P6 Breagh (most books), Malcolm (most points)
P7 Andrew (most books) Jack (Most points)
Responsible citizen
P1
Lily – confident little lady who will stand up for herself and others when required. A force to be reckoned with!
P2
Ruby – kind, caring little girl who always looks out for others.
P3
Holly – never sets a foot wrong. Sets a great example to others.
P4
Carys – super helpful and a great support to younger pupils.
P5
Alexander – helpful and very hard-working
P6
Breagh – empathetic and caring classmate. Encourages others.
P7
Andrew – fundraising efforts/initiative , always wanting to help attitude
Sports
Mini walk medals
Ben Thomson, Rachael Drummond, Mark Drummond, Thomas Agnew
Sports champions certificates
P2-Murray Reid
P3- Hamish Scott
P4- Mark Drummond
P5 – Fraser Reid
P6 – Murray Williams
P7 – Chloe Kennedy and Gregor Reid (shields)
House points shield
Soleburn – 116 (sports) + 144 = 260
Lochnaw – 74 (sports) + 189 = 263 – very close!!
Who has passed Platinum rainbow tables this year?
Hamish Mc G, Alexander, Tristan, Struan, Murray, Joshua, Gregor, Rose
Who has passed platinum rainbow spelling this year?
Rose, Chloe, Aidan, Jack , Luke, Malcolm
P1-4
P5-7
Literacy award
Hamish Mc Gregor – sets himself high standards. Reads novels that are pretty advanced, written work is entertaining and imaginative. Super listener and always makes interesting contributions during class discussions.
Aidan Adams – superb vocabulary range and uses this to great effect in his writing work and reading comprehension!
Numeracy award
Ewan Clark – Clark the Calculator! Quick accurate recall of number facts and bonds. Loves to share strategies when learning is shared and is super enthusiastic and determined about all new learning.
Thomas Agnew – Loves his number work! Working super hard on all maths tasks. Gets the bit between his teeth and won’t give up until he’s cracked a question!
HWB award
Faye Adams – strong moral compass, shows great empathy for others. Will help and support anyone who needs it. A kind caring individual.
Gregor Reid – super duper athlete! Excellent distance runner too. Great House Captain for this year too. A good friend and classmate who is fun company and fair.
REACH award (you might want to consider resilience, effort or positive attitude during lockdown learning?)
Sean Mc Credie – Has worked his little socks off this year and made super progress in his P3 year. Showing a real determination to do well. Excited to see what he will achieve!
Rose Santangeli – smiley, friendly and hard-working. Worked well throughout lockdown and always tries her best. Joined us here at Leswalt less than a year ago but feels likes she been with us forever. A real asset to the class.
Nina Agnew
Creativity award – Gregor Reid, for Scots poetry achievements
P5-7 Award for Endeavour – Jack Cloy, for making us smile in all he did!
Finally, do enjoy browsing through our photos below and check out the Youtube slideshow (Mrs Baillie has emailed the link)
Leswalt & Kircolm Primaries held a combined One Planet Picnic in the fresh air today as part of our last day fun. The theme is ‘Good For You, Good For The Planet‘. This year, we worked very hard on reducing our single use plastic waste and snacking in a more environmentally way.
The initiatives we undertook were:
We packaged our lunches in recyclable paper bags
Our healthy fresh fruit offering was unwrapped to reduce waste
Our milk was supplied with paper straws instead of plastic
Children bought their reusable water bottles
Our take-away burger rolls were packed into recyclable paper bags.
Eco friendly takeaway bags
reduced packaging fruit choice
Everyone enjoyed the alfresco social time as part of our last day. There was lots of chatter and smiles from the boys and girls.
The children sorted our waste into three recycling tubs: food, paper and plastic, making sure there was no litter left behind.
Aiden does his bit
Look at the different amounts.
Rachel, Ruby & Ellie recycle
The first, smallest bag on the left is food waste to be put on our compost heap, the second largest bag is paper waste to recycle and the third, smaller bag is plastic waste which we can also recycle. You can see from the photographs how little plastic and food waste there was compared to recyclable paper material.
We then placed the waste into the correct bins to be processed by Dumfries and Galloway Council.
It didn’t rain!! To be honest, expectations for a dry day were pretty low as we headed off to the east of the region and the fabulous Mabie farm Park. Not that the weather really bothers children! But our luck was in – we had the most perfect day! No rain, no wind; just smiling children pedalling boats, laughing on trampolines and bouncy pillows, scooting downhill on grass sledges, hopping on-board the quad bike ‘Choo Choo train’, petting the farm animals, jumping in the hay barn, clambering on the adventure play area and eating ice cream! Sounds like a pretty perfect school trip to me.
The North Rhins trio schools were the only schools there and the staff at Mabie were on-hand to ensure they had the best day out possible. Take a look at the fun photos below. Wish you had been there too? It comes highly recommended by us all!
Last week, the Clark family headed up to the Royal Highland Showcase to show sheep – with great success!
Alexander showed and got 1st with a ewe lamb; then he, mum and Ewan achieved 1st again with a ewe and two lambs. Alexander was then awarded with a 1st and a Reserve Champion in the Young Handlers with the ewe lamb – and Ewan got 2nd!!
Well done Team Clark 😀
It was sports fun in the sun today for Leswalt pupils at their new temporary home at Kirkcolm Primary! To make things even more exciting, the Leswalt and Kirkcolm pupils got together and enjoyed a joint sports day (our lone P1 pupil got to run with buddies her age from Kirkcolm!) This was made possible as we are all operating in a bubble together – with pupils lunching and playing together at break times. Unfortunately, Covid-19 restrictions meant we weren’t able to invite parents to cheer along but our classmates and staff made lots of encouraging noise from the sidelines!
Pupils participated in everything from traditional egg and spoon races to the bean bag throw; sprints to the sack race; skipping to a challenging distance race! All done with good fun as a priority and top sportsmanship skills on display. Full sports results to follow later, but in the meantime please enjoy these happy snaps!
Our children were treated to an open air musical concert performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra today.
Everyone sat outdoors in the fresh air whilst six musicians played new and familiar tunes for the children on a range of instruments. The boys and girls were asked to identify and name the instruments and tunes whilst learning more about the instruments themselves. There was an oboe, a bassoon, a clarinet, a bass, a violin and a range of percussion instruments used in the recital.
There were tunes ranging from The Teddy Bear’s Picnic to The Hall of the Mountain King. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the performance and agreed it was a such lovely experience. Our thanks go to RSNO for travelling all this way to share their music with us. It certainly made us all smile on a Thursday afternoon.
We had a fantastic turnout for this year’s Kirkcolm 51st annual fundraising mini walk on Saturday.
Pupils and families from all three schools were invited to participate to help support their schools. There were entrants from nursery age to adults walking the 7.37km route together; some competitively and some just for fun.
First, second and third places are awarded for the boys and girls completing the course in the quickest time. The results are as follows:
Boys:
George Keith – Kirkcolm P6
Danny Dougan – Kirkcolm P4
Ivan Turtle – Kirkcolm P3
Girls:
Ruth Turtle – Kirkcolm P7
Olivia Turtle – Kirkcolm P6
Izzy White – Portpatrick P6
The route followed along the Corsewall Estate Coastal Path. A very well done to everyone who walked or ran the course!
Getting organised
Gathering together
Just time for a wee chat
Listening to instructions
Warm up time
Cheering on
Steady…
Go!
There has been a fantastic response to the fundraising effort; with each school hitting their target! The money will be put to very good use for each school to give children enjoyable experiences after a difficult year.
Our grateful thanks go out to so many people who helped organise and support the event:
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
Lidl and Tesco for the donation of refreshments
The Free Press who covered the event
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.
Have a look at the fabulous photos courtesy of Jemima Johnstone. See you next year! 🙂
Here are some action shots with our very enthusiastic participants
Mrs Ferguson planned an interesting STEM challenge for her class today as part of their Social Studies topic on the Titanic. The children were given just one resource with which to make a vessel capable of holding an increasing load of coins afloat.
The boys and girls were required to measure and cut a tin foil rectangle 13cm by 15cm with which to make their lifeboat – that’s it, nothing else!
We popped out into the sunshine to test our vessels in buckets of water. Some sank without a trace, and some floated victoriously. The maximum load was an impressive 23 pennies!
Everyone concluded that the designs that allowed the weight to be distributed as widely as possible, with the largest surface area, were more capable of holding coin weight. We all agreed that this was the lifeboat we would like to be on.
The boys and girls then experimented with a larger quantity of tin foil to give more design flexibility. Murray’s team constructed a very high sided vessel that was able to hold all the coins. Even though it got weighed down by the all of the coins, the water didn’t breach the sides of the craft.
