Leswalt Primary School

What a brilliant day out the North Rhins P7s enjoyed at Galloway Activity Centre on Friday! This was organised as a special treat as they had missed their last two residentials – and what a fabulous time they had together before they head off to S1 at Stranraer Academy.

Thankfully the high winds and rain of Thursday had abated and Friday dawned dry and reasonably bright. We met at Port Rodie and clambered upon the minibus to head down the road to Loch Ken.

Once there, we got kitted up with our laser guns and headsets for our first activity. Diving in and out of the wooden hides (and in Mrs F’s case headfirst over a tree trunk!) the teams worked to avoid being ‘killed’ by the opposition. Strategy meetings were held, tactics discussed and rounds of ‘ammo’ were fired… and yes the teachers were shot! All good fun. The teachers went from being quite cool and mature to being VERY into this game! Why had I never played this before? Highly recommended!

Next up, the children donned their wetsuits (many comedy moments were had with Mr Cloy!) and enjoyed a session of kayaking. They were naturals! Once they were kayaked-out, the suggested dare from Instructors Rob and Hannah to jump off the the end of the pontoon was met with great cheers all round. The phrase ‘drowned rats’ comes to mind as they all padded back up towards the centre to get changed into dry clothes.

A quick bite of lunch and it was time for the climbing wall and zipwire with instructors Rob and Ben. What a bunch of adrenaline seekers we have! Superb climbing and ‘zipping’! The offer was then there for those who wanted to have a 2nd,3rd and even 4th shot of the climbing wall.

We thanked Rob, Hannah and Ben for a great activity day and climbed aboard the bus to head to Castle Douglas for a bite to eat. Chip-shop dinners in hand, we stopped the bus by Carlingwark Loch and munched our tasty suppers, before heading back along the A75 towards home.

The kids were an absolute pleasure to be with, the activities were fantastic fun and the chip-shop tea rounded off a perfect day out! Just check out our pictures below to see for yourselves….

 

We had a fantastic time exploring our new Kirkcolm surroundings for Outdoor Classroom Day today!

The sun shone as we headed down Fisher’s Lane to the beach. P1-4 investigated symmetry in the natural environment, explored a measuring challenge and enjoyed creating messages using the Viking Rune alphabet.

P5-7 worked on some sand multiplication challenges, measure and writing about settings – and what a fabulous setting we have.

The older pupils had rugby training in the afternoon and then carried on the fun with a school rounders game. Great fun!

Take a look at the fantastic photos to see just how much fun we all  had! What a brilliant day!

All of Leswalt Primary have made it to Kirkcolm Primary for the first day of fun in the sun together.  They are enjoying the new surroundings and getting to know new friends.  Happy days ahead for all!

It’s been a busy few weeks here at Leswalt as shelves have been cleared, boxes packed and containers filled in preparation for our temporary move to Kirkcolm whilst our wee school has a refresh! Huge thanks to our buddies at Kirkcolm for letting us come and share their building. Leswalt had its last full makeover in 1989 and we’re super excited about the sparkly shiny school which we will return to some months from now!

We’ve made so many happy memories here; but there are so many more to be made. Our location may be changing for a wee while but we’re still Leswalt pupils! It’s not goodbye but see you soon…

Check out the BEFORE pictures! We can not wait to show you the AFTER!

See you next week at Kirkcolm!

Thanks to today’s Leswalt Litter Picking heroes for all their hard work in keeping our school and community looking fabulous! Several bags of rubbish were collected using great teamwork – top job Leswalt!

Many thanks to Active Schools for their recent delivery of the letters of the alphabet for their upcoming initiative Alphabet Street!

Leswalt gladly took delivery of their letters – and promptly put them to good use spelling out their own message! See below…

As we are on the move to share Kirkcolm’s school and playground very soon whilst our exciting refurbishment gets under way, we will store out alphabet letters for the moment and plan some fun with them on our return! Meanwhile, we will enjoy using Kirkcolm’s letters to participate in the Active Schools Challenges. Thanks Active Schools Team!

P5-7 enjoyed Feis Rois with a difference last term – as their weekly lessons were delivered via Microsoft Teams to their own living rooms!

Jamie and Emily, who are multi-instrument musicians with Feis Rois, led our lessons which had us listening to and identifying different musical genres, participating in Scottish and Gaelic action songs and, rather excitingly, working collaboratively to create a sound postcard!

This involved the pupils who participated in the weekly meetings recording sound effects and an extract each of the spooky local story ‘The Phantom Piper of Dunskey’. Rose designed the artwork for the postcard which was then produced into a final piece incorporating the drawing plus a QR code which can be scanned to hear the story production! Very clever stuff.

Thanks to Malcolm, Aidan, Rose, Noah, Breagh, Murray, Thomas, Tristan and Struan for the story recordings.

Check us out below with the finished articles and our class ipads which we used to scan the QR codes and listen to our work.

Well done to Rose and Holly from completing the D&G Active Schools Miles for Smiles challenge! This was set during Lockdown to encourage people to stay active and the girls had great fun doing this! As a thank you, Laura McClymont popped out today with a water bottle for each of them.

Just look at those smiles! Well done girls.

Many thanks must go to Mrs Richardson, Ivy Richardson and the team of helpers from p5-7 who over the last two Friday afternoons have set about the back garden area at school.

The willow dome was in great need of a lock down haircut – it had grown out of  control.  Have  a look at the wonderful transformation. 

Many thanks to Mrs Richardson and her team for all of their hard work.

Mrs Baillie is looking forward to the hairdressers opening soon so she can have the same magical transformation…….