Leswalt Primary School

The official Outdoor Classroom Day may have been rained off last Thursday, but that didn’t stop us from celebrating it a week later! This afternoon, we split into 3 groups and rotated around 3 different activities on offer – gardening (which included letting P5-7 pupils loose with a pair of secateurs on the willow dome!!); creating ‘grass heads’ using tights, grass seed, compost and plastic cups; and a village litter pick so we can see whether our litter posters make an impact when they go up this weekend!

We had a fabulous afternoon in the sunshine!

UNCRC article 24 – mental well-being and protecting our environment

We were visited this morning by 2 members of the Community Safety Team who brought some exciting news! A few months ago, all pupils were tasked with designing a poster encouraging people to put their litter in the bin. 20 of these posters were selected by the Community Wardens and turned into weather-proof versions. They will be distributed on lamp posts all around the village this weekend, to encourage everyone in our little community to be responsible (and avoid an £80 fine if caught dropping litter!).

Have a peek below to see the 20 selected pupils with their posters! Everyone has been tasked with finding all of the posters in the community this weekend – we’d love to see any photos if you manage to come across any!

A huge thank-you to the Community Safety Team for their hard work in producing our posters and hanging them around Leswalt to hopefully keep it litter-free!

UNCRC – Article 24 right to a safe environment; Article 12 right to be listened to.

Our Primary 6 pupils headed off to Stair Park today to participate in Operation Safety – a whole day session involving different workshops provided by various agencies, including the emergency services.

Pupils had inputs from –

• Police Scotland, learning about drug and alcohol awareness and vandalism
• Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, learning about home safety
• Youth Work on internet safety
• Coastguard on water safety
• Scottish Ambulance Service on First Aid
• Community Safety Team, learning about anti-social behaviour
• and SP Energy Networks, learning about electrical safety

They learned a range of life skills to help keep them safe and healthy and had a brilliant time! Thank-you to everyone who helped to organise this very worthwhile day!

UNCRC Article 2 – Survival; Article 16 – Protection of Privacy; Article 17 – Access to Information; and Article 33 – Harmful Drugs

Using the new food technology resources that all primary schools in our cluster now have, our senior pupils have been making a wide variety of different dishes this week with Mrs Kyle sharing her expertise and  helping the all with those vital life skills.

On the menu this week were – sticky toffee muffins, pasta carbonara and chocolate brownies – yum!

Pupils all enjoyed cooking, and eating the different foods.  Have look at them all in action –  and the end products (before it was all eaten!).

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

This morning, Tony from NSPCC joined P5-7 to lead them through the Speak out.Stay safe workshop. This followed this online assembly and activity which the class worked on last week.

The workshop began by introducing the mascot Buddy – a speech mark designed to encourage all pupils to talk about what is on their mind. Tony talked to them all about different types of abuse in a sensitive and age-appropriate manner. The main focus was to ensure pupils are all aware of their rights; know what is and isn’t acceptable and what to do about it. Discussion was key as the pupils worked together to talk about a variety of scenarios. The workshop linked directly to our school’s work on UNCRC Children’s Rights and gave all the pupils an opportunity to consider different situations and their feelings about them.

Tony played the pupils an animated video about Guy – a young boy who was hungry, lonely, living in a rundown house, looked unkempt and so found it very difficult to get to school and concentrate. He wasn’t being properly cared for – he was neglected. The pupils considered what he could perhaps do to make things better and thought about how he might feel. After chat, they watched the end of the animation which showed Guy contacting Childline and getting the support he needed.
The class did talk about the ways in which scenarios can be perceived but, essentially, to talk is the main message. Speak out to someone who makes you feel safe is the main message.
Everyone was provided with a booklet – a Speak out. Stay safe kit – a resource for them to use to think about their own safe places and safe people. They also made their own ‘fortune tellers’ and bookmarks to recap the main message from this morning.

Visit the Childline website below to check out the games on offer
https://www.childline.org.uk/toolbox/games/
Every child has the right to feel safe UNCRC

Today we welcomed our new Minister, Rev Marlene Cash into school to take her first ever assembly with all the boys and girls of Leswalt Primary.

Marlene is the new minister for Leswalt and Kirkcolm and hopes to link up a lot with us in school.

Today we learned why geese are not really that silly, and the importance of all working together.

We also learned that before she was a Minister, Marlene worked in Asda. 

We will look forward to having her in school again.

This afternoon, Leswalt Primary pupils hopped on the bus and headed down to Logan Botanical Gardens as part of their annual schools’ week event.

The sun was shining, the air was warm – if perhaps the sky looked a little threatening as the afternoon wore on. But it takes more than a shower of rain to dampen the spirits of Leswalt pupils!

After a quick picnic lunch, the P1-3 pupils headed off to their workshop led by Kate on the Secrets of Trees whilst P5-7 joined Harry who taught them about Mapping our World using the gardens and natural materials as resources.

After exploring the bamboo maze, P1-4 pupils learned how trees work and worked together to make human representation of a tree! Pupils got to taste some tree sap in the form of maple syrup, which comes from a maple tree. On route round the gardens, we learned that a tree’s roots underground are as wide as the furthest outer branches.  We were amazed to learn that certain types of bark can be weaved to make items such as shoes and a handbag! After finding our own unique leaves and playing a game, we finished the workshop by working in small groups to design our own tree using natural materials, featuring all of the things we learned.

P5-7 talked about different kinds of maps; globe, Google maps, OS maps and those of places of interest. We then headed off to explore the gardens and used sticks to create a 4pt compass. Looking carefully at the surroundings within each quadrant of the compass, pupils used leaves, sticks and other flora and fauna lying on the ground (never taken from a plant!) to recreate a visual map of their surroundings. This led to a chat about the 8pt compass and Harry then gave each a compass to use. He taught them how to use it and each pupil got a chance to do so.

We then headed to another area of the garden to consider how the gardens might be viewed by minibeasts – HUGE! Mapping out a small area, they worked together to recreate what the minibeasts might be seeing.

Such a beautiful place which sits right on our doorstep – we all thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon at Logan Botanical Gardens.

Huge thanks to Kate and Harry for their expertise.

What a glorious day! Sunshine, friends and delicious scones and traybakes – what’s not to love?!

Thanks to the hard work of the fabulous Parent Council and friends – many visitors, family and friends were treated to a tasty afternoon tea and the chance to browse some stalls being run by the pupils and parents.

A magnificent total of over £1200 was raised! This is a superb amount which will be used to offer the pupils even more fun experiences and a super end of term trip.

Huge thanks to everyone who helped in any way today. Your kindness doesn’t go unnoticed!

Just take a look at the photos below to get a flavour of the fun that was had.

See you next year…!

This morning, Mrs Patterson from Stranraer Academy came to visit the P7 pupils. She brought with her three well-known faces;  Katie Kirkbride from Portpatrick, James Turtle from Kirkcolm and Alexander Clark from Leswalt – all of whom are S1 pupils at Stranraer Academy and past pupils of our primary school.

P7 enjoyed a question and answer session with the S1 pupils; getting a chance to find out more about life as a secondary pupil. Alexander, Katie and James were really helpful!

The next transition event will be on  Friday 17th May when P7 will be heading to Stranraer Academy for the day.