Kirkcolm Primary School

We are proud to announce that Kirkcolm Primary has achieved it’s third Eco Schools flag, represented another two years of fantastic eco-friendly action from our highly motivated pupils.  This achievement recognises all the hard work, dedication and drive from our pupils, our staff and our wider community.  Our action targets for 2021 – 2023 focussed on:

• Litter and Waste
• Healthy Living
• Biodiversity

Many congratulations to everyone!

The The Education and Learning Team from Keep Scotland Beautiful have written to us with this message:

Congratulations to everyone at Kirkcolm Primary School for achieving an amazing 3rd Eco-Schools Scotland Green Flag Award!

We have very much enjoyed reading through your journey. You have worked really hard on your
wide-ranging actions to make your school a more environmentally friendly place to be.

Well done!

Why not read the full report to see the excellent feedback we have received from Eco Schools Scotland!

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We won’t stop there as we’re already thinking ahead to our next action plan for 2023 – 2025!

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

Sustainable Development Goal: 3 – Good Health and Wellbeing, 15 – Life on Land

Kirkcolm Primary gardening club has been super busy and productive yet again!

At club last night the enthusiastic volunteers and children put up 6 bird boxes that Mr John Potter helped us make.  They look fantastic!

We also hung up home made bird feeders AND did plenty of weeding too! We then checked on the potatoes we planted last week. These were kindly donated by Theolette .. Kerr Pink variety.. a great flourey spud – Yum!

Have a look at all the wonderful photos of the eco-friendly gardners in action.

UNCRC: Article 24 – Food, Heath, Water and the Environment

Sustainable Development Goal 14 – Life on Land

Sad the sun didn’t fully get the memo about today but at least we are no longer in the clutch of Winter (temperature wise!?

We made the most of this special occasion by getting outside for most of our learning today! Sadly the P7 could not join us as they were off on a little jaunt to the Academy for some transition. 

The classes linked together to go on a mini beast hunt down the beach and out in the playground. We collated out information all together in some graphs to show off our math skill and they turned out fab! 

Finally, we spent the afternoon outside getting in our Sports Day practise before the big day on the 2nd of June (weather dependent!) 

All happy smiley faces here at Kirkcolm – loving life being in the great outdoors! 🙂 

The day finally came around and on Friday the 12th of May we had our annual school summer fundraiser – The Kirkcolm Mini Walk! After a few changes in days here and there, it was decided we would host this historic event on the Friday to ensure all pupils could make the most of the sunshine and enjoy their fitness together (hopefully taking the pressure off everyone’s weekend commitments!) We had a smasher of a day for it too! 

The sun was shining and there was a lovely breeze to keep us cool! After an early lunch, the whole school set off at 1:15 to complete the 5 mile loop around Corsewall Estate and The Scar! Some chose to run, some chose to walk, some went solo and some brought along their big person to come and enjoy the fun with them! There was no pressure, the only thing we wanted was to see everyone participate and enjoy! 

In a true mark of Kirkcolm team work, we actually had 3 overall winners as James, Ivan and Danny chose to come over the finish line at the same time – demonstrating great sportsmanship and  teamwork which allowed them to get each other through it and keep pushing each other on!

The results are as follows; 

1st Boys: James Turtle, Danny Dougan & Ivan Turtle

2nd Boy: Jack Howie 

3rd Boy: Noah McGrory

1st Girl: Phoebe Manson 

2nd Girl: Sally Warwick 

3rd Girl: Rebecca Manson

Well done to all who participated, everyone gave it their best shot! Special well done to the hard work of the parent council who worked tirelessly to pull it all together! You all deserved your ice lollies at the end for sure! 

Thank you to Jemima Johnstone for the cracking photos! 

Today, in light of the big event this weekend with the Kings Coronation, we felt it only right to treat pupils a fun day celebrating the upcoming Coronation of King Charles!

The day was jam packed! We began our day by learning about the formed Prince of Wales and his rise to the title of King! We watched an educational video on this and discussed how he was about to take on such a big role at the age of 73 (when most people retire!) Pupils knowledge then got put to the test in a King Charles Quiz where we teamed up the big with the wee. 

Then we had break time and after that we welcome Ansley McClure from Kirkcolm Community Trust into the school to present pupils with little Coronation teddies and mugs to commemorate the event in history! The generosity of the Trust is always welcomed and pupils were extremely grateful for their wee mementos. 

Then we had the nursery join us for some flag designing! Pupils were split into groups ranging from the teeny 2 year olds to the towering 12 year olds with a single objective – create your own red, white and blue flag design! They were given a variety of different materials to use and what huge amounts of creativity that we saw from all the school. Watching them all work together was lovely! Miss Gordon then came through to select the most creative flag and the winners were awarded with some chocolate – ofcourse!

After that we sat down to enjoy our buffet lunch prepared by Michelle and what a spread she put on for us! From goujons to sandwiches and wraps. Pupils were stuffed to the brim but managed to finish off their meal with a lovely chocolate muffin with some very patriotic icing. 

Next on the agenda was making crowns with our nursery cohort, children put their best colouring skills to the test and designed some beautiful crowns which we mounted to their wee heads! Just in time for their end of day song performance… 

A rendition of the Lion King’s ‘I Just Can’t Wait to be King!‘ – keeping in the spirit of things! 

We have had such a fun day today and it has been so fab getting to link up with the boys and girls of the nursery with transition coming up soon! We hope you all enjoy your long weekend and we will see you all fresh faced on Tuesday! 

We are delighted to announce we have been awarded our RSPB Wild Challenge Gold Award for our hard work supporting biodiversity in our school environment.

Our children completed a total of 18 challenges to Help Nature and Experience Nature , all of which promotes Learning for Sustainability, Sustainable Development Goals, outdoor learning and good health and wellbeing!

Feedback from the RSPB –  Congratulations on achieving your Gold Wild Challenge award! You have done so much during your Wild Challenge Journey to help and experience nature. Thank you for your amazing efforts. This accolade is only provided to schools who achieve our highest level of Wild Challenge.

We can now proudly display our Gold accolade for all to see.

Well done everyone!

# Effective Contributors & Responsible Citizens

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

Sustainable Development Goal 3 – Good Heath & Wellbeing, 13 – Life on Land

Our Primary 4 pupils were invited to participate in an Earth Day workshop at the Ryan Centre.  Along with pupils from our cluster schools, the children watched videos to learn more about alternative energies from wind turbines. They learned how blades are manufacturing, the role of blade technicians and how this all links to more sustainable energy sources.

The chidren then took part in a team exercise to build a model wind turbine from paper.  They also connected a motor powered by our breaths to light an led as a clean energy source.

# Responsible Citizens

UNCRC Rights of the Child  Article 29- Aims of Education

Sustainable Development Goal 12 – Responsible Consumption & Production

Sustainable Development Goal 13 – Climate Action

The DG Schools STEM Showcase for 2023 is now live.

We are proud to say that the North Rhins Partnership has been highlighted for our excellent learning in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

Click here or scan the QR code below to access a Thinklink to view our good work.  All you need to then do is click on the red hotspots for our school locations to access the content. You can also explore what has been happening in schools across the region in all things STEM.

# Rights of the Child 29 – Aims of Education

Pupils will be coming home very knowledgeable today about all things teeth and dental care related!

We had a lovely visit from Megan Bark, the Dental Health Officer, with the NHS initiative to help promote tooth brushing and good dental hygiene in schools. Megan was able to tell pupils all about the correct tooth brushing habits and help promote the reasons we brush our teeth in schools in addition to all the brushing they do at home! Megan was able to speak to both classes today and even got the puppets involved with the little people!

I must say – our pupils are very vigilant about their tooth brushing and have been doing a great job staying on top their dental care – let’s hope they keep it up! 

Despite the windy forces at work today, 11 hardy P5-7’s took themselves off to run the annual school’s cross country competition out at Green Valley today! We had glorious sunshine, slightly over shadowed by some harsh headwinds (or excellent tail winds if you are facing the right way…?) 

Pupils waited patiently for the schools to gather and then the races began, every single pupil tried their absolute best and the most evident thing to myself and the other members of staff was the team work the Kirkcolm pupils displayed – cheering each other on as loudly as they could! 

We had a tremendous victory from a rather small girl – in the form of our own Phoebe Manson who has proved that long legs don’t always win the race! Phoebe secured third place in the p5 girls race and earned herself a medal at the prize giving! 

A well done to all pupils for taking part and supporting each other and an extra special well done to Phoebe for her victory today!