Kirkcolm Primary School

Just  sneak peek of the pupils excellent Christmas Jumper efforts on Friday! 

While we didn’t use this as a fundraising opportunity in school this year since it was following on from the kindness already exhibited at the Coffee Morning – we thought you’d like to se a picture of them all sporting their Christmas cheer! 

Not long now! 

It’s back and it’s as amazing as ever! 

What a joy to welcome back our school fundraiser – The Kirkcolm Primary Christmas Coffee Morning. It has been 3 years since we have been able to host this event and finally we can fully open our doors back up to the wider community. What a roaring success it was too! 

There was amazing baking donated by the wonderful parents of the school, a wide variety of sweet treats up for grabs to whoever stopped in, along with a hot drink. Not to mention all the wonderful baking at the side that was up for sale for anyone to take home. 

We had our STEM room kitted out with numerous craft stalls from local sellers all over the community – it was amazing to see how a small village can have so much to offer and what a fab opportunity to support businesses that simply can’t get any more local. 

A new addition this year also seen a Santa’s Grotto being raised in the Library, with some of our own former pupils playing the roles of Santa’s helper elves. A great opportunity to get a family photo with he little ones. 

The school pupils worked hard in the run up to this. Both classes completed their enterprise projects, devising the crafts they were going to sell, going through the hard work of making them in the lead up and finally they got step up and sell their items to try and raise school funds. 

Pupils learned Christmas songs to perform, as is tradition, at the Coffee Morning so we had a fab rendition of Christmas Tunes from both classes as well as a medley of Christmas songs. We are very grateful to Gillian Wilson for her accompaniment on the keyboard for this – it gave that extra touch of sparkle! 

Finally, the day came to a close with a Christmas Raffle! Pupils and parents had done an excellent job selling things in preparation for this and finding prize donations! 

Overall, it was a wholly successful day, everybody was smiling, enjoying the home baked treats and enjoying being altogether again in one space. Hat’s off to the parent council for bringing this event back with a bang! Their hard work is amazing and so worth it when it pays off so well – with well over £1110 being raised at this one event!

Did you get a flyer through the post? Did you see a burgundy clad bunch trooping up your street this afternoon? Did you hear the laughter of pupils as they excitedly approach letter boxes?? 

Yes, that was indeed us! As part of our enterprise topic and with the upcoming Christmas Coffee Morning on Saturday, we decided we needed to make sure the word was out as much as possible and we raised awareness of our cute little fundraising event on Saturday!

Armed with leaflets designed by the class, we posted through the doors of the Kirkcolm locals in the hopes of try to inspire them to come along on Saturday morning from 10am-12pm to enjoy some Christmas cheer with us! 

So, if you are at a loss of something fun to fill your time and you’d like to hear the sound of Christmas spirit in carols, buy some cute handmade decor or simply indulge in some lovely baking? Please pop down to Kirkcolm primary on Saturday the 3rd of December! 

Our digital leaders from across our partnership held an online meeting via Teams today.  We came together to create a Christmas trivia quiz for pupils to enjoy.  This provided a theme for us to learn how to use Microsoft Forms.

Our leaders used our Higher Order Thinking Skills to work collaboratively on a shared ‘form’ online.  The children had to remember and understand how to access and design questions using the software. They also used their applying and creativity skills to select and insert appropriate images and themes to present the quiz in an appealing way for the user.  In addition, they had to analyse and evaluate the functionality of the quiz.  For example, they had to set up the software to automatically mark the quiz to give the user feedback and a game score for their results.

Why not click or scan here to play the quiz for yourself!

Danny commented, “I really liked doing that making a Christmas quiz. I would love to do more on it.  Havana said she enjoyed working with the leaders from Leswalt and Portpatrick.

Thank you to Alexander, Hamish, Danny, Havana, Cameron and Conor for working hard on this.

# Successful Learners

The North Rhins Partnership schools have been extremely busy marking a trio of annual calendar events which all happened to coincide in the same week this year – Book Week Scotland, Anti-Bullying Week and Children in Need. Kirkcolm, Leswalt and Portpatrick Pupil Councils worked together to plan lots of fun activities to celebrate these.

We kicked off Book Week Scotland with an author visit to each school as part of the Big DoG Schools’ Tour, organised by Wigtown Book Festival. Portpatrick pupils were entertained by the hilarious Renita Boyle, and Leswalt and Kirkcolm pupils had the pleasure of David MacPhail. Pupils also participated in a book swap – each pupil brought a pre-loved book from home for another pupil to enjoy. Pupils then cosied up in their classrooms with a hot chocolate and marshmallows to read their new books. In addition to this, parents and carers were invited in to see P1-3 pupils being gifted with their Bookbug/Read, Write, Count bag. This is part of a Scottish Government initiative to encourage families to incorporate fun literacy and numeracy activities into their everyday lives.

Anti-Bullying Week was the theme for our assemblies this week, linking to our work on children’s rights. Portpatrick pupils also wrote kindness letters as part of the Diana Trust’s Positive Post box. Pupils were empowered to spread positivity by either writing a letter or drawing a picture which will then be sent to another child in the UK.

As part of our Children in Need celebrations, pupils were given the choice to either come to school in their pyjamas (PJs for Pudsey) or dressed as their favourite book character, in return for a small donation to the very worthwhile charity. Face painting and biscuit decorating were on offer throughout the morning and bookmarks that pupils designed were sold. Together, our partnership raised an amazing total of over £350!

Despite a very busy week, Christmas is in sight which means one thing – preparing for school shows and Christmas craft fayres!

My oh my, thank goodness this morning’s rain passed up by as the upper class at Kirkcolm were invited along to the Kirkcolm Community Hub for a visit this afternoon! How lovely it was for all of us (especially those of us who do not live centrally in the village) to see what this little community have put together. 

Pupils sat down, greeted the slightly older crowd who had came down for a Warm Wednesday session, and tucked into biscuits and juice provided by the kind folks working at the hub that day! Ainsley explained to pupils the purpose of the hub is and what it has to offer to them while I enjoyed a first-hand view of what they’ve been working on… 

They are currently developing a new space to host the Fed0-Up Cafe 4 times a week, this will be open from 10am-2pm daily and will provide hot drinks, cool drinks, cakes and biscuits and a light hot food menu for those passing through the village! Set to open in February, you can see already all the hard work that has been put into developing this space and I can’t wait to see it flourish and to pop down for my own lunch some days… 

The people behind the scenes have been working hard to develop an eco-friendly space with solar panels and air pump heating, they shared these developments with the pupils knowing Kirkcolm Primary’s own strong Eco Positive stance! 

The space already hosts a variety of activities, from Tai-Chi to art classes and is available to hire out to any prospective events…

Overall, we love seeing what the community is getting up to and we are never ones to turn down an offer to get out and about, so it was lovely seeing what there was on our own doorstep and realising all the ways we could work together and make use of this space! 

Thanks again to Ainsley McClure for inviting us down and all the others working together at Kirkcolm Community Hub! 

Comfies at the ready! This year Pudsy bear was back and the wee yellow ears were out in full force once again at Kirkcolm Primary as the pupils dawned these to show their support and to help raise money for the cause! We were given the choice to either come cosied up in our pajamas for the day or we could pay homage to Book Week Scotland by dressing as our favourite character from novels. 

Pupil Council were hard at work organising different ways to raise money. With bookmarks being sold at break and face painting on offer. (We are extremely grateful to Kirkcolm mum Lucy James for coming in to offer her artistic skills for this!) 

Overall, we all had a lovely day together and have some fab photos to show off demonstrating the pupils dressing up efforts! We managed to raise £138.78 which, I am sure you will agree, is a decent contribution for such a small school! Every little helps! 

As part of our Book Week Scotland celebrations, parents were invited into school today to see P1-3 pupils being presented with their Bookbug (P1) and Read, Write, Count (P2-3) bags.

This initiative, ran by the Scottish Book Trust and Scottish Government, sees every P1-3 child receive a free bag which contains beautiful books, educational games and writing materials. The bags are designed to help build parents’ confidence and encourage families to include easy and fun reading, writing and counting activities into their everyday lives.

After being gifted with their bags, pupils then spent some time in class exploring the contents with parents. P1s listen to some stories and practised writing their names on their new whiteboards. P2s had fun playing charades and trying to create various tangram shapes – although it seemed to be more of a challenge to get the tangram pieces back into the holder at the end than it was to create the shapes!! And P3 pupils had fun running around trying to find items to match a given adjective.

Thank you to everyone who was able to come into school today. We hope you all enjoy exploring the contents of the bag with your child at home!

Over half of the school gathered at 3pm today to participate in the first of 4 Christmas lantern-making workshops, kindly organised by the Parent Council and Kirkcolm Community Council.

Pupils started to create their own lanterns using willow, in preparation for the village Christmas lights switch-on parade on December 3rd.

A huge thank-you to Anita, Lesley and Finlay for giving up their time today, and to the Kirkcolm Community Council for funding this project. We can’t wait to see the finished lanterns!