Kirkcolm Primary School

Today we were very lucky to be invited down to the Stranraer Campus of the Dumfries and Galloway College to engage in some taster sessions for the courses they offer while also tying into Math Week Scotland. 

What an amazing day we have had! This was the first time many of the pupils (and staff) had seen inside the college campus building and we were blown away by how bright, airy and modern it was with such fantastic facilities inside to suit a variety of different courses on offer! 

Our first venture of the day was in Mocktail making. We headed into the lovely clean kitchen and set to work learning how to mix together our drinks and how to make fruit salads on the other side of the kitchen. Pupils use their measuring skills to put the correct amounts of each dish/drink into the glass/bowl and then got to enjoy the (literal) fruits of their labour.

Next on our experience was the STEM centre that has been build in the middle of the campus. This was an absolutely excellent space that we absolutely made the most of, using our STEM activity kits we set to work on a variety of different STEM challenges which used our knowledge of 3D shape, measure and counting.

Our final stop was in the childcare area of the college which was kitted out with a fantastic playroom for the pupils to get involved in. Students were able to lead the pupils in a variety of different activities that put to work their numeracy skills such as; making up bottles for babies, making play dough and some games with the other students on the course. It was lovely watching the child care students and the pupils interact together.

Finally, we hopped on the bus back to school just in time for lunch (okay… maybe a touch late!) 

We cannot thank the lovely staff at DGC Stranraer campus enough for this experience and our own Miss Whorlow for the time taken to arrange it for us all. We all had an amazing day and it has been such a good experience for the staff and pupils to see what the Stranraer campus has to offer! 

We successfully applied for funding from the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (EMS) School Enrichment Fund to pay for transportation costs for all three schools from our trio to attend this great event. Thank you also to this organisation for making today’s learning experience possible.

Here are some recounts from the pupils of their day; 

Today at the college the thing I liked most was making the play doh 😚🤗😍🤩 . The people at the college were really friendly people. At the college we made fruit salad ,fruit drinks and drew our drink🍎🍍🍌. The fruit drink was very nice. 😍😘🏡 – Pheobe (p5) 

Elspeth Hall from the D&G STEM team visited school today to provide the pupils with a fun, hands-on maths workshops – and they certainly weren’t disappointed! The infant class has their session this morning and the upper class went this afternoon. The workshop was part of our Maths Week Scotland celebrations (although we are a week early due to Elspeth’s busy schedule!).

After a little ice breaker where we had a competition to create as many different sized triangles as we could, both classes got their thinking caps on and had to work together to solve problems and complete challenges using various visual and concrete materials. We had:

• The Engine challenge where we had to sequence the coloured carts of the train in the correct order (this involved lots of maths language);
• The Wizard’s Cat where we had to put 3 magic circles around the cats so they each had their own space;
• Dice Towers where each of the 4 sides had to equal 14 but no number could be the same (think Sudoku using dice!);
• Domino walls where each side had to equal 10;
• And the Milk Bottle challenge where we had to fit 6 milk bottles into a 5×3 crate, ensuring that each column and row had an even number of milk bottles.

We finished off with a bit of healthy competition where pupils could only move the hands of the clock on by either 30-minute or 1-hour. The winner was the first person to get to 12pm.

The pupils had a brilliant time applying their maths skills into problems. Many thanks to Mrs Hall for providing pupils with a fantastic maths roadshow!

Today P5-7 took part in a live Coding Session and got their first experience using the Microbit! A Microbit is a small pocket sized computer developed by the BBC, it has a number of amazing tiny outputs all over it which can be coded on a computer through online software to do different tasks or a variety of different things altogether! 

It has lights on the front to spell out words or show pictures, a small speaker on the back, a thermometer, a light sensor, a compass and finally an emotion sensor! (You would have to see it to believe it that the lovely developers of this handy little tool have actually managed to pack this much into something that can fit in the palm of your hand!?)

We coded little Emoji faces which responded to different button inputs on the front to either put a sad face or a happy face. The pupils picked his up in no time and by the end were having a ball experimenting with building their own codes and transferring them onto the gadget! 

Micro:Bit gets the thumbs up from Kirkcolm! 

Love a bit of alliteration..!

What an amazing day we have had today at Kirkcolm, we have been lucky enough to partake in an afternoon of farming innovation and fun on a glorious sunny autumn day! This is all thanks to the P1-4’s topic this term – Farm to Fork. The little people have been looking at all things farm related and today was a great day to see everything first hand. 

We had Grant Hurcumb, Jack Milroy (who was kind enough to let us use one of his fields to host all this!) and Ian McKnight to inform us of all things sheep related. We got a first hand look at some sheep shearing by Grant as well as learning about all the different ways the farmer looks after his sheep and the precautions needed. From vaccinations to types of feed – we covered it all! 

Steven Adams and Angus Brown brought some machinery for us to have a look at, this included a tractor and a chopper (we got extremely well acquainted with the horn on both of these…) As well as that, Steven managed to wrangle Blossom the sheep down for us to feed and swoon over, as well as two lovely little calves! 

Stuart McCrindle brought down some more sheep and sheep dogs! We got an amazing sheep dog demonstration as well as getting to meet the cutest wee sheep dog pup that stole the hearts of all the pupils and adults alike! WE all took a vote in naming the new pup and Olivia Johnstone from Kirkcolm was the lucky name pulled with the beautiful (and monosyllabic) name of; Jem.

Finally, Leswalt’s own Alexander Clark had some auctioneering fun with us where he demonstrated what exactly happens at a real auction and the groups attempted to out bid each other for the sheep of choice! 

Overall, what a fab time we have had and what a treat it is to be able to bring all 3 schools together. Thanks to all for coming down and a huge thank you to Mrs McKnight, the lady with the super farming connections who brought a lot of this together! 

We were visited today by Frances Wallace from ‘Make It Happen’ who came to explain to the pupils about a competition that her company is running to design an app.

The pupils had a think about what they use apps for and the list was huge – playing, learning, listening to music, editing pictures/videos, reading books, finding out the weather, and Mrs McHarg’s favourite – shopping!!

Frances explained the process that app designers go through from the initial idea, to designing it, to building it. She then shared some examples of apps that were created by other children – there was an app called Go Get Dressed to help children get dressed in the morning in time for school; an app that was a snap game to teach about recycling; an app to teach about flags of the world; and another that was to help a non-verbal child communicate.

Frances talked through what the pupils need to do to enter the competition. There will be 1 winner selected from Leswalt, Kirkcolm & Portpatrick who will win a Kindle Fire and other goodies! We’re looking forward to seeing all the creative entries!

Digital Leaders from Kirkcolm, Leswalt and Portpatrick came together for a training session today.

The children covered a lot of areas as part of today’s agenda:

• Roles and Responsibilities
• Correctly handling, storing and charging devices
• Managing and using logins – personal information, successfully accessing sites
• Bookmarking favourites and displaying our favourites bar
• Adding tiles to personal Glow launch pads e.g. Teams, Email, One Drive etc.
• Creating and sending emails with attachments to the correct recipient
• Discussing possible breaktime clubs e.g. Scratch Coding

Our inventive team decided that they would like to collaborate with each other across the partnership to plan events such as Safety Internet Day.  We have now set up an email group just for our digital leaders so they can communicate with each other.

The session was very productive and our team are ready to support their classmates in any way they can.

Here is a useful parent guide to support your child online:

Digital-Learning-Parental-Leaflet-2022_23 (2)

# Responsible Citizens

Today was meant to be our day of Harvest Festival Fun from our potatoes given to us by the kind people of the Dandelion Project! Pupils made hard efforts at growing these potatoes both at home and in school and today we celebrated these efforts using potato in some creative ways! 

We kept it very low key today, especially given the recent sad news of the passing of our Queen. We spent some time today reflecting on her reign and the impact this day will have all over the world. 

So this morning we put our cooking skills to work making some tattie scones. Pupils peeled and shaped their mashed potatoes (teachers and adults handled the boiling and the mashing side…) and formed them into some interestingly shaped tattie scones which were then fried by staff! This was definitely an experience for pupils and some were amazing and some were sticky potato blobs sadly doomed for the bin, but what is success without some failure too? 

After enjoying these, the classes joined together once more for some potato based art. Pupils were given some sliced potatoes for printing purposes and told to come up with designs which made them think harvest, autumn and making the most of the land around us. As you can see, they did a great job with this brief. 

Overall, another lovely day in school to perhaps take our minds off the sad news from yesterday.

A huge shout out to Michelle, the lovely cook and Mrs Smith from Leswalt, who swooped in to lend a hand over the hot stove and the wild cleaning up. We couldn’t do it without you ladies 🙂

Today the boys and girls of Kirkcolm got a little visit and a chat from the Community Safety Team for the West of Dumfries and Galloway! The Safety Officers took this opportunity to remind pupils about how they can stay safe in and around the community and keep their community and surrounding safe for others. 

We discussed issues related to dog fouling and litter – things that just don’t make for the nicest surroundings… Pupils were reminded of the laws regarding these and what can happen to offenders. We also discussed the rising issue with Gulls in the area – no longer seagulls but urban gulls!

We had a lot of great discussions based around how we can keep ourselves and our community safe and the boys and girls proved to be superstar listeners. 

Finally managed to pin down this crazy wee crew… Phew!

The pupils and staff here at Kirkcolm are delighted to welcome our new precious wee P1’s that started with us at the beginning of the term! We have got James, Sally, Ewan and Henry all looking very smart, kitted our in their burgundy…

As well as this gang joining us in the first week, we have actually had another wee addition to our team… We are very pleased to welcome Vladislav with open arms – who is joining us here at Kirkcolm Primary all the way from Ukraine. We hope he enjoys being part of our team!

Let’s get stuck into Term 1!