Kirkcolm Primary School

Today we weeded out the weak from the strong… Well, more so the egg haters from the egg lovers/tolerate-ers!

After 2 weeks of growing, some fairly consistent watering and possibly too much sun on occasions.. We managed to grow some cress in class and finally today we had the chance to harvest our hard work. Mrs Richardson, with her keen gardening skills, led this with the class and brought in all the supplies to create some delicious egg and cress sandwiches with the class.

Here are some photos of the pupils reaping the fruits of their labour in sandwich form..

In line with our Eco Plan and our Eco topic in upper school this term, we have been making our best effort to keep on top of the litter problem! This hasn’t just been done in our playground but we have also expanded this to our local area! 

Suited and booted with our litter pickers, gloves and bin bags, we went on a litter hunt and thankfully there wasn’t too much to be found down the beach but what there was, you best believe our eagle eyes zoned in on it! 

The tiniest piece of plastic did not escape our ruthless litter picking! 

This is one of many litter picks we have done as a school and will continue to do, as is our duty, to keep the area surrounding our lovely school in tip top shape! 

Here are some photos of the day… 

The sun shone, the pupils listened and the presentations were informative and fun – safe to say the North Rhins Partnership Safety morning was the most resounding success!

This term’s Health and Well-Being focus for the upper primaries was centred on Risk-Taking Behaviour; in short, what to do if faced with an emergency situation. Having discussed this as a staff, it was felt there was no better plan than to get as many local emergency services as possible together to offer the pupils a first-hand experience directly from those who dealt with such situations. And what a response we got from the community! No less than seven presenters offered their time covering RNLI, Police, Ambulance, Fire Service, Coastguard, Scottish Power and Farming!

Working in small groups and armed with a clipboard for note-taking; the pupils moved round each station in 15 minute slots. Listening to the presentations, finding out about the kits carried by each service and asking their pre-prepared questions – the groups collected a wealth of information.

Summing up the morning, Mrs Baillie led the group in talking about these jobs based in their local community, considering the many employability skills required and discussing whether the jobs were paid careers or voluntary. It was interesting for the children to understand the value of volunteer work and giving back to their community.

All in all, it was an excellent morning of learning in the sunshine with friends. And, they are all a great deal more safety savvy now too!

A huge thank you must go to all of the services for giving up their time – one having come of their fourth night shift! Their input was most welcome by us all.

Enjoy flicking through the photos below to see for yourselves.

All the schools in the Stranraer Academy cluster were brought together to put on our running shoes and do our best in a good natured cross country competition out at Green Valley! We simply could not of asked for a better day for it; the sun was shining, not too hot and not too cool and the fantastic Alison Murray was running the show.

Kirkcolm took along their selected 15 (so.. most of the class in our case!) and were primed and ready to go. All pupils gave it their absolute best and the effort from the boys and girls was outstanding. Everybody has a positive attitude, even if running wasn’t their most favourite thing to do. One of the best parts about it was to see how much the pupils supported each other through this! Even if we weren’t the fastest – we certainly were up there with cheering the loudest!

A special shout out needs to go to Emma Drummond, who secured 2nd place in the P7 girls category, excellent effort Emma and a medal to show for your efforts! Well done!

Here are some photos of our runners from the day;

Today, to celebrate the final day of term, we simply had to have some Easter based fun! Especially after the turmoil of being subject to the pranks of Mrs Baillie all morning!

A lot of us took place in the egg decorating competition, kindly run by the House Captains, and competition was stiff but the final prizes were awarded to;

P1-4

1st – Archie Ashton

2nd – Alistair Swan

3rd – Emilie Brown

P4-7

1st – Steven Gillon

2nd – Luke Butler

3rd – Tylor Alexander

To add some extra Easter fun to the day we ended it with an egg hunt outside where the P7’s managed to (extremely well) conceal a whopping 76 eggs around the playground! Some of them were on fire with this! …Some less so, but thankfully we are just such a kind, sharing bunch everybody ended up with an egg by the end!

Naturally, since we were already outside this had to culminate in a game of whole school rounders because if you act like it’s summer, surely the temperature will follow!?

Happy Holidays to all and can’t wait to see you back for our bright and sunny term 4!

Today Mrs Baillie was truly a very naughty head teacher today, pranking our poor pupils! Not even just once… but twice! 

First Mrs Baillie tried to convince them all that since some had been off with Covid this past term, they would have to come in over the Easter holidays and make up their time doing numeracy and literacy! Some of Miss McNicoll’s older pupils were a bit too savvy for it but poor Miss Douglas’s class fell for the act! (Give that teacher an Oscar!) The joke was quickly revealed and we all breathed a sigh of relief that we would get to enjoy our 2 weeks + a day off! 

Did she stop there…? Oh no, Certainly not! 

Mrs Baillie was back at it again after break with a very official letter dictating that due to our planting our trees and bushes in the playground, the council were going to refuse to cut the grass around them so we had to trawl out with our trusty scissors and rulers to ensure all the grass was at the recommended 5cm! This time, we got em’ all! 

There was much amusement to the staff about this, as you can see from the many photos but it did descend into a sticky willy war as the pupils understandably realised how utterly ridiculous they looked! 

Please enjoy these photos of them at their best for your own amusement! 

The children in Primary 1 – 4 have been working hard on producing a radio show transmission with Dumfries and Galloway Youth Music Group as part of our Feis Rois traditional music programme.

This radio show is the culmination of a block of sessions which focussed on the development of early music and communication skills and health & wellbeing and promotes the enjoyment of music. Singing games, exploring musical instruments and games were included in each session.

We are pleased to introduce to you, the Kirkcolm Kids Radio Show.

# Confident Individuals

On Wednesday P1-4 ventured to Dumfries House in Cumnock for a fun-filled school trip in the sunshine (and snow for some of the day)! The first activity we enjoyed was ‘Animal Senses’ where we put our own senses to the test in some sticky, smelly and tasty activities. We then investigated animals’ senses and diets and found out how marine life use their senses to hunt for food. This led us on nicely to the topic of plastic pollution and its effect on marine life where the boys and girls blew Nia (the co-ordinator) away with all the information they had learned from Ms Whorlow’s weekly assemblies 🙂.We learned about how to correctly separate and recycle rubbish using the different bins – I am sure they could even keep mums and dads right with the red and blue bins now! 😂

We then braved the ever-changing weather conditions, to go to our next workshop on.. ‘The Weather’ 🙂!  We spoke about  the Beaufort Wind scale and how it can be used to measure the speed and the wind – we even managed a bit of running however it is fair to say that none of us were in fact ‘faster than the wind’! We used bubbles to decide on the wind direction, as you can imagine these were a BIG hit!! 😄

We then finished off a lovely day with a trip to the Adventure Playground, where we let off a bit of steam before our nice sunny and sleepy bus home. 

-Miss Douglas

Wow! What sporting superstars our pupils have been recently! Recently the boys and girls at Kirkcolm (and part of the wider trio) have worked their absolute socks off lately and gained some sporting success in a couple of tournaments so obviously we are going to have to big up these champions!

Football

On Friday, at the schools football tournament, our team (despite having only 1 after school football training session) managed to lock down third place (missing out second on sheer goal differences)! This success was against all the larger town schools and our fellow village school fellows and we are just so absolutely over the moon with the outstanding effort and determination from our boys!

Their successful efforts were a combination of Kirkcolm’s George, Oliver, Luke, Alfie and Calder over the course of a few weeks, working fantastically with pupils from both Leswalt and Portpatrick. Well done troops, all those break time tackles have paid off!

Badminton

Then we follow up with our badminton extra-ordinaires who entered into the badminton competition, kindly hosted by Alison Murray, who has been in helping to teach the pupils the ins and outs of the game as well as running an after school badminton session.

Kirkcolm Pupils cleaned up house!

In P5, Mr Jack Howie secured the title on 1st boy!

In P7, we locked down 1st girl with Miss Olivia Turtle!

Finally, our P7 boys just thought they’d clean up house in all positions with Calder Farquhar in 3rd, Luke Butler in 2nd and George Keith in 1st! 

We are pleased to announce that our North Rhins Football team were  ranked third place in the cluster schools football tournament on Friday.

Our North Rhins Football Team:

Left to Right:

Back Row – Ruby, Rose, Oliver, Aidan, Luke, Murray

Middle Row – Brandon, Alfie, George, Fraser

Front – Alexander

Our thanks  go to Rose’s dad for stepping into the role of coach and guiding and encouraging our football stars.  Thank you also, to Jamie Adams for providing football coaching at school and to all parents for transporting and supporting the players.

# Effective Contributors