Kirkcolm Primary School

As part of their RME topic learning about the Hindu festival of Holi, P5-7 pupils donned some very old clothing and headed outside on Tuesday afternoon to take part in paint throwing! Pupils learned all about the origins of the festival and how Hindus celebrate this by lighting bonfires and throwing colourful paint powder at each other, so we thought we’d have a go ourselves! Have a keek below at the fun in action! Apologies if any children still have bright red or blue faces and hands today!!

Today we sent away a few of our math’y brained individuals to represent the school at the ‘Enterprising Maths Challenge’ held at Stranraer Academy. Ivan, Arran and Alistair went away to represent the school (and a huge shout out to Arran who stepped up to the challenge last minute this morning!) and take part in a day centred around all things maths.

Pupils had to create a posted themed around Codes & Ciphers, partake in problem solving challenges and play Head-to-Head – a game based around math logic and strategy. Our pupils worked hard to try and do the preparation beforehand with a tough task for the poster ahead of them! 

The boys gave it their best shot and had a smashing time putting their brains to the test!

Meta Skills:

Curiosity Carlos

Collaborating Cora 

Communicating cate 

Focusing Fergus 

Articles:

Article 28 – Access to Education

Article 29 – Aims of Education

Today we welcomed PC McGregor into the school to have a chat with the boy and girls about issues surrounding road safety. It has come to light that there have been some reports of speeding in the village of Kirkcolm!

In a bid to ensure everyone’s safety, she introduced some pop up ‘Road Bairns’ to help to deter speeding and remind people that this is a wee village with a school right on it’s edge! The boys and girls would be in charge of putting these out everyday to help keep our our roads nice and safe!

We were very grateful for PC McGregor for coming out to speak to us and giving us this chat!

Since today was World Book Day, we here at Kirkcolm could not miss an opportunity to celebrate all things book and reading related! Pupil council worked hard with the library monitors to organise a book sale to take place in the morning slot. Pupils across the school kindly donated fantastic books in fab condition that they had perhaps outgrown and other pupils (and staff!) were able to snap these up to give them a new home!

P1-4 also engaged in a book quiz in the morning and a Wigtown Book Festival live streamed lesson all about the ‘Museum Mystery Squad’ by MIke Nicholson! The upper class took part in the designing book tokens competition (with some juice and crisps) and enjoyed their Wigtown Book Festival live stream in the afternoon, also by Mike Nicholson, and his novel Catscape.

What a fabulous day filled with reading! A huge thank you to all the families who donated to the book sale and our hard working librarians for organising everything!

Meta Skills:

Communicating Cate

Creativity Cassidy

Articles:

Article 31 – Rest, Play & Culture

Article 28 – Access to Education

A huge well done to Fallon and Lyle, who last night, took tot he stage at the Ryan Centre to represent Kirkcolm in the annual Rhins Burns Federation Event. This event showcases the best of the Burns winners at each school across our wee area! 

The bravery these pupils displayed at this event was fantastic, Fallon did an excellent rendition of ‘We Frenly Dug’ on the stage with excellent expression and actions in the P3-5 category. Lyle went on to dazzle with a fantastically dramatic performance of ‘A Dug, A Dug’ in the P6-7  category.

Despite both pupils getting a resounding round of applause for their efforts at school, they did not manage to secure any placing on the night but that doesn’t stop us being incredibly proud of them and all their achievements! 

Well done Fallon & Lyle!

Today we welcomed Jack and Linnea back into the classroom! …but not for long…

As part of their work with the pupils exploring the campus and the setting of the school, we all got bundled up and ventured down to the beach (first in a long time) to discuss ways pupils engage with learning about the environment and what they do know about climate change.

It was great to be able to soak up some of the cold sunshine today and show off what our school and community has to offer!

We look forward to welcoming them back next week to continue our work together…

Gillian from Lighthouse Musicians visited P1-4 today for another wonderful session. Today she was accompanied by John the Bagpiper, who showed pupils his bagpipes and played a demo for them. They had great fun learning about the different parts of the bagpipes and how they work, getting to try the chanter and getting to try on some typical bagpiper attire! Orla even treated the class to some Highland Dancing alongside the bagpipes! We had a great morning!

Following on from our Safer Internet Day celebrations led by our Digital Leaders, pupils were given time to work in pairs to participate in the ‘design a cyber superhero’ competition. They all got their creative thinking caps on and the designs were very impressive indeed!

Ms Gordon had the difficult decision to judge the competition – and it was very close, with 3 designs in particular catching her eye. In the end, Ruby and Sally were crowned the winners. Their cyber superhero’s power was being able to alert the user to a scam without them having to click on any link, helping to keep the user safe.

Well done to everyone for putting the time and effort into their designs!

Primary 6 and 7 recently had 3 fun filled days of outdoor education at Lockerbie Manor.

Please see below for a link to just some of the adventures they had –

Lockerbie Manor ~ February 2025 – YouTube

Jack and Linnea from the Children’s Parliament were back to visit P5-7 this morning. Their focus this time is to explore the 4 Cs with the class – community, curriculum, campus and culture. This is because the Scottish Government has tasked them with sharing what our schools are doing to be kind to the environment, nature and the community with all schools in Scotland.

Today we focussed on ‘campus.’ We started off with a scavenger hunt outside, where pupils had to think of an answer to show off their school rather than the first thing that came to mind! For ‘places where we grow nature,’ some pupils wrote down the tyres (where plants grow), the poly crub, and the orchard. For examples of recycling on campus, pupils wrote down the Rag Bag bin, the battery recycling, pen recycling, compost bin and black paper boxes.

We then went indoors and each pupil walked through the ‘dignity curtain’ to show that this was a safe space where they would be treated with dignity and their ideas listened to. Each group had to pick 1 of their answers from the scavenger hunt to explore further. They are going to turn this into a board game that will be sent to all schools in Scotland. Small groups went out to the poly crub with Linnea, where she recorded a podcast with them. They answered her questions all about how they connect with nature at school and what other schools could do to be more eco-friendly.

We are looking forward to our next session on Tuesday of next week! Thank-you to Jack and Linnea for their time this morning and for listening to our views.