Kirkcolm Primary School

This week has been Science Week Scotland! Although we are very busy little bees right now preparing for our School Show Performance – we couldn’t miss an opportunity to invite all the special people around us into the school to celebrate Science with us with some experiments! 🔬🧪🔍

Station 1: Building Bridges! 🌉

Mrs Adams manned the bridge building station in the hall – parents and pupils were challenge to construct a bridge out of different materials (such as spaghetti, marshmallows, paper, tin foil… etc.) and this bridge had to support a 1kg weight on top of it! This was a fantastic challenge to get people thinking and seeing if they can reinforce their structures to support that weight! 

Station 2: Sailing Boat! ⛵

Miss Agnew led a boat building station in her class – the challenge was to construct a boat that could; 

a. Float! 

b. Hold the most marbles while continuing (!) to float! 

They were given materials like tinfoil, straws, paper etc. to try and complete this challenge! ⚓

Station 3: Microbits 💻

The tech experts – Paige and Ross, digtal leader extraordinaries – led a programming MicroBits session in the P5-7 classroom. This gave pupils and parents a chance to program their MicroBits to undertake a variety of different jobs. This included jobs like; sunshine sensors, thermometers and compasses! ☀️🧭🌡️

Station 4: Fizzy Hands! 👐💥

We got to grips with some chemical experiments – seeing what would happen if we mixed up some common household items and the reaction that takes place from it! We got to see first hand the rather explosive outcome that took place! (thankfully we conducted this outside for minimal mess!) 

Overall it was a fantastic afternoon and we are so grateful for everyone who took time out of their day to come in and see us! We look forward to seeing you all again very soon for our yearly drama performance! 🎭

Meta Skills 

Curiosity Carlos 

Collaborating Cora 

Focusing Fergus 

Communicating Cate 

Articles

Article 28 – Right to Education 

Article 29 – Goals of Education 

We were very proud of our two confident individuals, Henry and Fallon last night.  They stepped on the stage at the Ryan centre, in front of a packed audience and recited their Scots poetry word perfect, with great expression.  It was a great evening of entertainment and both Henry and Fallon represented our school so very well.

We were delighted when the results were announced and Fallon was placed in 1st place for all the schools in the Stranraer area for her recitation of “The Moosie’s Prayer”.  She really gave it her all and was awarded an amazing 40 out of 40 for her faultless delivery! It was a very well deserved win!🤩

Well done to both our stars! 👏👏👏

Our netball team had their first outing last night at the inter-school, mixed netball league.  After school they all headed to the Ryan Centre to play against other local schools.

Many thanks must go to our coach, Mrs Meriel Dougan who is taking the after school club and supported them to a win at the netball league.  Thank you also to Rachael from our partnership school of Leswalt who came along and joined in to help our team from Kirkcolm.

Great teamwork!

UNCRC Article 15 – Every child has the right to meet with others and join groups.
Collaboration (Meta-Skill) – Working positively with others to achieve shared goals.
SHANARRI (Active & Included) – Encouraging every child to take part and feel valued as part of the team.

Today, P1-4 were very excited to welcome Ailsa Buchanan into school to talk us about her job as a Vet, especially given the number of aspiring vets we have in the school!🐾

Ailsa told us all about the skills and qualities she needed to become a vet. She explained that in order to be a vet,  you must have a kind and  caring personality and love animals! Which was great to hear for all our little animal lovers!😻

She brought with her some of her special vet equipment; stethoscope, thermometer etc. and explained how vets use them to help animals to feel better. Then, it was over to us to become vets, Ailsa brought with her some X-Rays from some attention needing animals and we had to work out what was wrong with the animals and why they needed help from the vet. We saw the X-Ray of a poorly pup who had swallowed a stone, some broken paws and a pregnant dog too!🐶🐱

A huge thank you to Ailsa from Academy Vets for taking the time to visit Primary 1-4. We absolutely loved hearing all about her job and the work she does to look after our furry friends! 🐮🐶🐱🐹🐰

Curiosity Carlos
Critical Thinking Chris
Collaborating Cora

Today we had Norval working with us outside at the little Orchard at the bottom of the playground, looking after the fruit trees we planted a few years ago now! 🍎🍏🍐

The fruit trees need around the year care and this was the opportunity to give them some Winter attention – so the trees were sufficiently mulched and checked over for any damage (which there was – pesky hares having a nibble!) so we made sure we protected them as best we could. 

Norval had a lot of very interesting information about caring for trees – how diseased branches can spread their diseases  and how trees can send out signals to each other for more nutrients and support from their tree friends! Nature really is incredible 🌳🤩

Meta Skills 

Integrity Imani

Collaborating Cora 

Focusing Fergus 

Feeling Felix 

Communicating Cate 

Articles

Article 24 – Health, Food, Water and Environment 

Today the little people of Kirkcolm Primary tootled over to Leswalt primary to get VERY hands on exploring their health and well-being topic – People Who Help Us!

Part of this was looking at people who can help us when we find ourselves in danger and need urgent assistance and thus… Emergency Services Afternoon was made! Big thank you to Mrs Warwick for her excellent work in co-coordinating all these kind volunteers to come to the school. 

Pupils had inputs from; 

Coastguard – Learning how in a seaside town like Stranraer they have an active role is making sure that people stay safe out on the Loch and further afield!🚣🏼‍♂️🚤

RNLI – Mush like the Coastguard, they are another essential service to have this close to the water. They experience many call outs all across the area from people struggling in boats. 🏊🏼‍♀️⛵

Police – We learned about how our local police help us daily by keeping the place we live safe for us and are always quick to respond in an emergency should we ever need their help! 👮🏼‍♀️🚓

It’s always fantastic for the pupils to get hands on during these open afternoons and it really helps bring the topic to life for them! A huge thank you to the kind volunteers who gave up their time for this. I know when P1-4 came back, they were buzzing with chat from their afternoon. 

Meta Skills 

Integrity Imani

Collaborating Cora 

Articles

Article 24 – Health, Food, Water and Environment 

Article 19 – Protection from Violence 

Huge congratulations and well done to our very own Paige Neill who took part in the local Wigtownshire Badminton Competition and managed to secure a silver medal in the P6 girls tournament! 

Well done Paige – you have done a fantastic job representing the school with your sporty skills! 

Meta Skills 

Focusing Fergus

Articles

Article 24 – Health, Food, Water and Environment

Big thank you to the lovely gentlemen of the Stranraer Rotary Club who kindly came out to school today to drop off some litter pickers and speak to the boys and girls about the importance of not dropping litter! 

Litter has been an ongoing issue across our local community for some time now and even the students of Kirkcolm Primary can be guilty of this in their own playground! Hopefully this will inspire the pupils to be more conscious of throwing their rubbish in the bin. 🗑️

The Rotary Club themselves have collected 523 large bags of rubbish over the past year – enough to fill our entire classroom! They spoke tot he children about the harmful effects of dropping litter on the environment and how long it takes certain items to complete biodegrade. Ranging from 5 days for a banana peel to 500 years for plastics – which is mostly just the process of them breaking down into micro plastics! 

We discussed the 3 R’s: 

• Reduce
• Reuse and… 
• Recycle 

They left us with some plastic bags, bag holders and litter pickers – all of which were kindly donated by Kirkcolm Bowling Club and Lidl – to support ‘We Are OSOM’ – Our School, Our mission! 

Meta Skills 

Integrity Imani

Collaborating Cora 

Initiative Ivy 

Articles

Article 24 – Health, Food, Water and Environment