Kirkcolm Primary School

What a fabulous way to end the term with a musical jaunt out to the Ryan Centre! 

P5-7 attended a Music for All show put on by Stranraer Music for All as a means of exposing pupils to the wide range of instruments and trying to engage and inspire them using music!

We picked up our Leswalt friends and got a bus down to the theatre and assumed our seats to be delighted by various brass instruments, we heard a French Horn, a Trombone, a Trumpet and various other instruments. 

We learned how conductors orchestrate a band and some of us even had to go up and be our own conductors to the musicians there! Finally we used clapping to become the instruments and it was amazing seeing the effect the music could have when you changed certain sections pitch and tone! 

Overall, a lovely afternoon had out and a lovely way to end this term of hard work! 

The pupils headed out into the community today armed with bags and litter pickers to take part in the annual Spring Clean, ran by Keep Scotland Beautiful. Half of the school went into the village and the other half headed down to the beach, kindly supported by some parents who gave up their time to accompany us. Pupils found all sorts – from sweetie wrappers and plastic bottles, to rope and some glass. Some even managed a quick pit stop at the park to reward their efforts!

Our responsible citizens collected a grand total of 3 full binbags of rubbish from around the community to help make it look tidier. We entered our results into the Spring Clean League which all local schools are participating in as part of an inter-schools competition.  We are pleased to announce we achieved third place for the Scotland South region (D&G and Scottish Borders)!

Check out our pupils sporting their high-vis vests below!

P1-3 have been busy learning how to say various foods in French as part of their Modern Language topic. To round up the topic, pupils got the opportunity to taste some typical French foods today, including croissants, pain au chocolat, macarons, eclairs, crepes and … SNAILS!! (Or Escargot to give it it’s proper French name!).

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the pastries were given a score of 10/10, and the macarons were a big hit too! However, the same can’t be said for the snails – “disgusting,” “horrid,” and “they stink” were the general comments used to describe them! Most pupils used their cocktail stick to get the snail out of it’s shell, but most only gave it a lick before deciding it wasn’t for them! We did have 3 pupils who ate their snail though, and 1 who came back for seconds as it was apparently “so delicious!”

Have a keek below at the photos to see the fun the pupils had today!

Wow – all those weeks worth of work have paid off! 

Since the end of January, pupils and teachers have been prepping for the upcoming return of the School Easter Show! It has been many years since we have been able to go back on the stage and entertain you all with our drama skills and for many of the pupils here – it is their first time getting the opportunity to take part in a whole school play.

This year we went with Pirates vs Mermaids, it was sure to be a comedy spectacular and had lots of funny moments and catchy songs! 

Pupils have put in such a huge amount of work in preparing for this, they have been diligently learning their lines and songs and taking orders/direction from some very amateur director teachers!

The Drama Club were a huge help to us by supplying the majority of the costumes and we cannot thank them enough. Parents as well, for no doubt putting up with hearing these songs being sung endlessly at home as well as helping support the pupils in learning their lines and getting together all the bits they needed for the final show. 

I hope the final product was worth it!

Here are some photos live from the day time show and the show was also recorded and can be viewed on You Tube Pirates vs Mermaids – YouTube

Until next year! 

There was an excellent turn out from our cluster primary schools at this year’s annual Primary 7 Rotary Quiz.

Teams of four from each school competed to be this year’s champions.  There were a number of categories such as:

• Geography
• Technology
• Entertainment
• Nature

The questions were very entertaining and wide ranging.  A good few of them challenged the grown-ups in the audience too.

The winners were as follows:

1. Rephad
2. Sandhead
3. Kirkcolm

Congratulations to Noah, Jack, James and Olivia!

Our partnership pupils enjoyed the social mingle. There was a great team spirit and a lively atmosphere . Well done to all the keen beans who took part.  Thank you to the Rotary Club for organising the event and funding the refreshments and prizes.  Thank you also to Rephad for hosting the event.  A good time was had by all.

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The Lighthouse Musicians visited P1-4 at Kirkcolm Primary today for a morning of music. To get started, Gillian led the boys and girls though an opposites game which was aimed at getting their bodies warmed up and their minds concentrating, with Sally being crowned the winner. After this, they then spoke about the importance of warming up our voices before singing and pupils took it in turns to lead the class through the ‘voice rollercoaster’ warm-up, were the pitch of our voice had to follow the person’s hand up or down.

We then had great fun trying to say the tongue twister that Gillian had created especially for Kirkcolm – “Kirsty kissed a camel at Kirkcolm” – before singing some songs together, including 5 Speckled Frogs and BINGO! Each pupil then received a cup and we sat in a big circle. We had to learn the rhythm that Gillian taught us and play it as an ensemble. After we finished the rhythm each time, we had to pass our cup onto the next person and see if we could keep it going until we got our original cup back. And we did, meaning we managed the same rhythm 24 times in total!!

Finally, we learned some Italian musical terms, including forte (loud), fortissimo (very loud), piano (quiet), pianissimo (very quiet). We played the hot/cold game with a hidden ball, but using the Italian terms instead.

A huge thank-you to the Lighthouse Musicians for coming into school today – we had a wonderful musical morning!

On Wednesday we welcomed Ansley McClure from the Kirkcolm Community Hub to present a prize to a very special little lady in P3! Last year, all pupils took part in a competition for designing the new logo for the Kirkcolm Community Hub and it was Jessica’s lovely design of the sunset over the Loch with the silhouette of Corsewell Lighthouse that won it in the end! 

Jessica earned herself a WHSmith voucher to spend on herself and her design has been made into a sign which now sits outside the hub, welcoming any passer-by’s in! 

Well done Jessica! 

To celebrate Red Nose Day 2023 and raise funds for Comic Relief, everyone came to school today dressed in their casual clothes. We even had one pupil who sprayed his hair red to mark the occasion! Official merchandise has been on sale all week to raise further pennies for this very worthwhile cause.

Our House Captains, James and Noah, have also been busy organising our ‘Kirkcolm’s Got Talent’ show over the last few weeks. They held auditions and got everything set up for our show this afternoon, to which parents and friends of the school were invited in return for a small donation. We had a variety of wonderful acts entertaining the audience, including Ivan playing his saxophone, Sally & Phoebe displaying their gymnastics skills, Emilie singing and dancing to George Ezra ‘Green Green Grass’, and Alistair doing a comedy sketch to ‘The Duck Song.’

Former Kirkcolm Headteacher, Mr Harold McCracken, kindly gave up his time to come in and help our House Captains judge the talent show. Despite it being a difficult decision, Ross and Rory were award 3rd place for singing Ed Sheeran ‘Celestial’; Havana was awarded 2nd place for playing the harmonica; and Jack was awarded 1st place for singing U2 ‘With or Without You.’

We raised an amazing total of £151.45 for Comic Relief! A huge well done to all our performers – you are indeed a very talented bunch! – and thank-you to everyone for supporting our charity fundraising.

The upper class have been studying WW2 and as part of their topic they had to pick an area we looked at and crate their own personal project on it, and well… One pupil really went the extra mile! 

Young James Turtle CREATED this piece of work, it is a zeplin based on the type you would have seen being used in WW2 and created it in his own work shop entirely out of recycled wood from pallets! 

I am sure you will all agree with me that he has a bright future ahead of him in carpentry and get your orders in now! 

Well done to our P7 pupils who dazzled at the Curling Bonspiel on Monday! Pupils headed down to the North West Castle, kindly escorted by parent Lucy, to participate in some curling fun and engage in a bit of competition. 

There met up with Portpatrick, Leswalt, Sandhead, Sheuchan, Park, Belmont and Rephad teams and our wee buddies at Kirkcolm managed to swing second place!

With the outcome being; 

1st: Rephad 

2nd: Kirkcolm 

3rd: Sheuchan

Pupils also got a tasty lunch at the North West castle for their hard work and we hope this has inspired some of them to take up the sport themselves in their own free time to make use of the great resources we have here in this wee corner of Scotland! 

The second place winners;