Kirkcolm Primary School

The DG Schools STEM Showcase for 2023 is now live.

We are proud to say that the North Rhins Partnership has been highlighted for our excellent learning in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

Click here or scan the QR code below to access a Thinklink to view our good work.  All you need to then do is click on the red hotspots for our school locations to access the content. You can also explore what has been happening in schools across the region in all things STEM.

# Rights of the Child 29 – Aims of Education

Pupils will be coming home very knowledgeable today about all things teeth and dental care related!

We had a lovely visit from Megan Bark, the Dental Health Officer, with the NHS initiative to help promote tooth brushing and good dental hygiene in schools. Megan was able to tell pupils all about the correct tooth brushing habits and help promote the reasons we brush our teeth in schools in addition to all the brushing they do at home! Megan was able to speak to both classes today and even got the puppets involved with the little people!

I must say – our pupils are very vigilant about their tooth brushing and have been doing a great job staying on top their dental care – let’s hope they keep it up! 

Despite the windy forces at work today, 11 hardy P5-7’s took themselves off to run the annual school’s cross country competition out at Green Valley today! We had glorious sunshine, slightly over shadowed by some harsh headwinds (or excellent tail winds if you are facing the right way…?) 

Pupils waited patiently for the schools to gather and then the races began, every single pupil tried their absolute best and the most evident thing to myself and the other members of staff was the team work the Kirkcolm pupils displayed – cheering each other on as loudly as they could! 

We had a tremendous victory from a rather small girl – in the form of our own Phoebe Manson who has proved that long legs don’t always win the race! Phoebe secured third place in the p5 girls race and earned herself a medal at the prize giving! 

A well done to all pupils for taking part and supporting each other and an extra special well done to Phoebe for her victory today! 

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.

# Effective Contributors

UNCRC Rights of the Child

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!