Kirkcolm Primary School

Our school vision and values are to ‘REACH for the Stars!’ At a previous meeting, the Pupil Council discussed how we could momentum going with this and continue to remind everyone since we were unable to have school assemblies. We also considered how we could share it with the wider school community, including parents given that they aren’t allowed into the building at the moment.

The boys and girls of the Pupil Council were very creative and decided they wanted to make a video to share with you all! This will introduce parents to the learning superheroes, whose mottos spell out ‘REACH’, and will allow class teachers to share it with pupil to remind them too.

A huge well done to Luke and Taylor who took on the job of creating this video! Copy the link below and paste it into a web browser to view it. We hope you enjoy the video! Perhaps you could use it to talk to your child about their learning, or ask them what learning superhero were they today at school? Enjoy!

https://glowscotland-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/gw12mchargshona_glow_sch_uk/EY-HE52zUvpOqKMJDLwAR6QBiip4V13fh7iVKhzMK0aUSA?e=TAZFMd

Today in celebration of Outdoor Learning Day we made sure we did our best to take all our learning today outside and thankfully the weather was on our side and even though it was a bit dreich looking in the morning – it held up and everyone (mostly…) remained dry!

Our Morning

Miss Gibson took out the P1-4 pupils for a spot of time practise. The boys and girls had a good run around and were hunting the playground to find clocks hidden showing different times. Then they got out the chalk and drew some clocks on the ground and used their very own arms to be the hands on the clock and show different times.

P4-7 were out with Miss McNicoll and spent the first 20 minutes of their morning practising their spelling words in a variety of different ways in pairs or on their own. The for maths we practised our fractions, first by using mini circles on the ground and covering different fractions of them and then we stepped it up and drew some very large (mostly circular…) circles on the ground and used our entire bodies to cover parts of them! (This is where it got a little bit damp…)

After Break… 

P1-4 went out on a literacy based scavenger hunt! The cunning Miss Douglas had hidden a lot of words and pictures to match with the words all over the playground and the P1’s had to try and find them while the older boys and girls were focusing on adjectives, nouns and verbs.

P4-7 had a choppy day with a bit of reading and la francaise/espagnol outdoors with their numbers to 20 and then continued to keep up their maths with Miss Gibson – looking at money this time! Pupils took part in a money shop challenge where they made their own money shops outside and sold some natural materials. Pupils had to source what they were going to sell, figure out at what price and calculate how much money they would make altogether.

After Lunch…

P1-4 got stuck into their P.E outside with a few fun games and P4-7 got arty with some natural materials on a black card canvas!

Overall we were delighted with how the day went and, as always, it is great fun getting to put the fantastic grounds we are blessed with here at Kirkcolm to good use! 

Well today was a very spooooky day out in the lovely scenes of Kirkcolm with our spectacular Halloween Extravaganza. Kindly (and extremely well might I add) organised by our House captains; Daniel and Zack.

The boys managed to put on a fantastic party with lot’s of games to keep the boys and girls busy and having a grand time. While each class had their own separate party, the boys organised a scavenger hunt outside so they rest of us could still have fun! Well done Boys! 

Though it wasn’t quite the same as normal and both classes did miss each other a touch (not to mention the cute addition of the nursery boys and girls in their costumes) – we still had our parades, just kept within our own class bubble!

The costume winners for each year are as follows; 

P1 – Callum as a scary skeleton!

P2/3 – Arran as something very creepy indeed… 

P4 – Lydia as a wicked witch and Alfie as a ghoul!

P5 – Olivia J as an undead pirate!

P6 – Calder as an evil elf (complete with head in a box!)

P7 – Ruth with her handmade bat wings! (sadly she did not hang herself upside down for the photo opportunity…)

This was then followed by a game of monster corners, wrap the Mummy, Scary Dancers and finally a best dancer contest where the kids busted out their best moves in order to claim those final packets of sweeties! 

By the end we were all thoroughly tuckered out, staff and pupils alike, but a great day was had by all. Check out the photos below to see what we were up to…

Wishing all the boys and girls the best over the weekend with whatever Halloween plans they are doing be it a scary movie or a pumpkin trail sweetie hunt…!

All of our pupils and staff wanted to say a huge thank-you: firstly to the Community Council who gave us the funding to purchase 2 new sets of football goals for our playground; and secondly to the team of men (Bobby McKie, Gordon Keith, Andrew Farquhar, Tommy Cochrane and Wully McMeikan) who kindly gave up their own time and resources to help install the goals during the October holidays. Your efforts are very much appreciated by everyone in the school community.

Our pupils are beyond delighted to finally have new goals to enable them to play football without having to use good old jumpers as goals anymore!! Thank-you once again 🙂 Here are some photos of the happy smiling faces making the most of their new playground equipment already!

Today the boys and girls of P4-7, accompanied by Mrs Richardson, took a trip to the beautiful grounds of Dunskey Estate in Portpatrick because something very special was happening – they were using it as a setting for a movie! The Orr-Ewing family were kind enough to invite all the North Rhin’s schools along to have a nosey at what goes on behind the scene of a real life movie set. A once in a lifetime experience for many of us! (Unless of course we have some budding actors in our midst…) Have a look at the photos below to check out the scenes on a glorious outing!

“It was funny when the guy fell!” – Olivia T

“I like how they made the blood look real on the actors!” – Tylor

“I liked their swords!” – Jack H

Math Week 

P1-4

The little class today combined their Math and french with a spot of French Number Hopscotch (They are, after all, seasoned professionals at this Hopscoth malarkey now…!) This was a great opportunity to practise their french numbers they have been working on this term with Miss Gibson and put it to use in game form. Looks like a fun time!

P4-7

The older pupils after a lovely day wandering around film sets simply couldn’t bear to stay indoors and waste the sunshine with Winter on the horizon so took a wander down to the beach to have a bit of math fun! We practised our symmetry in the sand and then we set ourselves an engineering challenge to engage the numeracy side of our brain making mini dens with specific set criteria and we finally ended with some stone skipping (not the most math related thing but certainly good fun!)

Overall, we have all had a fab week celebrating the power of numeracy and seeing how important it is and the impact it has in our daily lives. Thankfully we love Math here and do this all the time at Kirkcolm, regardless of what week it is!

P1-4 

The lower class had a grand old day outdoors once again for their Maths work with Miss Gibson where they got stuck into some potion making! Using their knowledge of measure that have been working on with Miss Gibson for the term, they got to put their skills to the test today and what an excellent job they have done. Look like lot’s of fun! 

P4-7

P4-7 really stretched their brains to the limits today with some problem solving! Some of us had a bash at some classic prob solving in pairs while others took us the ‘Math with Nae Borders’ Challenge which involved 5 incredibly tough questions to try and figure out! Then the class split into 2 groups and tried to solve the frog and lily pad conundrum! Have a look at the intense concentration faces that happened today…

…Sadly the bad weather kept us all inside today but we all still managed to find ways to celebrate maths!

P1-4 

P1-4 got very arty and practised symmetry. The P1s and P2s were using different shapes and colours to create symmetrical patterns on some very lovely butterflies which they then folded over to replicate the pattern on the other half.

Where as the P3/4s practised their symmetry by creating mosaic patterns on the floor and copying them on the other side! It was some very colourful arty maths as you can see from the photos to follow soon! 

P4-7

P4-7 used the time to see how Maths impacts us daily and how many of us end up using Math in our jobs every day!  We thought of as many different jobs as we could that involved Math in some way and as you can see.. it was most of them! 

We then engaged with the STEM Ambassadors from all around Scotland who had kindly uploaded videos of themselves online describing their jobs and how they use Math on a day to day basis. This was very interesting and we have the opportunity to ask them questions directly so we eagerly await their replies! 

P1-4 

P1-4 picked a much nicer day than the upper class to venture outside where they took part in a variety of different Math games! P1’s were continuing on their shape exploration by finding different natural materials of different shapes and using natural materials to create shapes! P2’s were having a great time with some active addition with beanbags and chalk! P3/4 had a measure exploration and then they had a wee round of bowling outside – practising their addition of 3 digit numbers! You can see all the fun they had in the photos to follow soon!

P4-7

Well today saw us using Math in Context. To do this P4-7 took their ‘Island Paradise’ they made early in the term and used a gridlock on them. They then plotted out where they would have some secret buried treasure and challenged their partners to follow their (very elaborate at times!) instructions to uncover the treasure! The older boys and girls got quite adventurous – some of them even having about 10 different steps to follow! Check out their hard work in the photos below; 

P1-4

For day 1 of Math Week Scotland the P1-4 class got down to some very creative math work this morning! This included some lovely shape dinosaurs from the P1’s and I heard they all did a very good job talking about their dinosaurs and identifying and counting the different shapes in each others. P2 made lovely rainbow clouds showing off their number bonds to 10 and finally, P3/4 made some tasty looking fraction pizzas! As you can see from the photos – the results were fabulous and everyone was very hard at work!

P4-7

The upper class got stuck into fractions and looked at some equivalent fractions outdoors for the first day. Pupils were challenge to find a whole ‘something’ that they could break into halves and then into quarters and discuss how two quarters were equal to one half. We then extending this even further and set off in pairs to build our very own fraction walls to demonstrate equivalence! The boys and girls got their hands stuck in and made a very good job as you can see in the photos! (despite the drizzle..!) 

On Friday we bid farewell to the Townend family who have been with us since Jane first started Nursery until now in when she is a big P3! We wished them all the best of their new ventures in Edinburgh and send them off with a scrapbook to remember us all!

Visit us whenever you can Team Townend!