Kirkcolm Primary School

Primary 1-3 pupils rolled up their sleeves and donned their painting aprons this afternoon, then headed outside to paint some old tyres! The boys and girls used lots of colours to make the tyres bright and eye-catching! Once they’re dry and varnished, they are planning on stacking some tyres, filling them with soil and planting flowers. This will certainly help to brighten up our playground! See below for some happy faces enjoying themselves…

Well, I’m sure as the tokens may have hinted to you, it was World Book Day this week! A day to celebrate all things wonderful associated with the world of reading!

Since we have our wee P1-3 pupils back in, we were still able to celebrate this with them! The morning started off with discussing what World Book Day and why reading is important. The boys and girls shared lot’s of information about their favourite books and why they liked reading. We talked about why stories are important because they don’t restrict us to where and when we are right now – we can go anywhere!

Later on in the morning the boys and girls took part in the live World Book Day assembly where we got to hear from famous authors and illustrators like Tom Fletcher, Joseph Coelho, Fiona Lumber and Lydia Monks with special guest Rob Biddulph. We learnt about the inspiration and thought that goes into writing a book.

We also read a good few stories over the course of the day in our ‘DEAR’ sessions (Drop Everything And Read) which helped inspire our art in the afternoon… I am sure many of you have seen the snakes they popped home with! 😀

Not forgetting our P4-7 pupils who celebrated World Book Day from home – they were also given a range of activities to pick from to join in on the fun. On offer were tasks such as the Masked Reader, designing their favourite character from fruit/veg/a toilet roll tube, a Big Booky Breakfast, and lots more!

Here are a couple of photos of the pupils taking part in the assembly… 🙂

A submission from Taylor!

The pupils at Kirkcolm Primary are never ones to waste a nice day outside…

As you may of guessed (or perhaps seen?) the boys are girls in P1-3 took advantage of the nice weather today to take a jaunt down to the beach to scatter the stones they collected on Monday and then painted. 

So if you are ever a stroll down to the shore today you may see some lovely bright colours keeking at you from the trees or path… 

It may have been an odd year, but nonetheless 2020 was a rather successful one for the North Rhins Primary Schools – we are delighted to announce that we have achieved our Bronze Award for Rights Respecting Schools! This is to recognise the work we have done so far and our commitment to learning more about and embedding the UNCRC Rights of the Child in the life and ethos of our schools.

Our work started waaaay back in January last year (pre-Covid times – can anyone remember what that was like?!) when pupils began learning about the Rights of the Child at assemblies. Then, when pesky Covid came on the scene, we were forced to continue our journey towards our Bronze Award online, with some home learning challenges on various different Rights of the Child.

When we were eventually allowed to return to school and class assemblies resumed, we then focused on ‘Respect’ – what this means and how to respect others’ rights. We learned how respect is at the centre of anti-bullying and we made a video to share with everyone, explaining what ‘RESPECT’ means to each of us; here is the link if you’d like to watch it and the finalised copy of our ‘Respect for All’ policy to have a read through:

Kirkcolm: Kirkcolm Respect Movie.MOV

Respect for All Policy: RfA Final Policy October2020.pdf

Behind the scenes, staff have also been busy learning all about the Rights of the Child, how this permeates lots of what we do in school (including how it is embedded into our ‘Respect for All’ policy) and how we can use language and a restorative approach to further promote respecting everyone’s rights.

A huge thank-you to everyone who helped in achieving this award – we are very pleased to gain national accreditation and recognition for all of our hard work. We can’t wait to continue our Rights Respecting School journey towards our silver award – watch this space!

It’s been 9 long weeks since we last saw their little faces at school, and we were delighted to see so many happy smiling faces at the door of Kirkcolm Primary this morning, on P1-3’s first day back since the New Year – the building has been rather quiet without them!! They were all glad to see each other and be back with their friends. Miss Douglas had a lovely day planned to ease them in gently, which involved a trip to the beach this afternoon in the winter sunshine. Whilst at the beach, they collected some stones and brought them back to school to paint using bright, eye-catching colours. They are planning on placing their decorated stones along the Corsewall route for people to find later on this week to spread a bit of happiness and cheer – perhaps you could take a walk at the weekend and see how many you can find?!

We’re super happy to have P1-3 back with us at school and hope they all had a brilliant first day back – fingers crossed it’s not too much longer before P4-7 can join us!

Lockdown 2021 meant that we could not have our usual in school Scots poetry focus as all learning was taking part at home.  But, this did not stop us!  Our in inaugural  North Rhins inter school Scots poetry competition took place on Friday 29th January and was judged  by local Burns enthusiast, Mr Alec Ross.

This event took place on Microsoft Teams, where everyone could see the beautiful handwriting and creative artwork.  Pupils recited their poems with gusto, over the internet.  

Results were as follows – 

North Rhins Scots poetry results  – January 2021

P1 – ‘Wee rid motor’ – Recitation winners : 1. Harry McKie (PPK); 2. Rebecca Manson (KKM);Lily Bennewith (LES):  Illustration winner – Jessica Johnstone (KKM) : Handwriting winner – Rebecca Manson (KKM)

P2 – ‘Nessie’ – Recitation winners : 1. Colin McGregor (LES) / Aaron Farquhar (KKM);Rececca Connor (PPK) :  Illustration winner –Ben Thomson (LES) : Handwriting winner – Rachael Drummond (LES)

P3 – ‘The Circus’ – Recitation winners : 1. Carter Henderson (PPK); 2 .Ela Chang (LES);Ellie Bennewith (LES): Illustration winner – Erin Harbottle (PPK) : Handwriting winner – Erin Harbottle (PPK)

P4 – ‘Fireworks off the castle’ – Recitation winners : 1. Cameron McNeil (PPK); 2. Hamish McGregor (LES); Cara Jamieson (LES) :  Illustration winner – Carys McHallum (LES) : Handwriting winner – Faye Adams (LES)

P5 – ‘Magic Pizza’ – Recitation winners : 1. Noah Gaw (LES); 2. Thomas Agnew (LES);Olivia Johnstone (KKM):    Illustration winner – Jack Trafford (PPK) : Handwriting winner – Thomas Agnew (LES)

P6 – ‘The Whistle’ – Recitation winners : 1. Maya McNeil (PPK); 2. Malcolm McGregor (LES);Breagh Kirkpatrick (LES):   Illustration winner –Izzy and Alba White (PPK) : Handwriting winner – Malcolm McGregor (LES)

P7 – ‘Robert Burns’ – Recitation winners : 1.Jack Cloy (LES); 2. Gregor Reid (LES); Zack Ashton (KKM) :    Illustration winner – Zack Ashton (KKM) : Handwriting winner – Arla McCulloch (KKM).

Many thanks must go to all parents and carers at home for supporting the children in this.

Not even a lockdown can stop Kirkcolm Primary from getting into the Scottish spirit! We were determined to still celebrate our Scottish hero the way we do every other year and this involved the same challenges set for the pupils! 

The boys are girls all got involved in getting their handwriting and artwork done in time for the judging on Friday the 29th and I am sure they have all been hard at work learning their poems to recite them live on zoom for our poetry judging contest again both Leswalt AND Portpatrick pupils. Just to make things more interesting! We are very grateful towards Alec Ross for coming along to judge for us! On his 50th birthday no less! 

Here is a sample of the fantastic work we have had it so far and I look forward to seeing who comes out on top after Friday! 

Get practising troops! Let’s get a few Kirkcolm wins in there! 

As part of his STAR awards, Calder decided to show initiative and create his own Christmas quiz to raise funds for Kirkcolm Primary school.  Priced at 20p a go, Calder sold his quiz sheets during the last week of term.  He sold lots and lots.  So much so he raised an amazing £30 – that is an awful lot of 20 pences!

Calder was kept busy marking them all at home.  Fourteen people got all of the answers correct (including Mrs Baillie!).  Calder put all the correct sheets in a box and pulled out a winner.  Callum Dougan in Primary 1 was the lucky winner.  Well done Callum, he won a prize kindly donated by the Farquhar family.

Great work Calder, I think we can tick off that target in your STAR awards now!

As some of you may have noticed if you have been so lucky as to have them pop through your letterbox, the pupils at Kirkcolm were hard at work making Christmas cards through the week to spread some Christmas cheer to the village!

So this morning we set off into the village (yes – really – in that weather!) and delivered as many as we could. We all actually had great fun doing this and we hope if you got a card from us (perhaps a slightly soggy one…) that you still enjoyed our Christmas wishes and if you did not then know that all of us here at Kirkcolm Primary are wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

Finally, it’s the moooost wonderful time of the yeeeear! (and what a year it has been!)

Due to this year being the strangest one any of us has ever experienced, we were determined to still press on with our traditional Christmas party fun here at Kirkcolm. Now, things couldn’t be quite the same as years gone by and we regretfully had to wave goodbye to the social dancing and the 2 classes coming together to have fun and instead we each had our own separate parties, finished off with visits from some very general elves since the main man, Santa, couldn’t come in to pay us a visit this year!

On Wednesday P1-4 had their party in the hall, hosted by the House Captains, they got up to lot’s of different party games like Musical Bells, Pass the Present, Pin the Nose on Rudolph and Christmas Corners! Stopping way for a wee refreshment before pressing on with the rest of the games like Reindeer Relay (this one had me in stitches!), Musical Chairs and Best Dancer (some quite impressive moves out there from both classes!) P4-7 followed up with the same shenanigans on Thursday afternoon, once again hosted by our lovely House Captains.

We cannot begin to thank or praise Zack and Daniel for their extremely hard efforts in putting together these parties and hosting them. The preparation that must of went into them was a massive effort and the boys did so well sacrificing their own time to make sure everything was done in time and everybody had fun.

Not to mention the excellent work of the lovely elves who provided the boys and girls with great presents that they all really enjoyed! It was a delight to watch them open them!

Miss Douglas and myself went very snap happy during these parties so there are plenty of photos to share with you of the pupils dressed up the nine’s having a great time…