Kirkcolm Primary School

– what have we been up to?

June 24, 2025
by Miss Douglas
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Physiotherapy – a job that keeps us on our feet, literally! Ashley Farquhar’s careers in the community assembly

This afternoon we were very fortunate indeed to have both Jamie and Ashely Farquhar in to visit us at Kirkcolm to talk to use about their careers.
After yesterday’s Buddhism talk Ashley came back for round 2 to talk to the boys and girls all about her job as a physiotherapist. Ashley and her very glamorous assistant Frank spoke to the school about her role and what a day in the life of a physio looks like (Frank was a little shy and didn’t say very much). She explained that she was a paediatric physio and works children in the Stranraer region who are having troubles with their bones and muscles.💀🏥👩‍⚕️
She spoke about how interesting her job is and the many different things she gets up to as no day looks quite the same as another. She was able to tell us how she uses her Meta Skills as part of her job
 
Creativity Cassidy – As Ashley works with children she has to make sure that she makes their appointments as interesting and fun as she can so often has to make up fun games and activities to convince them to do the exercises she wants them to!
Communicating Cate – Ashley works with lots of different people, even babies so she has to be creative with how she communicates with little people, often using facial expressions, hand gestures and in some cases sign language 👶
Collaborating Cora  – while working with the NHS Ashley explained that there is a lot of overlap and multi agency working to make sure everyone gets the best possible care, she explained that her job requires her to work with various health care workers including doctors, speech and language workers, nurses and even schools!
Focussing Fergus – As well as working with people, Ashely also has to to do some paperwork to make sure that everyone has the right information that they need. 📝
A huge thank you to Ashley (and Frank) for their time this afternoon again, the boys and girls thoroughly enjopyed her visit and has plenty of interesting questions!

June 23, 2025
by Mrs Morrison
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A Very Zen Afternoon!

Today we welcomed Ashley (Arran’s mum!) in to tell us all about Buddhism! Ashley actually grew up in a household where Buddhism is practised and she has been all around the world and in her travels has visited some Buddhist Monastery’s so she had some excellent first hand information and artefacts for us all to learn about! 

It was extremely interesting to hear all the diverse and niche knowledge that we would not be able to access online ourselves and listening to her own personal recounts of her time in Mongolia and Japan! We learn about looked at Mala (prayer beads), Katas (prayer shawls that can be blessed by a monk) and all the ways we could generate some good karma in Buddhism! 

The boys and girls had a low of questions for Ashley and she did a fab job at answering them. We are so grateful she took the time out of her day for us! 

Meta Skills 

Curiosity Carlos

Sense-Making Samira 

Articles

Article 14 – Freedom of Thought, Belief and Religion 

Article 17 – Access to Information 

 

June 23, 2025
by Mrs Morrison
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An Outdoor Treat!

As promised, Richard remembered us and arrived back this morning for some marshmallow toasting fun!

Richard got the fire going for us and the boys and girls has their marshmallows speared ready for some toasting (and perhaps a bit of melted chocolate?!)

A huge thank you to Richard for this, it was a really special way to start the week. 🍫🔥♥

June 16, 2025
by Mrs Morrison
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Week 6 of Forest Schools – Stir Fry!

Our final week of Forest Schools has finally came upon us! We are so grateful to Richard for these past 6 weeks and all the fun things we have gotten up to together in all sorts of weather climates! 

This week, we got the fire going (Deepest apologies if your child comes home smelling of smoke!) and we got to work on our stir fry! Both classes banded together for this and prepped the vegetables while we waited for the fire to get hot enough to cook the chicken 🔥🍗🥕🌶 As well as having the stir fry on offer, pupils also had stations where they could strip the bark from the wood and chop wood into kindling!🪓  Thankfully all fingers remain on hands 🤝🏼

Richard has actually very kindly agreed to possibly pop back to us next week to toast some marshmallows so watch this space for a special bonus Forest Schools! 

Meta Skills 

Initiative Ivy 

Curiosity Carlos

Sense-Making Samira 

Communicating Cate 

Articles

Article 6 – Life, Survival & Development 

Article 17 – Access to Information 

Article 24 – Health, Food, Water & Environment 

June 16, 2025
by Mrs Morrison
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A Monday Morning Musical Treat

Wow! What an entertaining treat for us this Monday morning! We were able to welcome the lovely folk of the Lighthouse Musicians into the hall – we had… Gillian on piano, Helen on the Violin and John on the Bagpipes and the small pipes! They serenaded our morning with a combination of some Traditional Scottish songs mixed in with some Disney tunes and more modern Taylor Swift numbers! 🎷🎹🎻

Gillian also gave the boys and girls opportunities to ask any questions about what a concert is like and they told us how we would get ourselves prepped for attending a concert. 🎤

This was a great opportunity for teachers to flex their vocal cords to some Love Story 💕and for the pupils to practise clapping along to the tunes! Thanks for coming in and we hope to welcome you back soon! 🎼

Meta Skills 

Focusing Fergus 

Creativity Cassidy

Collaborating Cora

Articles

Article 31 – Rest, Play & Culture 

June 13, 2025
by Miss Douglas
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Driving Trains and Building Brains – James Neil’s Careers in the Community Assembly

Today we were very excited to have Orla’s daddy James in to speak to us about  his job as  a train driver for Scotrail. James has recently spent a long time training to become a train driver, including completing lots of tests and assessments which we ourselves enjoyed having a wee go at! Part of James’ training was to test his accuracy and to do this he was tasked with sheets upon sheets of paper filled with the letter Q where he had to pick out  the Os – and trust me it was  a lot harder than it sounds!! 😮
James spoke about his main responsibilities as a train driver and the skills he uses as part of his everyday life, we have been learning all about the 12 Meta Skills so it was great to hear how these can be used out with school in the world of work 🚆🛤🚋
Adapting Aleksander – He explained that prior to being train driver he worked in Dubai doing a completely different job so it was a big change being at home and working in Stranraer along with all of the different aspects of his new job!
Focussing Fergus – Driving so many passengers is a big responsibility so James explained that he must concentrate to make sure he keeps everyone safe! He explained there are lots of things he has to watch to for or listen for so needs to make sure he doesn’t miss these signals! 🔔
Collaborating Cora – As a police officer Stuart needs to work with lots of different people including passengers, engineers and drivers, he explained that after his shift he must give the next driver a wee hand over to make sure they know of any problems from earlier in the day.
 
Communicating Cate – Communicating is something a train driver must be very good at (and the ways they communicate are very creative indeed). They use flags, bells and coloured lights to communicate with staff (a bit like a secret code 🤫) so they know when the train is ready to depart, stop, slow down, move back or if there are any problems on the line.🚩🚦
 
Critical Thinking Chris – Occasionally train drivers might have a bit of problem solving to do – when things break down or stop working they always seem to have a back up plan which is great!
A huge thank you to James for his time, the boys and girls really enjoyed his visit – they were well and truly captivated with the driver assessment and I have no doubt we will have a few keen to follow in his footsteps after this afternoon! We are very much looking forward to our wee jaunt to Ayr and back on the train in a few weeks time thanks to James’ kind generosity helping us out with the train tickets!
RRS Links
Article 13 (freedom of expression) Every child must be free to express their thoughts and opinions and to access all kinds of information.

June 13, 2025
by Mrs Morrison
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Fallon and Ewan Go To Parliament!

As part of both schools ongoing work with The Children’s Parliament – Both Fallon (Kirkcolm) and Ewan (Leswalt) were selected to represent children’s voices and views at  the Scottish Government base at Atlantic Quay in Glasgow.  Fallon and Ewan and have been doing ongoing work with The Children’s Human Right Defenders. This has meant many video calls and a whole lot of information for them both to absorb and contribute to before presenting their hard work. This culminated in a Residential Trip last week, escorted up by Mrs Baillie herself.  They stayed near Edinburgh, and went from the Sunday morning until Tuesday evening.  There were 7 children representing the whole of Scotland at this residential – and two of them were ours!  Fallon and Ewan did us very proud – they were impeccably behaved, confident and articulate individuals.

Here is Fallon’s account of their days away – 

We left Stranraer at 11 am on Sunday morning with Mrs Baillie driving. We stopped for something to eat at Ayr.  When we arrived we got straight in to work.  We finished off making our butterfly and bat – our “pollinators for change”. I finished in a few minutes so I could go on to the next activity.    We made bees and flowers too.   I made my quite quickly . Before we had a little break I helped Hamza with his butterfly and Ewan put the final touches on his bat.  He added pompoms and pipe cleaners!
We had a half an hour break and we went back to work. Then we decorated our rails.  Ewan and I used mainly green and blue ribbon and some fake leaves but we also added a touch of pink bows and  the flowers. Then we made our dinner  – it was pizza! We went to bed.   I shared a room with Kati and Ella, Ewan shared a room with Hamza. 
On the second day, we had breakfast as got straight back to work. We worked on our  speeches. Ewan and I presented all about climate change.   One other group spoke about mental health and another spoke about vapes. We organized who was saying what and practiced for a few hours till we could say our speech with no help and no notes. We said our speeches in front of everyone and Cara said her introduction speech – everyone was very good. Then we did a few more practises until dinner , which was chicken wraps. 
On the third and final day we packed up, had breakfast and headed off to Atantic Quay in Glasgow.
When we arrived in Glasgow we got our garden set up  (the place where we would be talking to everyone).  We organised our rails and plants. We went into a big fancy room and we heard Joe Griffin say his speech. Then we all said our speeches.  It went very well and you could  tell they where listening as they asked lots of questions.
I really enjoyed my time away. 
Fallon 
Meta Skills 

All of them!

Articles

All of them! 

June 12, 2025
by Mrs Morrison
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Final Visit With Matthew Robinson

Today was the final session and a wrap on the work Mr Robinson has been doing with the boys and girls in the upper primary class. This term, the sessions have been focused on transition (with the Primary 7 pupils in mind given their big move up to the academy) but all the pupils have really benefitted from this over the term! 

Matthew has done some fantastic games with the pupils getting them to talk about their anxieties and how they deal with them when it comes to issues surrounding change and we have loved having him in class! Hopefully this isn’t the last time he comes to us for a session and there are many more inputs from him in the future! 😁

Meta Skills 

Focusing Fergus 

Sense-Making Samira 

Articles

Article 6 – Life, Survival & Development 

June 9, 2025
by Mrs Morrison
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New Netball Bibs!

🏀💙🩷🏀

The kids of the Netball Club would like to thank Parent Council for kindly buying us two sets of new bibs to play in. We very much appreciate your support (and it has made training a whole lot easier! 😅 )

🏀🩷💙🏀

– Meriel 😊

June 9, 2025
by Mrs Morrison
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Well Done Henry!

A big congratulations to Henry Wilson who took part in the Water, Wheels and Wellbeing Festival competition and managed to win himself a prize! Henry filled out a wellbeing timetable and recorded all the activities he did over a span of a few days. This was then entered into a prize draw and anybody present at the Festival over the weekend was in with a chance of winning! 

Well done Henry – we hope you are chuffed with your new water bottle and thank you to Janet from Creative Stranraer for hosting the festival and getting us involved! 

Meta Skills 

Creativity Cassidy 

Sense-Making Samira 

Articles

Article 6 – Life, Survival & Development 

Article 24 – Health, Food, Water & Environment 

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