Kirkcolm Primary School

Following on from last terms Topic that spans this term additionally – we received an online input from Isabel Scott, who works for the Education Team of the Scottish Parliament. This input gave us a good deep dive into the role of the Scottish parliament, it helped us to understand what devolved the Scotland Parliament had and helped deepen our understanding of how elections work. Thanks to Isabel for this input and making the time for us! 

Okay maybe we are a day late but it’s fine! There is no better day for a costume contest and some treats than a Friday anyway…

Today pupils came to school dressed in their spookiest best – we had a lot of zombified professions as well as some classics! Pupils did their usual laps of the room while the house captains and teachers  made their judgements on the best costumes.  This was no easy task – as you can see from the photos everyone looked super spooky A big well done to the parents as well as the pupils – a lot of effort went into some of these costumes! 🧛‍♀️🦇🎃

The fabulously spooky winners were:
P1 – Kendall 
P2 – Orla 
P3 – Sally
P4 – Ross
p5 – Paige
P6 – Arran 
P7 – Alistair

Then we got stuck into some games altogether! Pupils had an absolute blast playing the games organised by the house captains. We kick started the games with a very competitive game of creepy corners, which features a lot of strategising but our final winner was Robert! Next up we played pass the pumpkin with two of the smallest pumpkins I have ever saw, our winners were Freddie (P1-4) and Bryleigh (P5-7). 👻💀

Haunted chairs was next on the agenda, when the music stopped chairs would mysteriously disappear and pupils had to find somewhere to sit but our final winner was Joey! Next was a new Halloween game called Capture the Pumpkin (a Halloween retake of the age-old classic Capture the Flag); teams has been redecided by our house captains and  after a lot of running around our winners were – Ivan, Arran, James, Jessica, Kaylyn, Arryn, Archie and Ross. 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️

After all that running around we were all feeling a bit hot and sweaty so we thought why not cool ourselves down by sticking our heads in a huge bowl of water, filled with apples!! 🍎 Both classes played Dookin’ for Apples, a fan favourite which was lots of fun! Those wearing face paint sadly had to sacrifice their carefully painted designs in attempt to retrieve an apple, which meant we had some very wet, soggy looking pandas leaving the playground at 3pm!! 🍎🐼

We finished the afternoon with a boogie and a laugh with the best dancer competition (which Miss Douglas is still convinced she should have won!!) Our winners were Arran and Bryleigh who were cutting some shapes on the dance floor so were well deserving of their prizes! 💃🕺

The credit  planning and hard work of this party has to go to the House captains, Ivan and Phoebe have been working hard from the very beginning to ensure everything was ready to go and they put on an excellent time for the whole school!  ⭐🤩

Well done team! 

#Article31 The right to rest relax and play

P5-7 welcomed Robert McCrorie from The Scottish Fire and Safety Service who delivered a talk on how to be safe around Bonfire Night. Robert discussed the safety issues we could experience with bonfires, fireworks and sparklers – he informed us of the ways we can ensure accidents do not take place in the first place but also how to deal with scary situations involving fires. Bryleigh demonstrated how to hold a sparkler correctly, where as Rory showed us an excellent Stop, Drop & Roll technique! 

This was very helpful and informative so we hope our pupils ensure everyone stays safe this year! 

Much like our lovely Leswalt neighbours, who got to experience this last term – this term, it is Kirkcolm’s chance to welcome Matthew Robinson and the D&G Youth Work team into our P5-7 classroom to deliver the ‘Living Life to the Full’ input which deals with ideas of feelings and self-esteem – our health and wellbeing focus for this term! 

Matthew will be with us for the entire term helping to encourage pupils to explore their feelings and look at coping mechanisms for dealing with big feelings in their life.

We were very happy to welcome back Jack and Linea to deliver another Children’s Parliament session with our pupils. We focused on our ‘Campus’ and pupils had quite the go at recreating our school campus on the classroom floor.

We discussed what resources we have in school to help support our learning and how we can use environmentally friendly energy resources to help power the resources in our school and what steps we need to take to improve! 

It was a great informative session and we were wow’ed but what a great effort our school does to be sustainable already! We are excited to welcome back Jack and Linea for further sessions throughout the school year!

A post from our Gardening Superstar Mrs Richardson…

‘The Kirkcolm School Parent Council Gardening Club secured funding via foundation school from Kilgallioch wind farm community fund for a polycrub. The polycrub is a secure polycarbonate poly tunnel which will allow the gardening club to grow things for the school and the community.

The school is very grateful  to locals Mark Clayton, Chris Hunter & Dave Taylor who volunteered to build it, a huge engineering task as it required to be concreted in the ground! Today the school are pleased to announce that the polycrub is complete and can now be used by the school. Mark, Chris and Dave came to the school and were presented with a card and gifts to say thank you for their efforts over the past few weeks.’

Our wee school is always very touched by the help locals are willing to give to us! Another perfect example of a community working together 🙂 

P1-4 pupils were treated to an afternoon of music today, led by Helen from Lighthouse Musicians. We started off with an opposites game to help pupils get their listening ears on. We then had to copy Helen by repeating different rhythms, created using body percussion. This led nicely into a discussion about different note values, such as crotchets and quavers.

We then looked at various Italian musical terms for the different dynamics of music (pp = very quiet; p = quiet; f = loud; ff = very loud). We also learned some new terms today – Crescendo, which means getting louder, and Diminuendo, which means getting quieter.

To put our new learning into practise, we played a game of ‘Hot or Cold’ but used our voices to direct the person to the hidden object. Helen hid a beanbag somewhere in the room and the pupils sang ‘Where’s the Beanbag?’ to the tune of Frere Jacques. They sang louder when the person got closer to the beanbag, and got quieter when the person moved further away from the beanbag.

We finished off with a bit of music appraisal – discussing the different instruments we could hear in a piece of music that was played, the dynamics we heard, the tempo and why we liked it or not.

Huge thank-you to Helen for popping in this afternoon – we had a lovely Tuneful Tuesday afternoon!

What a delight to head up to Kirkcolm Church this afternoon for a Harvest Festival Service by our Minister Marlene Cash! We had a beautiful, engaging service which showed off the Gardening Clubs Scarecrow project; Cedric and learned all about the meaning behind the Harvest Festival. Pupils stood up in front the church service and sang their wee hearts out with a Harvest Song they had been practicing for the last few weeks.

Overall it was a lovely, wholesome afternoon which taught us all the importance of sharing and looking after each other. We happily walked back down to school munching our apples from the church as the Primary 7 pupils left with Mrs Baillie to distribute some Harvest Festival goodies to the people of Kirkcolm. 

A huge thank you to the Minister for the fantastic service, the boys and girls for their lovely singing and finally, the parents of Kirkcolm Primary for their kind donations to the school. What an outstanding community we have here! 

Celebrating all things Maths has been our focus for this week! Maths is such an important and integral part of our lives beyond school and Maths Week Scotland does it’s best to promote why maths is important and get our pupils involved in some fun tasks which help inspire a love for all things numeracy! 

P1-4

P1-4 have started their maths week with some outdoor learning inputs from OWL Scotland where parents got the chance to join in on the fun! They went outside and explored measure by comparing sticks and making their own stick at a whopping 17m long on the ground. They then got stuck into some symmetrical butterflies using natural materials and a beetle drive. They had another math-y morning outside extending their measure knowledge with Miss Douglas’s own measure challenge so boys and girls had lots of funning running about the playground wielding their metre sticks! 

P5-7

P5-7 have taken the chance to get involved in some of the Maths Week live lessons this week, on Monday we did Math Story Telling and pupils had a bash at the Maths Week Story Writing competition with their ‘Finn Finity’ stories! We also partook in a different live lesson that involved making our own math inspired booklets. On Wednesday we braved the Autumn chill and did some outdoor learning with place value and finished up in the warmth of the classroom trying some online numeracy escape rooms. Thursday we did some arty maths and created our own labyrinths and mazes!

Finally on Friday, we had parents complete a survey which highlighted the many ways they use maths in their real life jobs which allowed the pupils to see the value in this key curricular area! Thanks very much to all parents who took part in that for us! 🙂