June 29, 2025
by Mrs Morrison
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💫A Very Fun Friday! 💫

On Friday, to round up the end of a fabulous school year and the summer term coming to a close, pupils of Kirkcolm Primary embarked on their school trip to Ayr!

All pupils (and staff!) had an amazing fun filled day which kicked off with the train journey up the road where pupils wasted no time whipping out the snacks and getting stuck in. Once up we trekked down to LA Bowl for some laser quest 😎 and bowling fun 🎳 A couple of strikes later and we settled down with our food to fuel up for our next stop…

Sadly, due to unpredictable weather, instead of making use of the park at the beach, we made a swift right turn to Pirate Pete’s (our back up plan) and WOW – What a treat that was. The pupils (…and some staff…) threw themselves right into the fun, climbing and sliding all over the place. 🏴‍☠️

Finally, we made our way back to the train station and settled in for our trip home. In a shocking turn of events, our pupils still had bundles of energy and were bright eyed and full of the chat the entire way home but I am sure the fun of the day caught up with them when they made it to their beds that night! 😴

Another fantastic trip organised by our lovely Miss Gordon, Mrs Baillie and the hard work of the parent council for raising the funds to take us there! 🥰

June 26, 2025
by Mrs Morrison
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Den Building at the Beach!

This afternoon the whole school joined together to go a jaunt down to the beach to put their STEM and outdoor learning skills to the test! It’s been a wee while since we descended upon the sand and thankfully the weather was just right to be able to make the most of it! 🏖

Pupils split into teams of roughly about 5/6 and came up with a den building plan! They had certain criteria to follow…

Has to have a front and back entrance 🚪🚪
Has to have a roof! 🏠
Has to be made of all natural materials (no cheating!!) 🌿🍃🍂
Has to be able to have a small figure stand up inside of it 👫

Safe to say, by the end we were pretty amazed with the creativity and genius engineering that came from them! Pupils did their best to follow criteria and smashed it out the park while getting to enjoy some fresh air and sunshine! 😎

Meta Skills

Critical Thinking Chris

Leading Li

Adapting Alexander

Creativity Cassidy

Collaborating Cora

Communicating Cate

Articles

Article 24 – Health, Food, Water and Environment

Article 29 – Aims of Education

Article 31 – Rest, Arts, Play & Culture

June 25, 2025
by Miss Douglas
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No Day for Jamie is ever Quite the Samey – A day in the life of a headteacher

Jamie Farquhar came in to speak to the boys and girl this afternoon about his job as a head teacher; he had a tough act to follow after sister in-law’s careers in the community assembly only minutes before! Jamie didn’t need any introductions, we were all familiar with him from transition days to the academy, from events at Kirkcolm school and of course for his favourite job of all – being Fallon’s daddy! 😄

The talk itself was a whirlwind of excitement as the boys and girls took on the role of headteachers! Jamie give them a list of jobs and responsibilities from budgeting, to dealing with staff, parents, pupils and resources and asked them to rank these basked on order of importance and to top it off, they has a very limited time to make these important decisions – so as you can imagine there was just as much stress in the room as I imagine goes on in Mr Farquhar’s office on a daily basis, perhaps just a little less boujee furniture!

This task captured the skills needed to be a successful head teacher perfectly as the pupils demonstrated their ability as:

Collaborating Coras – they worked together to decide on was the most important priority, often having to negotiate their feelings and gut instincts.

Communicating Cates – there was plenty of discussions in the room, lots of heated debates and interesting conversations between the class of wanna-be headteachers.

Leading Lis – as a Headteacher Jamie explained that important decisions fall onto you and often this can seem scary! He used the example of everyone ordering their priorities different as a means to show that regardless of the decisions you make, you are always going to upset somebody, as much as you want to try and avoid it!

Feeling Felix – He said that as well as doing plenty of thinking with you head, it’s always important to show compassion to others! ❤️

Overall, I am glad we have Mrs Baillie and Mr Farquhar as our heads/ soon to be heads as I don’t think I would like to work for any of the mini wanna-be headteachers!! 😮🤭

A huge thankyou to Jamie for his time this afternoon, I think its fair to say we learned first hand how busy a head teacher is so we are very grateful that he managed to squeeze us in this afternoon! The boys and girls all had an absolute blast! 🙂

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