Digital Leaders from Kirkcolm, Leswalt and Portpatrick came together for a training session today.
Our Capable TeamGetting To Grips With Email
The children covered a lot of areas as part of today’s agenda:
Roles and Responsibilities
Correctly handling, storing and charging devices
Managing and using logins – personal information, successfully accessing sites
Bookmarking favourites and displaying our favourites bar
Adding tiles to personal Glow launch pads e.g. Teams, Email, One Drive etc.
Creating and sending emails with attachments to the correct recipient
Discussing possible breaktime clubs e.g. Scratch Coding
Our inventive team decided that they would like to collaborate with each other across the partnership to plan events such as Safety Internet Day. We have now set up an email group just for our digital leaders so they can communicate with each other.
The session was very productive and our team are ready to support their classmates in any way they can.
Here is a useful parent guide to support your child online:
Today was meant to be our day of Harvest Festival Fun from our potatoes given to us by the kind people of the Dandelion Project! Pupils made hard efforts at growing these potatoes both at home and in school and today we celebrated these efforts using potato in some creative ways!
We kept it very low key today, especially given the recent sad news of the passing of our Queen. We spent some time today reflecting on her reign and the impact this day will have all over the world.
So this morning we put our cooking skills to work making some tattie scones. Pupils peeled and shaped their mashed potatoes (teachers and adults handled the boiling and the mashing side…) and formed them into some interestingly shaped tattie scones which were then fried by staff! This was definitely an experience for pupils and some were amazing and some were sticky potato blobs sadly doomed for the bin, but what is success without some failure too?
After enjoying these, the classes joined together once more for some potato based art. Pupils were given some sliced potatoes for printing purposes and told to come up with designs which made them think harvest, autumn and making the most of the land around us. As you can see, they did a great job with this brief.
Overall, another lovely day in school to perhaps take our minds off the sad news from yesterday.
A huge shout out to Michelle, the lovely cook and Mrs Smith from Leswalt, who swooped in to lend a hand over the hot stove and the wild cleaning up. We couldn’t do it without you ladies 🙂
Today the boys and girls of Kirkcolm got a little visit and a chat from the Community Safety Team for the West of Dumfries and Galloway! The Safety Officers took this opportunity to remind pupils about how they can stay safe in and around the community and keep their community and surrounding safe for others.
We discussed issues related to dog fouling and litter – things that just don’t make for the nicest surroundings… Pupils were reminded of the laws regarding these and what can happen to offenders. We also discussed the rising issue with Gulls in the area – no longer seagulls but urban gulls!
We had a lot of great discussions based around how we can keep ourselves and our community safe and the boys and girls proved to be superstar listeners.
Finally managed to pin down this crazy wee crew… Phew!
The pupils and staff here at Kirkcolm are delighted to welcome our new precious wee P1’s that started with us at the beginning of the term! We have got James, Sally, Ewan and Henry all looking very smart, kitted our in their burgundy…
Henry
Ewan
James
Sally
Silly Faces for the Camera!
As well as this gang joining us in the first week, we have actually had another wee addition to our team… We are very pleased to welcome Vladislav with open arms – who is joining us here at Kirkcolm Primary all the way from Ukraine. We hope he enjoys being part of our team!
On Monday this week, we were very lucky to have Neve from Wigtownshire Rugby Club coming in to coach the pupils of P5-7 in some rugby skills! Neve taught us some new rugby skills and got us developing our throwing and catching abilities, our dodging abilities and even some (safe!) tackling abilities! We all had good fun – even if it was a bit hot!
This is the start of a 6 week block of lessons and Kirkcolm will be out every Monday on that playing field – so please remember appropriate P.E Kit and trainers for a Monday!
Starting off our new school year, we are pleased to announce we have been awarded our RSPB Wild Challenge Silver Award. This is as a result of all the hard work of our pupils in promoting biodiversity in our school grounds.
Our children had to complete six challenges both to help nature and experience nature, all of which promotes Learning for Sustainability, Sustainable Development Goals and good health and wellbeing.
Congratulations on achieving your Silver Wild Challenge award! We loved your Biodiversity Action plan and were very impressed with all you hard work. Thank you for your amazing efforts. Every action you take makes a real difference. We hope you thoroughly enjoyed learning through nature on your journey to your award.
This has been a jam packed week to celebrate our final time together with the 10 super star P7 pupils and the classes we are currently in.
How amazing it has been to have a normal school year, totally uninterrupted by any external; factors, and to go back to a sense of normality at last! One of the biggest signs of finally returning to normal was being able to open our doors once again to the parents and grans and grampas and anybody else who fancied it, to attend our Closing Ceremony on Wednesday!
We spent the entire afternoon celebrating all the fantastic achievements of the past year and wow – was there a lot. From our Super STAR Readers, to our teacher delegated awards, the Rainbow Spelling/Tables Awards and the STAR Award GOLD Certificate! The pupils of Kirkcolm really cleaned up house this year!
We also hope we delighted you with some of our singing (I am sure yopu missed that!) so we had been working very hard this past term to learn the hymns as well as our rendition of Hello Goodbye by The Beatles and our own Kirkcolm version of The Wellerman Song! Available for event hire if you are at all interested…
To round off the ceremony, we bid a tearful goodbye to our (giant) P7 babies, as they head on off to the Academy! We gave them their yearbooks and their leavers hoodies and celebrated just how much they have grown over the years with the Photostory!
Finally on Friday (the actual last day!) we enjoyed a nice chilled out day watching films, getting our classrooms all tidied up for summer and spending that ever so important final few hours together before a lengthy summer apart.
We were very much treated in the end by George Keith who kindly donated his Bouncy Castle Assult Course win to us to have fun on and finally, the day was rounded off by a tasty ice cream in the sun courteous of the fantastic ladies of the Parent Council.
We can’t even begin to thank everyone for helping to contribute to the fantastic year we have all had together, from pupils to parents to teachers, staff and cooks – it has all came together to be a fantastic year together and what a perfect day to finish it off. Here’s to many more years of normality – may we never take it for granted ever again!
Have am amazing summer folks and we will see you again in August! P7’s, you have been a delight and keep on doing great things!
-All Kirkcolm Staff 🙂
Special Award for a Special boy who’s changed the most!
Once again – a Huge Thanks to everyone involved for the end of year treats! You are all stars and we are such a blessed wee community and team!
Felt it very, very necessary to pop up a wee post to say a huge congratulations to past students Ruth Turtle, Danny Lyon and Ellie Miller – who all managed to secure a Pupil of the year title at the Stranraer Academy Awards! 3 out of 6 awards is outstanding for this wee school.
We feel very blessed to have gotten to know/teach these wonderful (not so wee anymore) people and see what fantastic young adults they’re turning into – You may not sport the burgundy anymore but that’s how we will always remember you!
Here’s a look back at some simpler times with them… (I can’t imagine they’ll be overly amused at these photos but oh well!) 😀
Nice early start for us at Kirkcolm on Monday as we got suited and booted to go galavanting off to Heads of Ayr Farm Park for our school trip this year, and a smashing choice of location for all involved!
After a some what lengthy bus drive we finally arrived at our destination and bundled off to enjoy some of the attractions. We got to walk around and enjoy all of the animals and wildlife the farm park had to offer. From the large pigs lounging around, the wild meerkats keeking their heads up and the lemurs with their bright eyes – it was an amazing experience for all.
Not to mention the other attractions; sliding down hills on our doughnuts, zipping along the flying fox, exhausting ourselves on the trampoline and bouncing pillows and making use of all the gigantic and fantastic play park the area had to offer! Somewhere in-between all this we managed to fit in have our lunch in their lovely large cafe under the watchful eyes of some very cute and tiny primates!
We even got to round off our day in the large indoor play area complete with some very fun (and terrifying in my opinion…) slides and lots of obstacles to navigate around! Didn’t take long for myself and Miss Douglas to get the shoes kicked off to join in the fun! (it was truly exhausting, I have no idea how they do it for so long…)
Finally, we toddled off to our bus exhausted and ready to get home and rest but very happy after a fun day out! What a great way to kick off the final week of school before the summer holidays and a 10/10 experience for everyone who went!
On the 20th Of June 2022 Kirkcolm, Leswalt, and Portpatrick P7’s travel to Agnew park to participate in fun water games and water sports, held by Stranraer Water Sports Association (SWSA, For short)
After they loaded off the bus they went to meet the staff and equipped their wet suits.
They then enjoyed a few games before getting their life jackets on ready to have some great fun!
Then after all that and safety talk it’s finally time to hit the water! They enjoy splashing and kicking the water, almost making sure their shoes get soaked, until it’s time to submerge the rest of their body. Again assuring to get completely wet.
After the joyous screaming had passed it was time to move onto paddle boarding and kayaking! This was performed in two separate groups.
By the time that was over it was time to get their lunch bags, and dig in!!
As the saying goes, time flies by, and with all the excitement it quickly went on to heading back to the water and going on a final paddle board trip as a whole to take on a raft making challenge by joining all the paddleboards together.
Then after the long day of fun and games they ended it with some ice cream and a calm bus ride home.
Thank you to the instructors and volunteers at the watersports centre. Thank you too to Mr White for our ice-cream treat!
-Taylor Smith (p7) and reporter extraordinaire!
Some Photos from our Resident Photographer as well:
