Kirkcolm Primary School

The Lighthouse Musicians visited P1-4 at Kirkcolm Primary today for a morning of music. To get started, Gillian led the boys and girls though an opposites game which was aimed at getting their bodies warmed up and their minds concentrating, with Sally being crowned the winner. After this, they then spoke about the importance of warming up our voices before singing and pupils took it in turns to lead the class through the ‘voice rollercoaster’ warm-up, were the pitch of our voice had to follow the person’s hand up or down.

We then had great fun trying to say the tongue twister that Gillian had created especially for Kirkcolm – “Kirsty kissed a camel at Kirkcolm” – before singing some songs together, including 5 Speckled Frogs and BINGO! Each pupil then received a cup and we sat in a big circle. We had to learn the rhythm that Gillian taught us and play it as an ensemble. After we finished the rhythm each time, we had to pass our cup onto the next person and see if we could keep it going until we got our original cup back. And we did, meaning we managed the same rhythm 24 times in total!!

Finally, we learned some Italian musical terms, including forte (loud), fortissimo (very loud), piano (quiet), pianissimo (very quiet). We played the hot/cold game with a hidden ball, but using the Italian terms instead.

A huge thank-you to the Lighthouse Musicians for coming into school today – we had a wonderful musical morning!

On Wednesday we welcomed Ansley McClure from the Kirkcolm Community Hub to present a prize to a very special little lady in P3! Last year, all pupils took part in a competition for designing the new logo for the Kirkcolm Community Hub and it was Jessica’s lovely design of the sunset over the Loch with the silhouette of Corsewell Lighthouse that won it in the end! 

Jessica earned herself a WHSmith voucher to spend on herself and her design has been made into a sign which now sits outside the hub, welcoming any passer-by’s in! 

Well done Jessica! 

To celebrate Red Nose Day 2023 and raise funds for Comic Relief, everyone came to school today dressed in their casual clothes. We even had one pupil who sprayed his hair red to mark the occasion! Official merchandise has been on sale all week to raise further pennies for this very worthwhile cause.

Our House Captains, James and Noah, have also been busy organising our ‘Kirkcolm’s Got Talent’ show over the last few weeks. They held auditions and got everything set up for our show this afternoon, to which parents and friends of the school were invited in return for a small donation. We had a variety of wonderful acts entertaining the audience, including Ivan playing his saxophone, Sally & Phoebe displaying their gymnastics skills, Emilie singing and dancing to George Ezra ‘Green Green Grass’, and Alistair doing a comedy sketch to ‘The Duck Song.’

Former Kirkcolm Headteacher, Mr Harold McCracken, kindly gave up his time to come in and help our House Captains judge the talent show. Despite it being a difficult decision, Ross and Rory were award 3rd place for singing Ed Sheeran ‘Celestial’; Havana was awarded 2nd place for playing the harmonica; and Jack was awarded 1st place for singing U2 ‘With or Without You.’

We raised an amazing total of £151.45 for Comic Relief! A huge well done to all our performers – you are indeed a very talented bunch! – and thank-you to everyone for supporting our charity fundraising.

The upper class have been studying WW2 and as part of their topic they had to pick an area we looked at and crate their own personal project on it, and well… One pupil really went the extra mile! 

Young James Turtle CREATED this piece of work, it is a zeplin based on the type you would have seen being used in WW2 and created it in his own work shop entirely out of recycled wood from pallets! 

I am sure you will all agree with me that he has a bright future ahead of him in carpentry and get your orders in now! 

Well done to our P7 pupils who dazzled at the Curling Bonspiel on Monday! Pupils headed down to the North West Castle, kindly escorted by parent Lucy, to participate in some curling fun and engage in a bit of competition. 

There met up with Portpatrick, Leswalt, Sandhead, Sheuchan, Park, Belmont and Rephad teams and our wee buddies at Kirkcolm managed to swing second place!

With the outcome being; 

1st: Rephad 

2nd: Kirkcolm 

3rd: Sheuchan

Pupils also got a tasty lunch at the North West castle for their hard work and we hope this has inspired some of them to take up the sport themselves in their own free time to make use of the great resources we have here in this wee corner of Scotland! 

The second place winners; 

On Friday we got ourselves all sorted out with an early lunch to then head down to the Ryan Centre for a film afternoon! The film afternoon was courtesy of the folk at Intu Film, who kindly came in and did a session with the upper school on film making not long ago. 

We got snuggled up in the cosy theatre to watch Tad the Explorer and the Curse of the Mummy! We had a fab time and it was lovely to see some familiar faces from our partnership schools there! 

A lovely day to come back to and a chance to celebrate all things literature! Today was kindly organised by Olivia from Pupil Council and our two hard working librarians; Archie & Marley, who all worked hard to come up with come activities to help us celebrate World Book Day! 

They ran a character design competition which saw Ivan and Paige come out on top! As well as that, we drew a raffle for anybody who manage to take an accelerated reading test today which had Steven take winning place. All three earned an extra book token!

In class, the younger pupils took part on a main character treasure hunt outside organised by Miss Douglas and the big class participated in the BBC Live Lesson on World Book Day. Upper school pupils also enjoyed a Chill n’ Read session in class where they cosied up with a book and some hot chocolate and biscuits – a huge part of the true joy of reading when you get to curl up with a good book! All pupils took part in the David Walliams Live Lesson later on in the day where the wee people enjoyed their hot chocolate and biscuits! 

Overall, an indulgent calm day was had by all and we hope all the pupils get to make use of their book tokens and feel a tiny bit more inspired by books and what comes with the joy of reading! I have already heard some whispers of pupils thinking about writing their own books or already in the throws of writing so can’t wait to read what they’ve come up with one day! 

Well done to the boys who represented the school at the Active Schools Badminton competition! They have been regularly attending badminton sessions over the past few weeks and all their hard work paid off. James secured second place with a medal, Jack secured third place with a medal and Ivan came fourth overall out of a whopping over 50 who attended the competition!

Mrs Hall kindly came out to join us today to deliver the good news from the make It Appen competition which took place earlier in the school year. Pupils were charged with coming up with an idea for their own app with the best ideas getting made and published on the Make it Appen website! 

The winner of this was a pupil at Leswalt Primary but we were lucky enough to have Olivia Johnstone as a runner up! Well done Olivia – your idea was fab!

Mrs Hall also had certificates for some of the other pupils in school whose apps, while not placing, got recognition for their great ideas and this included Blaze, Ivan, Alistair, Paige Calum, Rory and young Henry! 

Well done troops – great effort all round!  

Have a look at some of the amazing app ideas pupils have came up with here; Make It Happen Club

We are so happy to welcome back Kathryn Purchase into our classroom for another fab History input for the pupils! Pupils have been working hard studying WW1 ad WW2 this term, we had made a good bit of headway through the topic but nothing compares to Kathryn’s expert knowledge which provides an insight that we cannot get anywhere else! 

We learned about how the War started and how this was linked to other events across the world like The Great Depression. We understood that The Treaty of Versailles, an outcome of the first World War, was one of the key factors in what started WW2. We looked at how this led to Hitler’s rise to power and the events that followed. 

The morning talk was very informative – so much information that the pupils seemed to soak up like a sponge! Then the fun really began for their eager eyes, they got to get hands on with all that fantastic props that Kathryn brings along with her – with WW2 being her most heavily stocked history topic! 

We finished off the session with a Q&A – as per expected, the pupils had lots and lots of questions to fire at Kathryn and they got their answer every time! 

Thanks for joining us today Kathryn, always a pleasure and until next time… 🙂 Here are  some photos below of today’s fun! 

All the hands up!