Kirkcolm Primary School

All three school communities came together on Saturday for our annual Kirkcolm Mini Walk to raise funds for our schools and to enjoy a social fitness activity together.

Despite the threat of rain, the weather stayed dry enough to allow our walkers to enjoy a run or a stroll around the beautiful scenery of our Kirkcolm coastal area.

First, second and third places are awarded for the boys and girls completing the course in the quickest time.  The first boy and girl tied, crossing the line together. The results are as follows:

Boys:

1. George Keith – Kirkcolm P6
2. Danny Dougan – Kirkcolm P5
3. James Turtle – Kirkcolm P6

Girls:

1. Olivia Turtle – Kirkcolm P7
2. Izzy White – Portpatrick P7
3. Miley Adams – Kirkcolm P7

Our Winners: Olivia & George

The route followed along the Corsewall Estate Coastal Path. A very well done to everyone who walked or ran the course.  There was great camaraderie and high spirits as everyone progressed around the route.

We are very grateful to those who were sponsored to take part in the event.  Each school has raised their own total, which will be announced shorty.   The money will be put to very good use for the children.

Our schools would like to thank:

• Our parents and families who planned and organised the mini-walk
• The Carrick-Buchanan and Milroy family for their kind  permission to walk on their land
• The volunteer  marshals
• Lidl and Tesco  for the donation of refreshment
• and to ALL the children and families who fundraised and participated to raise money for our three fantastic wee schools!  We applaud each and every one of you who took part.

Enjoy these photographs from the event:

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As part of younger pupils learning all about caring for babies, our younger pupils enjoyed the company of Miss Maeva Mc Harg.  Mrs Mc Harg brought in her baby daughter, who has just turned one, to allow all to appreciate all the more, what caring for a baby involves.  This is part of the health and well being teaching planned for p1-4 this term.

There was lots of questions for Mummy Mc Harg and lots of happy little faces enthralled by the cute Miss Maeva who enjoyed crawling about the gym hall.

Many thanks to Mrs Mc Harg and Maeva for coming in – the cute little visitor brightened up the day for all in school!

After a long delay due to Covid, the annual Primary 7 Rotary Lunch event recommenced today.

Olivia and Luke represented Kirkcolm Primary  at this year’s event where the guest speakers were Bejing Olympic Gold and Silver Curling Medallists Vicky Wright (Gold), Bobby Lammie (Silver) and Hammy McMillan (Silver).

They enjoyed a tasty lunch of Tomato soup or fruit juice, followed by fish and chips.  This was followed by a Q & A session with our Olympians.  They talked about practicing for about 7 hours a day, five days a week and travelling a lot for competitions. The curling sports heroes said that they were first introduced to curling by attending the curling club at the North West Castle in Primary 7. So, now is about the time for anyone interested in curling as a sport to think about joining.

Our Leswalt and Kirkcolm  team rocked up at the North West Castle wearing Scotland tops that once belonged to Vicky Wright, who also went to Leswalt school.

 Both represented our school well, chatting easily with a member of the Rotary Club, who joined us at our table throughout the event.

#confident individuals

Today Kirkcolm Primary got to venture outside the school grounds for a trip to Logan gardens! Many of the pupils remembered going on these trips before and we were delighted to be welcomed into the gardens once more!

The little class went off to enjoy a Teddy Bear’s Picnic. They packed up their night time buddies and brought them along for the fun. In this they learned all about SWAF – what bears need to survive in the wild; Shelter, Water, Air and Food! They played some games around this and made their own islands for their bears to live on – ensuring the bears had everything they needed! 

The big class toddled off to learn about the different parts of a flower. Using some creative props, we learned all about how pollination works in plants and our best friends – the bees – who play such an essential role in this. We then used magnifying glasses and coloured overlay glasses (that were extremely reminiscent of the early 3D movie days!) to study different flowers in the gardens and see how they appealed to insects. We also had some practise being our own squirrels and storing away our nuts for the Winter. 

Finally, we enjoyed our pack lunches, surrounded by the beauty of the gardens, before toddling back off on our bus to head back to school. 

We cannot thank the Botanical Garden Team enough for this day, it has been so informative and such fun for the pupils and adults! 

Today we weeded out the weak from the strong… Well, more so the egg haters from the egg lovers/tolerate-ers!

After 2 weeks of growing, some fairly consistent watering and possibly too much sun on occasions.. We managed to grow some cress in class and finally today we had the chance to harvest our hard work. Mrs Richardson, with her keen gardening skills, led this with the class and brought in all the supplies to create some delicious egg and cress sandwiches with the class.

Here are some photos of the pupils reaping the fruits of their labour in sandwich form..

In line with our Eco Plan and our Eco topic in upper school this term, we have been making our best effort to keep on top of the litter problem! This hasn’t just been done in our playground but we have also expanded this to our local area! 

Suited and booted with our litter pickers, gloves and bin bags, we went on a litter hunt and thankfully there wasn’t too much to be found down the beach but what there was, you best believe our eagle eyes zoned in on it! 

The tiniest piece of plastic did not escape our ruthless litter picking! 

This is one of many litter picks we have done as a school and will continue to do, as is our duty, to keep the area surrounding our lovely school in tip top shape! 

Here are some photos of the day… 

The sun shone, the pupils listened and the presentations were informative and fun – safe to say the North Rhins Partnership Safety morning was the most resounding success!

This term’s Health and Well-Being focus for the upper primaries was centred on Risk-Taking Behaviour; in short, what to do if faced with an emergency situation. Having discussed this as a staff, it was felt there was no better plan than to get as many local emergency services as possible together to offer the pupils a first-hand experience directly from those who dealt with such situations. And what a response we got from the community! No less than seven presenters offered their time covering RNLI, Police, Ambulance, Fire Service, Coastguard, Scottish Power and Farming!

Working in small groups and armed with a clipboard for note-taking; the pupils moved round each station in 15 minute slots. Listening to the presentations, finding out about the kits carried by each service and asking their pre-prepared questions – the groups collected a wealth of information.

Summing up the morning, Mrs Baillie led the group in talking about these jobs based in their local community, considering the many employability skills required and discussing whether the jobs were paid careers or voluntary. It was interesting for the children to understand the value of volunteer work and giving back to their community.

All in all, it was an excellent morning of learning in the sunshine with friends. And, they are all a great deal more safety savvy now too!

A huge thank you must go to all of the services for giving up their time – one having come of their fourth night shift! Their input was most welcome by us all.

Enjoy flicking through the photos below to see for yourselves.

All the schools in the Stranraer Academy cluster were brought together to put on our running shoes and do our best in a good natured cross country competition out at Green Valley! We simply could not of asked for a better day for it; the sun was shining, not too hot and not too cool and the fantastic Alison Murray was running the show.

Kirkcolm took along their selected 15 (so.. most of the class in our case!) and were primed and ready to go. All pupils gave it their absolute best and the effort from the boys and girls was outstanding. Everybody has a positive attitude, even if running wasn’t their most favourite thing to do. One of the best parts about it was to see how much the pupils supported each other through this! Even if we weren’t the fastest – we certainly were up there with cheering the loudest!

A special shout out needs to go to Emma Drummond, who secured 2nd place in the P7 girls category, excellent effort Emma and a medal to show for your efforts! Well done!

Here are some photos of our runners from the day;

Today, to celebrate the final day of term, we simply had to have some Easter based fun! Especially after the turmoil of being subject to the pranks of Mrs Baillie all morning!

A lot of us took place in the egg decorating competition, kindly run by the House Captains, and competition was stiff but the final prizes were awarded to;

P1-4

1st – Archie Ashton

2nd – Alistair Swan

3rd – Emilie Brown

P4-7

1st – Steven Gillon

2nd – Luke Butler

3rd – Tylor Alexander

To add some extra Easter fun to the day we ended it with an egg hunt outside where the P7’s managed to (extremely well) conceal a whopping 76 eggs around the playground! Some of them were on fire with this! …Some less so, but thankfully we are just such a kind, sharing bunch everybody ended up with an egg by the end!

Naturally, since we were already outside this had to culminate in a game of whole school rounders because if you act like it’s summer, surely the temperature will follow!?

Happy Holidays to all and can’t wait to see you back for our bright and sunny term 4!

Today Mrs Baillie was truly a very naughty head teacher today, pranking our poor pupils! Not even just once… but twice! 

First Mrs Baillie tried to convince them all that since some had been off with Covid this past term, they would have to come in over the Easter holidays and make up their time doing numeracy and literacy! Some of Miss McNicoll’s older pupils were a bit too savvy for it but poor Miss Douglas’s class fell for the act! (Give that teacher an Oscar!) The joke was quickly revealed and we all breathed a sigh of relief that we would get to enjoy our 2 weeks + a day off! 

Did she stop there…? Oh no, Certainly not! 

Mrs Baillie was back at it again after break with a very official letter dictating that due to our planting our trees and bushes in the playground, the council were going to refuse to cut the grass around them so we had to trawl out with our trusty scissors and rulers to ensure all the grass was at the recommended 5cm! This time, we got em’ all! 

There was much amusement to the staff about this, as you can see from the many photos but it did descend into a sticky willy war as the pupils understandably realised how utterly ridiculous they looked! 

Please enjoy these photos of them at their best for your own amusement!