Kirkcolm Primary School

Pupils were super excited when they arrived at school this morning and saw some workmen in the playground using what they described as a “flame thrower”!!! No, the circus hasn’t come to Kirkcolm Primary – rest assured, it was only some workmen painting our new playground marking onto the concrete!

Back in September we were successful in receiving some funding from Maths Week Scotland. The only condition was that we had to use this to promote Maths, so we decided to purchase a new playground marking in the shape of a giant target. This will enable pupils to work with numbers in a fun way both at break times and during lessons if they go outdoors.

Have a keek below at the happy faces with their colourful new playground design!

Every year to help celebrate Book Week Scotland, P1-3 pupils are gifted with a Book Bug (P1) / Read, Write, Count (P2/3) bag as part of a government initiative to promote literacy and numeracy at home. And despite Covid ruining most things this year, thankfully it didn’t ruin this (albeit it was a bit late since Book Week was technically last week!!!).

This afternoon, pupils were presented with their gift bags and got the opportunity to explore the contents. They enjoyed reading the books and playing some of the games contained inside the bags. There was much hilarity with the ‘This is Dog’ book – if you have a P1 Bookbug bag, have a keek for yourself!!  Although this year we were missing the parents (who usually pop in to share in this wonderful event), the pupils were thrilled with their bags.

Please look out for your child bringing these bags home for you to enjoy together. If you’d like any further information or suggestions on how to use the bags at home, check out the Scottish Book Trust website:

P3 bag – https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning-resources/read-write-count-for-p3

P2 bag – https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning-resources/read-write-count-for-p2

P1 bag – https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning-resources/bookbug-picture-book-prize-2021-learning-activities

We hope you have fun using these with your child!

On Monday Kirkcolm pupils showed their support and stance against bullying by coming to school sporting odd socks. This was done to promote how great individuality is amongst us all and why it should always be celebrated and nothing more!

Pupils watched a 20 minute assembly video from the Odd Sock Gang that showed different celebrities telling us about why they are anti-bullying all the way. Accompanied by a few very catchy songs for the pupils to enjoy!

Mrs McHarg has put a lot of effort into creating and promoting the anti bullying policy for the North Rhins so if you are curious about what we have in place do not hesitate to get in contact with the school and we will continue to be thankful for the happy community we strive for here at Kirkcolm!

The time of year has finally rolled around again where we all don our Pudsey yellow and come together to raise money for a great and very important cause and this year (extenuating circumstances and all) was absolutely no different!

This year we celebrated and marked the event by wearing the brightest clothes we own and kicking off our day by showing our support to the brave Joe Wicks  in finally half hour of his 24 hour exercise smash! This got our spirits nice and high for the day!

We  raised funds by selling our Pudsey ears, pins and wristbands through the week. The Pupil Council set up some fun activities for the pupils to take place in which included a scavenger hunt outside for all to enjoy and the winner Zack Ashton proved himself scavenger hunt champ of Kirkcolm and a Guess the Bears Birthday competition which saw winner James Turtle take home the prized cuddly teddy with a mere 2 days out!

In the end we had a fun day and we managed to raise a whopping £152.10! Which I am sure you will all agree is a massive accomplishment for such a small rural school of only 36 pupils. We are as proud as punch of the excellent effort of all the pupils today and they just show what wee numbers can do when they put their minds to it!

Have a look at the photos below for some snaps of today’s fun…

Our school vision and values are to ‘REACH for the Stars!’ At a previous meeting, the Pupil Council discussed how we could momentum going with this and continue to remind everyone since we were unable to have school assemblies. We also considered how we could share it with the wider school community, including parents given that they aren’t allowed into the building at the moment.

The boys and girls of the Pupil Council were very creative and decided they wanted to make a video to share with you all! This will introduce parents to the learning superheroes, whose mottos spell out ‘REACH’, and will allow class teachers to share it with pupil to remind them too.

A huge well done to Luke and Taylor who took on the job of creating this video! Copy the link below and paste it into a web browser to view it. We hope you enjoy the video! Perhaps you could use it to talk to your child about their learning, or ask them what learning superhero were they today at school? Enjoy!

https://glowscotland-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/gw12mchargshona_glow_sch_uk/EY-HE52zUvpOqKMJDLwAR6QBiip4V13fh7iVKhzMK0aUSA?e=TAZFMd

Today in celebration of Outdoor Learning Day we made sure we did our best to take all our learning today outside and thankfully the weather was on our side and even though it was a bit dreich looking in the morning – it held up and everyone (mostly…) remained dry!

Our Morning

Miss Gibson took out the P1-4 pupils for a spot of time practise. The boys and girls had a good run around and were hunting the playground to find clocks hidden showing different times. Then they got out the chalk and drew some clocks on the ground and used their very own arms to be the hands on the clock and show different times.

P4-7 were out with Miss McNicoll and spent the first 20 minutes of their morning practising their spelling words in a variety of different ways in pairs or on their own. The for maths we practised our fractions, first by using mini circles on the ground and covering different fractions of them and then we stepped it up and drew some very large (mostly circular…) circles on the ground and used our entire bodies to cover parts of them! (This is where it got a little bit damp…)

After Break… 

P1-4 went out on a literacy based scavenger hunt! The cunning Miss Douglas had hidden a lot of words and pictures to match with the words all over the playground and the P1’s had to try and find them while the older boys and girls were focusing on adjectives, nouns and verbs.

P4-7 had a choppy day with a bit of reading and la francaise/espagnol outdoors with their numbers to 20 and then continued to keep up their maths with Miss Gibson – looking at money this time! Pupils took part in a money shop challenge where they made their own money shops outside and sold some natural materials. Pupils had to source what they were going to sell, figure out at what price and calculate how much money they would make altogether.

After Lunch…

P1-4 got stuck into their P.E outside with a few fun games and P4-7 got arty with some natural materials on a black card canvas!

Overall we were delighted with how the day went and, as always, it is great fun getting to put the fantastic grounds we are blessed with here at Kirkcolm to good use! 

Well today was a very spooooky day out in the lovely scenes of Kirkcolm with our spectacular Halloween Extravaganza. Kindly (and extremely well might I add) organised by our House captains; Daniel and Zack.

The boys managed to put on a fantastic party with lot’s of games to keep the boys and girls busy and having a grand time. While each class had their own separate party, the boys organised a scavenger hunt outside so they rest of us could still have fun! Well done Boys! 

Though it wasn’t quite the same as normal and both classes did miss each other a touch (not to mention the cute addition of the nursery boys and girls in their costumes) – we still had our parades, just kept within our own class bubble!

The costume winners for each year are as follows; 

P1 – Callum as a scary skeleton!

P2/3 – Arran as something very creepy indeed… 

P4 – Lydia as a wicked witch and Alfie as a ghoul!

P5 – Olivia J as an undead pirate!

P6 – Calder as an evil elf (complete with head in a box!)

P7 – Ruth with her handmade bat wings! (sadly she did not hang herself upside down for the photo opportunity…)

This was then followed by a game of monster corners, wrap the Mummy, Scary Dancers and finally a best dancer contest where the kids busted out their best moves in order to claim those final packets of sweeties! 

By the end we were all thoroughly tuckered out, staff and pupils alike, but a great day was had by all. Check out the photos below to see what we were up to…

Wishing all the boys and girls the best over the weekend with whatever Halloween plans they are doing be it a scary movie or a pumpkin trail sweetie hunt…!

All of our pupils and staff wanted to say a huge thank-you: firstly to the Community Council who gave us the funding to purchase 2 new sets of football goals for our playground; and secondly to the team of men (Bobby McKie, Gordon Keith, Andrew Farquhar, Tommy Cochrane and Wully McMeikan) who kindly gave up their own time and resources to help install the goals during the October holidays. Your efforts are very much appreciated by everyone in the school community.

Our pupils are beyond delighted to finally have new goals to enable them to play football without having to use good old jumpers as goals anymore!! Thank-you once again 🙂 Here are some photos of the happy smiling faces making the most of their new playground equipment already!

Today the boys and girls of P4-7, accompanied by Mrs Richardson, took a trip to the beautiful grounds of Dunskey Estate in Portpatrick because something very special was happening – they were using it as a setting for a movie! The Orr-Ewing family were kind enough to invite all the North Rhin’s schools along to have a nosey at what goes on behind the scene of a real life movie set. A once in a lifetime experience for many of us! (Unless of course we have some budding actors in our midst…) Have a look at the photos below to check out the scenes on a glorious outing!

“It was funny when the guy fell!” – Olivia T

“I like how they made the blood look real on the actors!” – Tylor

“I liked their swords!” – Jack H

Math Week 

P1-4

The little class today combined their Math and french with a spot of French Number Hopscotch (They are, after all, seasoned professionals at this Hopscoth malarkey now…!) This was a great opportunity to practise their french numbers they have been working on this term with Miss Gibson and put it to use in game form. Looks like a fun time!

P4-7

The older pupils after a lovely day wandering around film sets simply couldn’t bear to stay indoors and waste the sunshine with Winter on the horizon so took a wander down to the beach to have a bit of math fun! We practised our symmetry in the sand and then we set ourselves an engineering challenge to engage the numeracy side of our brain making mini dens with specific set criteria and we finally ended with some stone skipping (not the most math related thing but certainly good fun!)

Overall, we have all had a fab week celebrating the power of numeracy and seeing how important it is and the impact it has in our daily lives. Thankfully we love Math here and do this all the time at Kirkcolm, regardless of what week it is!

P1-4 

The lower class had a grand old day outdoors once again for their Maths work with Miss Gibson where they got stuck into some potion making! Using their knowledge of measure that have been working on with Miss Gibson for the term, they got to put their skills to the test today and what an excellent job they have done. Look like lot’s of fun! 

P4-7

P4-7 really stretched their brains to the limits today with some problem solving! Some of us had a bash at some classic prob solving in pairs while others took us the ‘Math with Nae Borders’ Challenge which involved 5 incredibly tough questions to try and figure out! Then the class split into 2 groups and tried to solve the frog and lily pad conundrum! Have a look at the intense concentration faces that happened today…