Kirkcolm Primary School

The 7^th of Novembers marks the first of 2 outdoor learning days to take place within the school year and since we are all working together to try and make more use of our fabulous playground and all it has to offer, we did not let these grey skies deter us!

Arming ourselves up with lots of layers and bracing for the muddy playground – both the lower and upper classes took part in some outdoor learning challenges.

P1-4 are learning about money so replaced coins with natural materials and made up different sums of money. As well as this they also used measurement to work out the length of the netball court and added up how much it would cost to paint.

P4-7 attempted to measure a tree without anybody being required to stand on shoulders or climbing to the top… We used a variety of different methods but found that using our pencil, a partner and some ‘one eye closed’ perspective worked out the best!

Moving onto literacy this after P1-4 and P4-7 created their spelling words outdoors using natural materials and then P4-7 foraged for some natural ingredients to write down instructions for some home-made remedies! (There was a lot of hand washing after this!)

Overall, the boys and girls had a fab day running about outside, getting some fresh air and didn’t even mind the odd drizzling on!

The Groups Success!

P7 had a grand time this morning as they were given the chance to layer up and head out to the North West Castle for a morning of curling. They got an opportunity to glide around, sweep the ice and slide the stones along and then got straight down to business for a mini session of games!

Finally all the boys and girls mixed up for a finally game and although Kirkcolm gave a noble performance , it was Leswalt that took the title!

The P7’s had a great time and some of them are even considering taking it up on a weekly basis… Watch this space!

To celebrate all things spooky this Halloween Kirkcolm Primary came together with the nursery for a morning of ghostly games and a fabulous costume parade to showcase all the hard work the boys and girls put in to making themselves look terrifying!

The morning kicked off with our costume parade and judging session by our lovely Kirkcolm Pupil Council (with teachers occasionally called upon to make a deciding vote!) for the most ghoulish costumes that showcased a great effort from the pupils. The winners were;

P1 – Lyle McCulloch

P2 – Ivan Turtle

P3 – Sally Drummond

P4 – James Turtle (with some help from Olivia!)

P5 – Emma Drummond

P6 – Ruth Turtle

And finally,

P7 – Danny Lyon

Well Done Folks!

Then we set about some playing some Halloween themed games like; Pass the Pumpkin, Creepy Corners, Musical Arms and we finished it all off with a wee Dook’ for Apples.

We have our super duo House Captains to thank for the planning and organisation of the day and keeping things running smoothly! Well Done Danny and Abbie!

I’m sure you’ll agree from looking through the photos that Kirkcolm may have the spookiest children about…

Primary 7 enjoyed their first day at Stranraer Academy in the company of all the other Primary 7 pupils from the cluster.  The day had an enjoyable focus of Music, with members of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra travelling down to Stranraer to conduct a workshop with all the pupils.

Our pupils were singing, dancing, playing games, composing and learning about the orchestra and their music in a fun filled day.  After lunch they were joined by older pupils from the Academy who came along to listen to the final performance from the musicians.

All returned to Primary, more familiar with Stranraer Academy and informed and entertained by the orchestra.

On Tuesday this week the upper class were lucky to be given the opportunity  to visit a local farm along with P5-7 pupils from Leswalt and Portpatrick. We did this as part of our Health and Wellbeing topic this term which involves investigating where our food comes from and where better to find out this information than learning about local produce!

We started off the trip by making sure we  were dressed appropriately, so many layers were applied and welly boots at the ready to brave the elements. Thankfully we have a beautifully clear and dry day for our visit. We boarded the bus at Kirkcolm and then went onto to pick up our Leswalt neighbours before meeting Portpatrick at Balgracie.

We met up with the RHET leader – Isobel Milroy and Mr Drennan – the owner of the farm, and were given our gloves and an introduction into just what the farms purpose was and what Mr Drennan produced.

Balgracie has a range of produce from milk to beef to some crops. We focused on the production of milk and all the hard work involved and found out his milk does a very essential job in helping o make the chocolate for Kit Kats at the Nestle factory!

We learned about a range of different things; from how all cows have their own paper passport and how the calves are kept warm and safe. Learning about how they milk the cows, how long it can take to finish the milking and the steps the farmers takes to make sure the cows are kept safe from infection. Looking at where the cows sleep in the winter and how its kept clean and comfortable for them. Then onto the silage pit to see how they are fed and efforts it takes to make the silage.

We went on to look at the different types of feed for the animals and the different ingredients that go into them and saw where the milk was stored and how it was carefully cooled to keep it fresh. We went inside to see the crush and thankfully Mr Drennan was careful not to stuck while demonstrating (maybe we’ll catch him out the next time?!) and we saw how the cows were weighed and received medical treatment.

Finally we finished off the day with a seat on the tractor and quad bikes for those of us who have never had the chance!

Overall, we had such a great day out and learned so much about how farms work and were amazed at the hard work which goes into keeping things running and keeping the animals well looked after, happy and healthy. We can see first hand how resourceful farms can be in using their muck to slurry the fields and how many different people are needed to keep things working from the lorry drivers to the vets (one of which had quite the morning ahead scanning over 70 cows!)

We are so thankful for the RHET team and Mr Drennan for letting us have this experience and the day was even topped off with a bonus Kit Kat at the end!

This afternoon we had the Fire Brigade and PC Wilson pop into school to talk to the pupils about staying safe on bonfire night. They gave the pupils lots of useful tips, such as: putting a sparkler into a carrot so you have something safe to hold onto; contacting the fire brigade if you are having your own bonfire to inform them so they don’t get a call from a worried neighbour and are taken away from a real emergency; avoid wearing loose clothing and tie your hair up to it doesn’t catch fire; and finally we learned about which materials are safe to put onto a bonfire to burn.

Pupils volunteered to demonstrate the stop, drop and roll – have a keek at some of them in action in the photos below!

Huge thanks must go to the Fire Brigade and PC Wilson for taking the time to come into school – we are looking forward to a fun but safe 5th November!

On Tuesdays, Kirkcolm opened its doors to all the parents of pupils to come in for an afternoon of Numeracy and STEM games with the children! It gave the pupils a chance to challenge their parents to complete different Math tasks and to have a peek at just what the pupils are getting up to in school.

We all split into 6 different mixed groups and at each station we had a P6/7 or teacher leading the activities and our resident photographer (Mrs Warwick) went around snapping some photos of the day!

We challenged parents to complete a Big Math Beat That, played some of the snazzy 3D Sumdog games, had Lego building challenges, outdoor brainteasers, marshmallow towers (and nobody tried to eat any!) and finally guiding the Coding Mouse through a variety of mazes!

Here’s what the pupils thought about the afternoon;

Luke (P5) – “Very fun!”

Olivia (P5) – “The Frog challenge was good!”

Abbie A (P7) – “Seeing everybody have fun was the best part about it!”

Arla (P6) – “The Frog Challenge was hard but fun…”

Daniel (P6) – “MY favour part was doing the marshmallow cocktail stick tower challenge”

On the ninth of October, Miss McNicoll’s  P.5-7 class (joined by Leswalt’s P5-7) walked up to the village hall to learn about the history of the local Kilmorie Stone, and about the Vikings!

The children had four rotations to go round at the event including; moulding spear heads or axe heads using polyester like a blacksmith would have, looking at what a blacksmith would have did on a day to day basses, looking at the Kilmorie stone and learning about the story behind it and last but not least, taking three icons from a basket and writing a story about it!

The children also played a game called settlers, ( a game where you get a sheet of paper and try to get icons from a basket that you will need to survive!) and were shown battle weapons and a shield wall!

Danny Lyon said that he enjoyed using symbols to make a story but said it was also very challenging.

Overall the children very much liked learning about the vikings in a fun and involving way!

Written by Ivy Richardson (P.7)

If you want to see additional photos and video footage of what the children got up to, keep your eyes peeled in the Freepress for coverage of the day and online for the videos and interviews the children participated in!

The Kilmorie stone itself can be found to the right hand side of Kirkcolm Church for all to see and try to find the distinct images carved into it and if you want to know what they mean – just ask the pupils at Kirkcolm!

-Miss McNicoll (Teacher)

Today P4-7 from Kirkcolm followed in the footsteps of the younger pupils and took a jaunt out to Wigtown to experience some of the fun activities the Book festival has to offer!

We started our day by eating our lunch on the bus before exploring the streets of Wigtown to locate the Church Hall for our Shoo Rayner Event.

First ones there, we settled down right at the front with our clipboards, paper and pencils and got to meet Shoo and see some illustrations before the rest of the schools joined us and we all got to partake in a mass drawing session!

We got to see how Rayner builds up all his illustrations from simple shapes and through simple instructions we got to make our own illustrative designs and find out a range of different techniques for drawing.

We also learned that Math is key! (Geometry to be specific) in creating people and animals using simple shapes and lines (…which gave us a handy reminder of how much Math is truly everywhere during Math Week Scotland!)

Here is some of the photos of our time there.. 🙂