Kirkcolm Primary School

All upper school children from Kirkcolm, Portpatrick and Leswalt had a thoroughly enjoyable morning as history was brought to life in front of their eyes.  Children were led on a historical Scots journey through medieval times, learning about William Wallace and Robert the Bruce.  They were told about the many battles fought with clever tactics and lands plundered. The children were enthralled at the costumes, flags and swords on display that they were able to handle.  A fantastic opportunity to learn about this period of time.

The P6/7 children have been coding this morning using a programme called Scratch.  We have made a ghost busters game using sprites and commands to change size, movements, time and sound. Jack and Findlay said “It was the best thing we have done on the computer” so far!  Thank you Miss Creighton, RAiSE Team.

Our Trip To The Rotary Lunch

On Monday the 15^th January, Sophie and I went to the North West Castle for the rotary lunch. There was an Olympic curling champion  called Greg Drummond, and lots of other important people, including my golf teacher saying a few words and thanking everyone for coming. After he had finished his speech, we had our lunch, soup for starters and chicken salad or fish and chips for main. Then my golf teacher said a few more words. Greg came to the front, and showed us a couple of videos about his career, after that we got a picture with him and I got to hold his silver medal, and it was really heavy.  And that is what happened at the Rotary lunch.

Sophie Wilson and Davey Walker

Pupils got dressed up in their festive finery on Tuesday for our school Christmas party! The afternoon kicked off with a delicious buffet lunch provided by our cook, Ann-Marie – there were plenty of savoury snacks and sweet treats on offer for everyone to enjoy.

We then started the party games, which were all planned and organised by Primary 6/7 pupils. Games included Pass the Present, Christmas Corners, Musical Arms, Musical Snowmen, along with some social dancing.

At 2.30pm a special visitor arrived. We know that Santa is very busy at this time of year, but we had our fingers and toes crossed that it was him – and it was!! He kindly came bearing gifts for all the boys and girls.

Everyone had a wonderful afternoon!

Well done to the four pupils from Kirkcolm school who went to the Academy last week to represent their school at a fun Maths Transition challenge. The team consisted of Iona, Ivy, Robin and Finlay. The challenge began with an Activity Pack full of Christmas themed maths puzzles and problem solving, as well as a complex cube building challenge and a ‘Tarsia’ hexagon challenge.

Following this, the teams were given a pack of spaghetti, tape and one sheet of paper and tasked with creating the tallest tower. This was very entertaining!
The event was a great success and we look forward to participating in the challenge again next Christmas. Leswalt and Portpatrick School joined in the fun as well.

Pupils came to school on Friday wearing their very festive Christmas jumpers in aid of the charity Save the Children. Ellie Miller had also been extremely busy baking and decorating 100 cupcakes which she sold at break and lunch time! We continued the festive celebrations with a delicious Christmas Lunch whilst listening to Christmas music.

Pupils raised a fantastic total of £106.91 for Save the Children!! Well done to everyone and a huge thank-you to Ellie for her yummy cakes.

On Tuesday, the Nursery and P1 pupils performed ‘Our First Nativity’ to all the pupils, parents and friends of Kirkcolm School. They worked really hard to learn their lines and the songs, and all looked adorable!! P1-7 then entertained everyone with some Christmas songs that they had been learning.

We then took the opportunity while everyone was together to say some very important thank-you and farewells – Mrs McClure and Mrs Adams will both be retiring this Christmas after 17 and 19 years at Kirkcolm Nursery. They were each presented with a voucher for a pamper day, a scrap book of memories of their time at Kirkcolm Nursery, a beautiful framed collage that the Nursery pupils created, and a bouquet of flowers. The children then sang a song for the ladies that we have been learning, with help from Mrs Marie Turtle. Both ladies will be sorely missed by everyone at the Nursery and School.

The morning finished with pupils enjoying some juice and cake back in the classroom, and the adults staying for some shortbread and a blether in the hall!

This morning, all the p5/6/7’s took part in a Christmas Numeracy and Maths Challenge based on the 12 Days of Christmas.  They had to work out how many gifts were received altogether in the song and try to look for creative ways to work this out.  Some pupils used vidual methods, written calculations, tables etc.

They then had to work out how many ‘legs’ were in the song… things got a little tricky at Day 8 when there were maids milking cows with milking stools  (which all have their own legs!).

Final challenges were to estimate then try to calculate the potential cost of all the gifts in the song and then create their own modern day version.  Jak in P5 came up with ‘On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me… an IPhone and LG TV! 🙂

Finlay, Iona, Robin and Ivy were chosen as the final 4 who will go to Stranraer Academy on Thursday 14th December to represent the school in another transition Xmas challenge with the S1’s and the maths department.

P1-3 were very lucky and received fantastic gift bags full of literacy and numeracy activities and resources to take home and explore.  This included a selection of books, pencils, activity book and maths games included tropical trumps, snakes and ladders and a time/measure/money game.

Parents were invited in for the launch of these fantastic sets and older pupils took time to explore the gifts with the younger pupils.  This was lovely to observe 🙂