Kirkcolm Primary School

As part of our Eco Schools work learning about food and being responsible citizens, this Christmas we decided to run a ‘Reverse advent calendar’ – rather than the boys and girls getting a chocolate each day (they weren’t too impressed with this idea initially, I think many wanted the chocolate!!), they were asked to bring in a donation for the local food bank.

We spoke all about why it’s good to help charities, particularly people in need our local area, and learned about the work of the food bank. By the end, we were overwhelmed with our families’ generosity – we had pupils bringing in bags of donations as they realised how important it is to support the charity (despite only 1 item being requested per family!).

We are delighted to be able to deliver such a huge donation from our little school to the Wigtownshire food bank this Christmas – and we hope that it helps lots of families in the area.

Today we celebrated Christmas in all it’s glory with our delicious Christmas dinners and showed off our festive flair in our Christmas jumpers!

Tis’ the season to sparkle!

Merry Christmas from all at Kirkcolm Primary!

Please click here  for a special video message from the boys and girls.

Enjoy!

P4-7 pupils had their first Playmakers training session this afternoon with Laura McClymont. They started off by brainstorming ideas of games to play inside and outside (just in case we have more miserable days like today and are prepared for all weathers!). They then discussed how to make teams fair, for example, getting pupils to line up in order of height, or by birth month.

Afterwards, the class split into small groups and had to come up with their own game – they had to discuss the rules, consider if any points were to be awarded and how to win. They then had to explain their game to the class, with the other pupils giving feedback on their ideas and how clear their explanations were.

We are looking forward to our final session with Laura next week, when we will become fully fledged Play Makers!

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!