Kirkcolm Primary School

Primary 1-3 pupils were very excited this afternoon to receive their Bookbug (P1) / Read, Write, Count (P2-3) gift bags. Parents were invited in as part of our launch of this Scottish Government initiative which aims to inspire a lifelong love of reading, writing and counting, and strengthen links between home and school learning by supporting parents in taking an active role in their child’s learning to give them the best start in life. They were shown the contents of the bags and given suggestions for helping to develop literacy and numeracy at home using these resources. After presenting the boys and girls with their bags, everyone headed down to the classroom where we spent time exploring our new books and games. The pupils are really looking forward to using the contents of their bags at home!

On Wednesday the boys and girls had another visit from our friends at Lets Get Sporty. They were practising their throwing and catching as well as how to use a racket. The boys and girls particularly liked using the balloons to help them slow down and think about their hitting skills. Coach Craig and Coach Jazmin were fantastic and everyone had lots of fun.

Last week our Primary 7’s spent some time cooling off. They were joined by other Primary 7’s from various different schools at the North West Castle Hotel where they learned some of the basic skills of Curling. Curling’s Cool is an initiative aimed to introduce the sport to children and give them a taste of what’s involved. Initially, some found it tricky to find their balance, but by the end they were all playing like the pros. All children had a fantastic time and judging by some of the medals, we might just have some future Olympians in our midst’s.

The boys and girls of Kirkcolm Primary school had a pyjama party for Pudsey to raise money for the BBC Children in Need appeal.  Everyone brought a donation for a non-uniform day as well as purchasing official merchandise on sale from the school.

Mrs Richardson and Mrs Carrick Buchanan gave up their time to paint lots of faces and Ivy Richardson and Emma Bailey also sold some buns they had baked at home.  There was also a Pudsey colouring in competition.

The exact grand total raised is still to be counted up – but it is estimated to be almost £200.  Well done to all who helped support this – it was a fun and relaxed Friday 🙂

The whole school recently created colourful Christmas pictures for the Ervie/Kirkcolm Church Christmas card competition.

These were judged in school yesterday – it was a very difficult decision as they were impressed with all the artwork.  The 4 pictures chosen to be on the Christmas card belonged to Jack Howie, Olivia Turtle, Ivy Richardson and Izzy Keith.

Today all 4 received selection boxes as prizes and have been given a copy of the Christmas card.

Well done to all!  

On Wednesday the pupils at Kirkcolm were most certainly creepin’ it real as they got dressed up for their annual Halloween party. The party was organised by our House Captains, Robin McAuley and Michaela Lyon, who planned some fun games for everyone to participate in.

We started off with a costume parade for each year group with the nursery joining in on the fun too. The Pupil Council were on hand to choose the winners, with some proving just too difficult to call, resulting in a draw in the Primary 4 category.

After some dancing we moved onto the games, including Roll the Pumpkin, Creepy Corners, Musical Zombie Statues, Pin the Wart on the Witch and Wrap the Mummy. We are very grateful to the Parents and Carers who kindly donated prizes for the children to enjoy. Everyone had a spook-tacular time!

On this lovely Wednesday Miss McNicoll’s P4-7 were lucky enough to have a visit from our Lego engineering extraordinaire, John!

John came in to talk to pupils about their topic for this term; renewable and non-renewable energy sources, he was able to introduce them to ways they can experience these renewable energy sources we hear so much about for themselves and explained some very technical energy terms to them.

Our pupils got to hear all about the transfer of energy, and witnessed it first hand using a heat camera! – Extremely impressive military-grade equipment! In addition to this the pupils were given the challenge to use the Lego in their own way to design a machine which used a generator and some form of system to turn it using ‘kinetic energy’ that could give them the most volts. No surprise it ended up being Grace and Innes’s team (who were appropriately name ‘The Volts’) that pulled it off in the end with a staggering 17.9 volts! Closely followed by Cody and Daniel with an impressive 17.7 volts! Tight race kids!

Onto the next challenge… this one was a little bit harder and definitely required more steps. The pupils had to design a Lego machine… powered by a renewable energy source! So there could be no little hands turning any levers to make it work. The pupils were given outlines of this and amazingly, despite how difficult it proved to be at times, and fidgety, and tough… They managed it. As you can see in the photos we have some hydro powered Lego machines and some wind powered machines – Well done folks!

Finally, we rounded off our day with a little solar challenge. Since the weather was so kind to us we were able to make some solar powered cars to race in the playground! It was a bit grey and spotty at times but we managed it and you can see all the delighted and fiercely competitive faces during their races.

Overall, we have had a fantastic and extremely informative day and we have nobody else to thank but John of course for all his patience with us and for bringing all these fantastic gadgets to the school for us to play with. I hope he’s inspired some of us into being safer and more conservative with our energy use and perhaps even towards considering a career in a STEM field.

Lego Renewable Energy Input 
On the 10th or October at Kirkcolm Primary school the upper class got a Lego Input on Renewable Energy. First John told us a bit about Renewable us a bit about Renewable Energy. Then we had the challenge to make a windmill or a water turning that was fun. After break we finished them of up onto lunch time I made a water turbine. When we came back from lunch we made solar powered cars it was tricky and hard me and Miley raced with our classmates when we finished our car. The sun had disappeared but John brought lamps but it didn’t work as good as the sun. After we raced it was time to pack up I didn’t want them to go we said thank you to John that was Kirkcolm primary schools Lego Input I hope if you get this opportunity to get what Kirkcolm got I hope you liked it as much as we did.
Mackenzie Adams P.7 

Please have a flick through our lovely photos to see what we’ve been getting up to!

…and why it’s such a bad habit!

We were lucky enough to have the lovely Mrs Lisa Ashby visit us from Smoking Matters (Scotland’s initiative against smoking) to have a chat with the P4-7 pupils about the health concerns that come with smoking and all the dangers that surround it!

We played some true or false games and our faces turn to absolute horror when we realised some of the very real facts associated with smoking. The average person takes 17-20 years to quit smoking – we couldn’t believe our ears!

We got to witness Professor Scott and Professor Ruth dawn their lab coats and safety gear to conduct an experiment looking at all the dangerous chemicals that are in tobacco. Did you know there is around 4800 different chemicals in tobacco!?

As well as that, Mrs Ashby used her technology to give Robin and Miley a glimpse into the future if they were ever to take up the bad habit and you can see the horror and shock on their faces when they got the big reveal.

Hearing about some of the health concerns to do with smoking really sends some shivers down your spine; hairy tongues and black teeth!? As well as the long term affects on your lung health with all that tar. Hopefully this taught the boys and girls the real danger of taking up such a habit and why they should be participating and backing NHS Scotland’s goal to be a smoke free country by 2034!

If you know anybody who smokes, try and encourage them to jump on the bandwagon!

In the meantime – here are some photos of the boys and girls getting stuck into their experiments…

Kirkcolm Primary school is very proud to have a UK record holder in our midst.  Finlay Nelson, in Primary 7, now has the honour of being the fastest 11 year old boy in the whole of the United Kingdom with the fastest time for swimming 50 metres butterfly. 

What a star – and so humble too……. Mrs Baillie only learned of this amazing achievement today with a chance conversation over fish and chips!

Well done Finlay, we are all extremely proud of you!

Today we held our first Pupil Council meeting of the new session. Our new Pupil Council reps are: Archie Ashton, Jack Howie, Peyton Parker, Miley Adams, Abbi Johnstone, Ivy Richardson, Jack Barrett & Guy Butler

What responsible young citizens they are proving to be – they were full of great ideas to help make our school an even better place!!