Kirkcolm Primary School

Our wonderful gardening club, headed up by the fantastic Mrs Richardson, introduced chickens to the school garden yesterday. Don’t worry, our feathered friends are not running around the playground freely – Mrs Richardson received some funding to purchase a chick coop, and some kind community volunteers (Mark & Dave) offered to build it for us.

We now have a total of 4 chickens in the school garden and, only 1 day in, we have already collected 3 eggs! We plan to setup a rota to ensure that the chickens are looked after, including an egg collection rota. The eggs will be sold as a little enterprise project, with the money going towards the cost of feeding and caring for the chickens.

We are running a competition to name our new chickens – watch this space! Also, if you have any spare egg boxes at home, please send them into the school. Thank-you!

Here is a run down of what our wonderful garden volunteers have been up to after school and at weekends. Thank you to Mrs Richardson for leading them all and her hard work in this.

18 April  – What a lovely evening for gardening club, we planted our sunflower seeds and started weeding, in-between exploring the new chicken hut!

20 April – A great day was had  building the school chicken run and coop along with gardening. We had a lovely team of parent helpers and invaluable help from locals Mark and Dave.. we couldn’t of done it without you, thank you to everyone

24 April – The weather was ideal for gardening club today .. we split in to groups and finished off what the school started in the afternoon. This was checking on all the hedgerow plants that were planted nearly 2 years ago. We put a cardboard base around them ( to stop weeds etc) then mulched them my adding cut grass on to the cardboard. This was very popular!

Miss Douglas and Primary 1-4 had a real life game of “guess who” today. 

This afternoon the class were set the task of working in groups to describe people in class and the others had to guess who was who.   This was part of their science learning and teaching all about physical attributes.  BUT, without telling the class the REAL Miss Douglas left the classroom and was replaced by the OTHER Miss Douglas – her identical twin sister!  The other Miss Douglas is also a Primary teacher and was talking the class for this activity this afternoon.  The other Miss Douglas is currently teaching in Australia but paid a visit to the class at Kirkcolm this afternoon.

Mrs Baillie and Mrs Macpherson were in on this trick and kept a close eye on proceedings as some of the more observant pupils began to question if there had been a change of teacher. 

Both Miss Douglas’ were wearing exactly the same outfit and hairstyles.  But some children spotted a slight change in the voice of Miss Douglas (the second).  Others were oblivious to the fact that their temporary class teacher was a completely different person!

The big reveal came as one pupil described Miss Douglas their class teacher, and others had to guess who it was.  Miss Douglas, the Kirkcolm teacher, then jumped into the room saying “it’s me!” – to which many pupils were confused doing a double take- looking at them both!

Have a look at the photographs – can you tell which one is the Miss Douglas you have all of the time at Kirkcolm?

Which Miss Douglas is which?

Is the real Miss Douglas on the the right, or on the left?!

You’d have thought that 1 stage production would be enough for the pupils of Kirkcolm Primary – but not for our P5-7s! Despite finishing their own school show the night before, our senior class headed to the Ryan Centre on Thursday to work with the Scottish Opera and star in another performance, titled ‘Vikings! The Quest for the Dragon’s Treasure.’

Alongside their school show songs and lines, they’ve been busy learning another set of songs and moves throughout the term in preparation for today.

This performance saw us work alongside pupils from other schools – Leswalt and Portpatrick were the Sorcerers; Sandhead were the Vikings; and Kirkcolm and Drummore were the Villagers. We spent the morning being led by our Scottish Opera performers, who guided us in pulling the whole performance together. After lunch we got our costumes on which helped us to get into character and had a dress rehearsal, ready for our audience-worthy performance just 10-minutes later. 

The story told of the Sorcerer Supreme, the Queen’s advisor who was power-hungry and had been planning to overthrow her. He and his Sorcerers trick the Queen’s Vikings into stealing what they thought was a dragon’s treasure. The Villagers, led by the Farmer, warn them of enraging the dragon and convince the Queen to return the gems – however, they realise that one of the gems is actually a dragon egg and are set upon by the dragon. After reuniting the baby dragon with it’s mother, the story ends with a plot twist as it’s revealed that the Sorcerer Supreme kept one of the “gems” as a souvenir and now the Dad dragon is about to descend upon everyone.

We had an absolutely brilliant day working with the Scottish Opera teaching artists – a huge thank you to them for all of their hard work in helping us to pull it all together.

Our P5-7 pupils have worked their little socks off this term! 1 more day until their well-earned holidays!

UNCRC Article 31 – Right to take part in creative activities. 

Kirkcolm Primary pupils put on a spectacular show on Wednesday – not once, but twice -to a packed out hall of friends and families. The pupils have been working really hard over the last few months to learn their lines and the songs, and perform with gusto – and their hard work certainly paid off!

‘Cinderella & Rockerfella’ put a modern, panto-style twist on the traditional Cinderella tale. The story starts with Rockerfella (a music artist formerly known as Prince Charming) coming to town to appear in concert. Sadly, Cinderella is unable to go – she’s been given far too much housework by her Ugly Sisters! Soon, Rockerfella decides he wants to quit show business to find the girl of his dreams.

Fairy Nastyboots tries to thwart any possible romance throughout the show. She hatches a plan to bring misery to Cinders, but the welly-wearing Fairy Brigade thankfully avert disaster with the help of Buttons’ talking dog, Teaser.

The Ugly Sisters then receive invitations to an after-concert ball. After a little help from the Fairy Godmother, Cinderella attends and falls in love with Rocky. After leaving her shoe behind when the clock strikes 12, Rocky eventually manages to find Cinders and the shoe fits perfectly!

The story ends with Rocky’s manager finding the “Next Big Thing” in Buttons and his talking dog; the Fairy Brigade taking on the challenge of making over the Ugly Sisters; and Cinders and Rocky living happily ever after!

The audience were thoroughly entertained throughout and there were plenty of opportunities for audience participation from the outset – goodies to cheer and baddies to boo! Every single pupil was a star and we are very proud of them!

If you didn’t get the chance to come and see the show or want to re-live it all over again, the video has been uploaded to our YouTube channel here – Cinderella & Rockerfella Show

P5-7 have enjoyed a 4-week block of rugby with Neve and Niamh from Wigtownshire Rugby club.

Pupils have learned the basic of rugby and participated in lots of activities and games to help develop our agility and strength, and our skills in tackling and passing the ball.

Despite the mud, they got stuck in and had a blast!

Norval Dampney from Incredible Edibles popped into school on Tuesday afternoon to tend to the orchard that was planted last year. Some of our Eco committee and other P5-7 pupils went with her to give our trees some TLC!

Norval explained to pupils that we need to clear the bottom of the trees from grass and wild plants to give the trees less competition and more of a chance to grow. Pupils set to work and also laid down cardboard and bark around the base of each tree to give it more nutrients.

Pupils learned that there are more microbes in 1 teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people in the whole world!! Hence the need to make sure our hands are clean when we come in from play times and particularly before eating.

We look forward to watching our trees grow and eventually harvesting the fruit in years to come!