Kirkcolm Primary School

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 🙂

Saturday saw a very busy day of Christmas cheer and fun in the Christmas Fayre held in the school as well as carol singing and the big light switch on in the village at night.

Lots of the community turned up to the fayre and enjoyed the many stalls on offer including home baking, Christmas crafts and the nursery stall.  The whole school provided some entertainment to the guests via their fantastic Christmas songs they have been learning.  Thank yo to all who helped make the fayre such a success and thank you to all who came along too 🙂

The festive fun continued in to the night with carol singing at the top of the village outside the church.  Celebrations then continued in the village hall with the grand switching on of the Xmas lights, as well as the presentation of cheques to the community groups from the Windfarm Grants.  Our parent and pupil councils were there to receive their cheques and look forward to spending these very soon.  Again, thank you to all who help organise such fantastic events and also to those who come along to support it too.

What a successful night the Trio schools had at the girls’ badminton competition yesterday!!

Girls single results:

1^st – Rhian Palmer (Portpatrick)

2^nd – Kayleigh Williams (Leswalt)

3^rd – Ellie Miller (Kirkcolm)

Girls double results:

1^st – Katie Butler & Ellie Miller (Kirkcolm)

2^nd – Jenna Calderwood & Kayleigh Williams (Leswalt)

3^rd – Rhian Palmer & Jenna (Portpatrick)

A clean sweep for the North Rhins Partnership –well done girls!!

A huge well done to Iona, Katie, Robin, Ellie and Sophie who were placed 2^nd out of all the schools in Dumfries and Galloway in the Maths Week Scotland competition with their song ‘Born with Maths.’ They have won £50 for Kirkcolm School to spend on Maths resources. What a talented bunch!! (Video of the song to follow…)

P6-7 have had the pleasure of working with the traditional music company Feis Rois for the past 12 weeks. Anne from Feis Rois has been delivering Group Music Making sessions to the class, which has involved learning new songs and singing rounds, playing games to help develop rhythm, playing percussion instruments (with some pupils even bringing in their own instruments from home), and discussion about musical terms such as dynamics, pitch and tempo.

The 12 week block culminated in a performance yesterday which the whole school and parents were invited to come and watch. P6-7 enjoyed teaching the younger pupils a game called ‘San Mario’ that they loved learning!!

Huge thanks to Anne for all her hard work and input with the pupils. They really enjoyed the sessions and learned lots!

Kirkcolm School recently donated lots of spare books to a school in Africa. Our Art teacher, Mrs Copeland and her family are currently building a Nursery in Zambia and plan to then build a school. They will be raising funds to transport the books out to Africa. We hope to set up a link with the school in the future.

_{P1-3 went on a trip to the local post office today as part of their ‘People who Help Us’ topic. The children asked lots of questions and enjoyed finding out how letters get from the post-box to the person they are for. It takes 3 days for a letter to get to Santa in Lapland!!}